This past Shabbat we studied Parashat Vayetzei, the Torah portion known as Vayetzei, in the middle of the Book of Bereshit (Genesis), chronicling the formative episodes of our ancestors as they develop from a family into a nation.
The Torah portion picks up with our ancestor Jacob leaving (Vayetzei comes from the root meaning to leave or go out) his familial home in Canaan, fleeing the wrath of his brother Esau, whom Jacob and his mother Rebecca have fleeced out of his blessing, going to find a wife in his family’s country of origin.
The Torah portion closes with Jacob, having now amassed a large family and much wealth, reversing his trek, this time fleeing his uncle Laban, the father of his two wives, Rachel and Leah, and grandfather of his twelve children; Laban’s own sons had grown envious of Jacob’s success.
Prior to their flight, Jacob’s beloved wife Rachel steals her father Laban’s terafim, commonly translated as “household idols.”
The question that has perplexed commentators for generations is, why? And what might this teach us?
Some have argued that she did so to prevent her father from continuing to practice idolatry, a typical rabbinic move, to rehabilitate the actions of our ancestors. Other traditional commentators suggest that she did so to prevent her father from using these idols as a tool for divination, to determine to where Jacob and his family were fleeing; without recourse to the idols Laban would be unable to determine where Jacob was headed.
As scholar Nahum Sarna observed, these household idols served multiple functions in ancient Near East societies: they were believed to protect the family’s food supply, to assure the general well being of the family, or their ownership represented a status symbol in a family; whomever a parent bequeathed his household idols to was seen as the new patriarch or matriarch.
And yet the word terafim appears to come from the word rafah, meaning “to be limp, without energy” or even taraf “to decay, become foul,” meaning that the substance of the idols, at least as Torah understands them, signals vanity or decay.
What does this teach us?
Well, potentially, like Rachel, so often we feel we need to carry with us the same tools that we deployed or relied upon when we were young. Our operating assumption tends to be that if it helped get us to this point, it will be necessary to wield in the face of the challenges that lie ahead. But, as the title of one book would put it, what got you here may not aid you there. Much of life, the Torah may be suggesting to us, is recognizing when we can put down one tool and embrace a different approach. It’s never easy, but perhaps part of our journey is discerning which parts of our past are important elements of our future, and which are not.
