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Transcript & Notes
The following touches on the place and character of women. It is not meant to speak to actual individual women, but rather to a biblical archetype. I’m not trying to put you in a box!
In one of the companies I work for there is a senior advisor who is always expecting World War III right around the corner. He’ll ask questions like “Have you considered the possible impact of all trade between the US and Europe just ending?”
The answer, as a little company, is: “We’ll have bigger problems than bankruptcy if that happens.”
Nonetheless that sort of eventuality isn’t outside the realm of the possible. Along with the expanding war in and around Israel, the conflict in Ukraine is growing more serious. To listen to the Russian commentariat, Ukraine is only the first step. That can seem ridiculous until you realize most of the Russian army isn’t Russian, but effectively colonized peoples forced into service. If Ukraine loses, Ukrainians will be fighting for Russian imperialism. Meanwhile, on the other side of the world, the North Koreans have been acting increasingly aggressively and the Chinese are practicing blockading Taiwan. These are the places people care about, the places where it is not hard to imagine the situation snowballing into a global conflict in mere weeks or days. In a place nobody cares about, the conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo has killed 6 million in the past 25 years and the violence is continuing with 45,000 dead a year and 400,000 raped – year in and year out. Even South America has its issues, with Venezuela growing increasingly aggressive in its pursuit of Guyana’s massive oil reserves. And in the U.S. there is increasing talk of some sort of internal conflict. There are certainly those who desire exactly that.
The world seems to be on the brink of a conflagration.
In this reality, the two most important questions are: how did we get here and how do we stop it?
At first glance, the Torah might seem like a strange place to look for answers. That is doubly so when considering the early ‘history’ that seems so very strange. What can you possibly learn about modern geo-politics from an ancient text filled with twists on mythologies that are long since passed? The thing is, even if you don’t believe in the divinity of the document, there are probable millennia of wisdom buried within those stories. It is not scientific wisdom, it is wisdom about the nature of humanity and society.
We can take the flood as an example. What led to the flood? On its most obvious level, G-d pardoned Cain. He was destined to walk the earth as a marked man, but G-d said that whoever killed Cain would be punished sevenfold. In other words, the criminal was allowed to ‘live with his crime.’ He remained enough a part of society that he married and had children who built cities. As much as we like to talk about extreme lifespans in the Chumash, they are only attributed to the children of Seth (a rare case where I won’t use his Hebrew name transliterated). Despite what was probably normal lifespans in his line, Cain lived for many generations. His own seventh-generation descendent Lemech learned from him. He killed two people, declaring that he would be protected for 77 generations due to his violence.
Lemech’s own children then engage in lives of increasing avarice. His eldest is named Yaval. The word means to ‘acquire’ without actually earning. The Yuval, or Jubilee comes from it. He acquires. How? He goes into cattle ranching. It is an anti-social business, not exactly known for supporting wonderful families. His brother takes it a step forward. His name is Yuval, which is a passive form of this already passive activity. He goes into the entertainment industry with the instruments chosen suggesting a connection to prostitution. After all, his cowboy brother needs a place to spend his cash. Then we have Tuval Cain. Cain is jealousy and Tuval would seem to be a variation on Yuval, given the context. This suggests somebody who acquires jealousy, or perhaps ‘acquires through jealousy’. What business does he go into? Knives. He’s an arms dealer. After all, if you’ve got a great Vegas-style business going, you want to be better off than the other guy.
When we fast forward a few generations, the entire world seems populated by the Bnei Elohim (the sons of the powerful) who are men of might and of name. They are all about power and fame, which are zero sum games (in other words, every winner must produce losers). Their thoughts are evil, constantly. They aren’t creative, they are takers and the reality of their culture has infused and destroyed any hope of redemption.
So, we have a cause: if you’re too soft on crime, it will spin out of control. There are plenty of contemporary examples, but the most prominent right now are international. When bad guys are appeased, they don’t become better. It is almost as simple a truth as sanctions never overturning evil governments.
Fast forwarding through, we can see a number of other societal collapses.
With Bavel, the standard children’s tale is of a tower and language barriers being created. But the prior chapter already describes different people having different languages (Lashon). The story of Bavel uses another word for language (Safah). Safah can mean ‘borders.’ As in, there were no borders between men. No dividing lines. Everything they had was one. Then even settled in Shinar, meaning ‘that is young.’ They were just like modern young Marxist revolutionaries. Before they even decide to build a tower we read a phrase that is normally translated as ‘come let us make bricks and burn them thoroughly.’ However, if we understand these words pre-date the tower then we could instead translate this phrase as ‘come let us whiten the white and char the charred.’ In other words, they eliminate the gray areas. They are extremists. They then glue everybody together. The tower is just a shared objective to maintain this unity. Obviously this proto-fascist/communist concept isn’t G-d’s idea of wonderful. We have to leave space for people to be people.
Next, we have S’dom – the last of the great destructions. The city hates itself so much that they’ve stopped having children. Even old men and children participate in mass rapes. There is a social power to their evil that prevents them from breaking free. Lot tries to be a part of this community, perhaps even to reform it. But it is hopeless. He has not built any effective links with anybody else in this reality – even his own married daughters are subsumed by it. The lesson: the righteous have to build relationships to improve reality.
Then, of course, we have the very first ‘destruction.’ Adam and Chava are living in paradise. They are driven out, but not when they eat the fruit. Instead, they are driven out after they fail to take responsibility for eating the fruit. They pass the buck and thus fail to develop the responsibility that would enable them to have a relationship with G-d.
Each of these lessons appears powerful in their individual context. Take responsibility, build relationships, enable people to be people, punish crime. However, if we dig just a bit deeper, we can discover an underlying and shared reality.
Just before the flood, we hear of the sons of the powerful ‘coming into’ whatever women they wanted. This, beyond a general sense of avarice and power and fame-seeking, is the specific crime that is highlighted. This crime comes up again. Pharoah takes Sarah. So does Avimelech. Shechem takes Dinah.
The taking of women appears again and again, and it isn’t reacted to in a tremendously positive sense. First, there is the flood. Second, Pharoah’s household is ‘cursed’ with unidentified curses that are never lifted (suggesting Egypt was chosen for the plagues because Pharoah sinned against Sarah). Third, Shechem is eliminated and Yaacov’s family is protected by G-d despite the slaughter.
But the issue of relations with women goes deeper than kidnapping and rape. S’dom refuses to sleep with women in the ‘normal way’, which is why Lot’s daughters seduce Lot. Bavel happens because ‘man said to his neighbor.’ Women weren’t a part of the discussion. Fast forward and the Egyptians wanted to murder the sons and take the daughters – on a national scale. There is something else here, something critical linking the treatment of women and the health of society.
To understand the nature of this challenge, we have to start at the very beginning. In my understanding, human ‘animals’ pre-dated Adam. They were just not ‘Homo Divinus.’ They were not aware of the divine. Adam is the first to reach this understanding. Adam, however, didn’t act in the image of G-d. Goodness is a word always associated with Creation and man wasn’t creative. He wasn’t good alone. So, G-d brought along animals to be his ‘help-opposite.’ To push him and to help him. None fit the bill. Adam named them but didn’t get to work. So, G-d took Chava from Adam’s Tzalah[1]. She wasn’t created as an accessory, but to literally get man out of his mother’s and his father’s house and doing something. Specifically, creating something, filling a gap that needed filling. Interestingly, the very suggestion that Adam had a mother and father suggests he was the first Homo Divinus, but probably not the first human animal. Unfortunately, this first woman didn’t step up. The two of them just hung out eating fruit and presumably smoking ganja. So, G-d tempted the woman. He set her up. But the setup was a very particular one. She was to eat from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. Now, I’m a weirdo, but I believe one particular tree would have been a completely obvious choice to very ancient peoples: an almond bush. The almond is important in other areas. The Menorah is fashioned after an almond and the unrest after Korach’s rebellion is brought to closure through an almond branch. What makes almonds special, almost obvious as a Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil? Wild almonds, bitter almonds, are poisonous. You chew them and they release cyanide. They are evil. Now, given some time the fear of them could extend to touching. But Chava sees it and figures ‘that could be good to eat.’ She then tastes one of the first ‘sweet’ almonds. It is a genetic mutation. It is also good to eat.
She has discovered good and evil in one thing. This is a critical concept in Judaism, where G-d is the origin of both good and evil.
Critically, Chava doesn’t sin. No words for sin are ever used here. No, Chava innovates. She creates, she does good in the image of G-d’s goodness. Immediately she and Adam realize they are meant for more than hanging out in the garden. Right before she eats the two of them are called arum. It says ‘they are arum and not embarrassed.’ It is translated as ‘naked’. But the word is also used to describe the snake ‘the most arum’. And at the crossing of the sea, the waters are arum. Finally, a pre-meditated murder is one that is arum. Arum means something that literally doesn’t go with the flow. It is something that breaks the normal, natural, pattern. Mankind was meant to break the normal, natural, pattern. Before eating the fruit, they weren’t breaking that pattern. However, they didn’t know any better, so they weren’t ashamed of their lack of creation.
When Chava broke the pattern, the two of them realized their power. But rather than embrace who they were meant to be (it can be scary), they decided to hide from the Ruach Hayom. The spirit of the day. The spirit of creation (G-d creates during the day). They hide by wearing fig leaves. This is not a randomly selected leaf. In 2016, four children were admitted to the Burn Center of Imam Reza Hospital in Mashhad. To quote from the academic paper that followed:
They had gone to picnic with their families in a sunny and warm day. While playing near the river, they collected the fig tree leaves and pounded them to make color for painting their upper and lower extremities. About 8 h later, they all felt a burning sensation in their hands and feet, and they were admitted to the hospital. They received treatment for hypersensitivity and were referred to our burn center with 10%–13% second-degree burn.
One of the doctors who treated them was so confused as to what had occurred that he performed a patch test on himself – rubbing a fig paste in place and exposing himself to sunlight. Dr. Ali Ahmadabadi suffered 2nd degree burns that far exceeded the area he had treated with the fig paste. In other words, fig leaves make a terrible daytime garment. With daytime associated with creation, fig leaves are an excuse not to be creative. They are an excuse to stay in bed.
When she ate from the tree, Chava did what she was meant to. The snake took it a bit far, suggesting she would be ‘like G-d’ rather than just being in the image of G-d. But Chava did what she was meant to. When G-d comes and asks, ‘where are you?’ the question isn’t a physical one. It is a spiritual one. Essentially, G-d is challenging Adam and Chava to take responsibility. They don’t. Adam passes the buck. He blames Chava who he was simply obeying as she was the wife G-d had provided him. But that doesn’t get the two of them expelled. It is only when Chava passes the buck that they are expelled. She blames the snake. If she’d taken credit or taken the blame, the outcome would have been different.
With the expulsion, G-d curses both man and the snake. But Chava isn’t cursed. The words for curse are never used. Instead, she is transformed. Instead of breaking the relationship with G-d for the short-term pleasure of the fruit, she becomes someone willing to endure the dangers and pain of childbirth in order to create the future. She is willing to lose in the short term to create forever.
She becomes inherently holy.
I want to focus on the second part of her non-curse. She will endure great risk and pain to have children and…
וְאֶל-אִישֵׁךְ, תְּשׁוּקָתֵךְ, וְהוּא, יִמְשָׁל-בָּךְ
To your husband, shall be your desire and he will rule in you.
This is normally translated as ‘you’ll desire your husband and be ruled by him’. As in, you’ll put up with your husband for the future as well. But what is being said is quite different. The first hint is the preposition ‘ב’. It can be ‘in’ or ‘through.’ In other words, he will rule through you.
Now why would I come up with such a wacky take on this word. The reason is because almost the same phrase occurs 15 verses later. Only this time it is spoken to Cain:
לַפֶּתַח חַטָּאת רֹבֵץ; וְאֵלֶיךָ, תְּשׁוּקָתוֹ, וְאַתָּה, תִּמְשָׁל-בּוֹ
At the opening, sin is waiting. Towards you is its desire, and you can rule through it
The same words are used. Sin desires you, and you can rule in it. Well, you could rule sin, but that would seem odd. More sensible is that by overcoming sin’s desire for you, you become stronger. You develop responsibility. You rule through resisting sins’s desire. What is sin’s desire? It is to enter – it is waiting at the opening. This is why we Kaper and Yom Kippur. We form a cover to keep sin out.
The woman’s case is different on a few levels. First, she is the one being spoken to. She is the actor. Second, it follows her willingness to bear pain to have children. Her desire isn’t to ‘enter’ like sin wants. Her desire is to create the future – and ultimately to protect it.
You can almost see sin and woman as those two angels on man’s shoulders. Both desire man, but each has opposite desires. This is reinforced by the use of the word Chata – or sin – to suggest destruction in the story of Joseph. Woman, or at least this archetype of woman, is the good angel. Adam sees this immediately. He calls his wife ‘the mother of all life.’
From this initial story, we can trace the story of women through the text. Almost no women are mentioned in Cain’s family. The exceptions are Cain’s wife, who is nameless, and three of Lemech’s relatives. The first two are his wives, Ada and Zillah. Ada means ‘adornment’. She’s just a decoration. Her children are the cowboy and the Vegas promoter. Zillah means ‘roast.’ She’s a cook. A servant who prepares meat. Her son makes knives – he’s in the arms business. Amazingly, the knife-maker’s sister is also named. She is Naamah, a name that implies physical beauty and fertility – the land of Issachar is called Naayma. She appears to be an object of physical desire – the kind of thing jealously acquisitive men fight over. There are no other women. There are no daughters and no wives. Women are completely disregarded in this world of city-building and murder, except as objects of decoration, service and sex. In Seth’s far holier line, man after man is mentioned as having daughters. However, none of them are named. Even Noach’s wife isn’t named. They are there, they are present, but they seem to merit no real identities of their own.
Perhaps it is no surprise that the sons of the powerful have no problem taking whomever they please – with a particular interest in their beauty. These women mean nothing, as people. Even after the flood, this doesn’t change. Bavel happens when ‘men call out to their neighbors.’ The place where they settle is called Shinar, like s’na’ar – there is youth. Male youth. Women play no role. In S’dom, women are actively avoided in even a sexual sense; as horrible as the example is, the society wants to gang rape visiting men as a form of punishment and demonstration, but are totally uninterested in gang-raping Lot’s daughters. The people of Shechem want to exchange daughters like trading chips. Pharoah in the time of the slaves wants to kill all the men and essentially capture the women for their reproductive potential. Women are reduced to reproductive machines[2]. Just because women have the holy archetype of Chava does not mean that they either live up to it, or have the chance to live up to it.
The woman who breaks this pattern is Sarai, followed in the same verse by Milkah.
I’ve often wondered why Avraham was chosen. It doesn’t say he found favor in G-d’s eyes. In fact, the only action Avraham did was marry his half-sister and effectively adopt his nephew after his brother died. He was protecting both his father’s legacy (by ensuring his half-sister would remain within the family) and his brother’s (by protecting his nephew). Of course, Nachor does something very similar. He marries his brother’s daughter Milkah, thus protecting both his father and his brother in one action. Why isn’t Nachor chosen?
Well, there is a critical difference between the women. One is named Milkah – or Queen – suggesting somebody it is rewarding to honor. But the other is named Sarai. A sar is an officer or an administrator – like a Cabinet Minister. Sarai’s name literally means: my ruler or my administrator.
Avram, as he’s known at that point, choses a powerful woman as his wife.
In so doing, he seems to fulfill the promise of Chava. As she is an administrator, he rules through her. G-d completes the picture by sending Avram away. Just as G-d hoped with Adam and Chava, Avram leaves his father’s house and cleaves to a woman[3].
Sarah’s power is what makes a 90-year-old Sarah so attractive to Pharaoh and Avimelech. She is the only powerful woman they’ve ever met. This is why Avimelech (which means ‘my father is King’) has to cover her eyes. They are unprecedented. He wants to conquer this woman, but is prevented from doing so because G-d Himself protects her. Interestingly when G-d changes Avram’s name from ‘exalted father’ to Avraham or ‘father of many nations’, He changes Sarai’s name, which means ‘my ruler’ to Sarah, or simply ‘ruler’. Hers is a divinely protected, and honored, power.
It is this relationship that separates Avraham from all who came before him. And the pattern he establishes, of the Jewish woman managing everything, is carried throughout. Every Friday night we sing Eshet Chayil, a testament to our wives. It includes such sparklingly romantic verses like:
Her husband places his trust in her and profits only thereby…
She is like the trading ships, bringing food from afar…
She considers a field and purchases it, and plants a vineyard with the fruit of her labors…
She senses that her trade is profitable; her light does not go out at night…
She makes and sells linens; she supplies the merchants with sashes…
She opens her mouth with wisdom and a lesson of kindness is on her tongue.
She works hard, yes, but she also runs things. The praise is so effusive that many scholars attribute the song as being to the Torah. But it is clearly, on its face, about powerful and accomplished women. Sarahs. It remains a reality in the most functional modern Jewish families. Even the praise of the husband’s position is put in her context:
Her husband is known at the gates, where he sits with the elders of the land.
He’s an important person, a macher, and that comes down to her. It is in her song.
The story of women continues throughout the Torah. Tamar is praised not only for wanting to be a part of the people, but for essentially saving Yehuda from himself. He discovers responsibility and is ready to be elevated. Yocheved and the midwives are the ones who resist Pharaoh, before G-d steps in. Then there are the daughters of Tzelophchad: Machlah, No’a, Chagla, Milkah and Tirzah. Machlah literally means sickness. No’a means to tremble or shake or to be exiled (from the story of Cain). Chagla is a contraction of Chag-La or ‘the cycle is to Hashem.’ It suggests a sort of Kumbaya, whatever will be will be sort of fatalistic acceptance. But then we have Milkah, which means Queen. And finally, Tirtza which means ‘you will be desired’ or perhaps simply ‘you are desired.’ What we see in these names is a progression in their father’s attitude. He starts off seeing daughters as an illness – a failure on his part to produce sons. Then they are something that makes him feel exiled or weak. Then perhaps he begins to see a bit of G-d’s hand, but it is fatalistic. And then the next daughter is a Queen (not as good as a King). And the last is one who is desired. As in, I think, he desired a daughter.
This is a remarkable progression and one that is not often repeated in many cultures – including the history of Judaism. Tzelophchad may start with regret at having daughters, but he grows to love and appreciate them.
This process immortalizes Tzelophchad himself. He’s never named outside the context of his daughters. His growth, in respect of his daughters, immortalizes him.
Perhaps the most elegant expression of the connection between women and the health of societies is in the drawing of water. In a good society, women come to the wells and are not harassed. They draw up water, a symbolic stand-in for spirituality cleansing and the sustaining of life. That is what Eliezer encounters when searching for a wife for Yitzchak. A generation later, Yaacov encounters a society that is breaking and only one family still has women as shepherds. In Yitro’s time the women are actively harassed – even the daughters of the high priest. A generation later, Midian has Kozbi and a culture of mass-orgy. The regulation of relationships where two parents protect and raise children, where men serve the holy ideal of women, has been smashed. The breakdown is so complete that their people are called an emma rather than an amma. The word ‘am’ implies being together. The word em with an aleph means ‘mother.’ Theirs is a nation identifiable only by the mothers; a sign of societal breakdown. Women serve their physical desire, but that desire lacks the context of the future and the notion of protection of that future. These women have adopted the version of Chava before the expulsion; the one who chooses short-term pleasure even at the expense of long-term creation.
We started this by talking about an international ‘flood’. About a grand modern catastrophe. Looking around the world, we can see the status of women as a harbinger of the collapse of societies. Islamist society covers women completely. It reduces their status to reproductive machines locked within the home. Iran allows women out, but will more than occasionally effectively execute them for not covering their hair. They are suppressed in the public space. They are also, like Yocheved and the midwives, the leaders in the battle against oppression, despite the lack of powerful allies and sources of hope.
Perhaps no example is more brutal than that provided by ISIS. ISIS took Yazidi women and starved them. Then they fed them meat, after months. The women ate. Afterwards, they were shown photos of the babies – in many cases, their own babies – that they had consumed. It is perhaps, on an individual level, one of the worst crimes of the past century. It is also a complete inversion of the holiness that sacrifices the present for the future. These women were forced and tricked into experiencing short-term satiety in a way that destroyed their own offspring.
Meanwhile, in the West and the Far East, women are increasingly being separated from the holy archetype. Like Kozbi, the aspect of short-term pleasure is being played up, but the creation of the future being erased from the process. They may have more freedoms, or more equal freedoms (as in China, where freedoms are quite limited), but they themselves have abandoned the archetype of protecting the future. Just as the women of the flood were taken by the sons of the powerful, this is an increasingly shocking reality in the West. Epstein, P. Diddy and even Harvey Weinstein all engaged in a world in which women were forced into submission – perhaps in a willing trade at first but increasingly unwillingly over time. The horrifying example of Gisele Pelicot, who was drugged by her husband and raped by 70 different strangers while her husband filmed them, is just another extreme example of this disregard for women.
There is a deep, deep sickness.
This sickness touches us Israel as well. The young men (if we can call them that) who may have gang raped, or at least gang-sexed, a British woman in Cyprus were greeted like heroes on their return. This was disgusting and horrifying behavior; not just by the so-called men involved, but by their families. Widespread condemnation was missing, and it was critically important. The rate of crimes against women is substantial here, as is prostitution. Judged by the criteria of the flood, we are in significant danger of societal collapse. The son of our Prime Minister has been known to visit more than a few strip clubs and has been recorded talking about frequenting prostitutes.
In a way, the US Presidential elections capture this succinctly. On the one hand we have an administration that has been soft on, or even protected, murderous regimes. They have undoubtably contributed to the current state of our reality. On the other hand, we have a son of the powerful who has taken whatever women he pleased. He’s only the latest in a line of Presidents to have done the same. Americans have a biblically bad choice before them.
Taking all this into account, we can see the risk. We can see broken societies all around. Even those in which women are not treated ‘poorly’ the very concept of creating the future as an archetypical goal is being erased. People live for the now, with little consideration for who will actually make the stuff they need – or feed them in their nursing homes – when they get old. They embrace the now at the expense of the later.
For the long term, the solution seems obvious. We can improve our societies bit by bit. Raise our boys to be men, real men. Raise our girls to be women. Essentially, we can reform the world. But that process is too gradual, too slow, to head off our increasing risk of disaster. We are too late in the game for that sort of repair to take hold and to rescue us.
Something more dramatic is needed.
Fortunately, the Torah shows us what we can do. It shows us through the story of Hagar.
Hagar is a concubine. This isn’t the most elevated of roles. Not every woman is a sar, at least not in every circumstance. Sarah banishes her, twice, from Avraham’s home. The second time, G-d explicitly tells Avraham to banish her. Avraham gives Hagar some bread and a bottle of water and sends her into the desert. He gives her no money. She is essentially condemned to death. But remarkably, she and her boy survive. Not only that but she ends up getting him a wife from Egypt – not some lowdown local, but a woman from one of the greatest cultures of all time.
Hagar, a single mother on her own in the desert, ends up being miraculously successful. And in the very next verse we read:
“And it came to pass at that time, that Abimelech and Phicol the sar of his host spoke unto Abraham, saying: ‘God is with thee in all that thou doest.” Now therefore swear unto me here by God that thou wilt not deal falsely with me, nor with my son, nor with my son’s son; but according to the kindness that I have done unto thee, thou shalt do unto me, and to the land wherein thou hast sojourned.’
Avimelech comes to Avraham not because Sarah had a miraculous child, but because Hagar – the discarded woman – has succeeded beyond any reason. Avimelech, who sees the power of Sarah, recognizes the unbelievable strength of the women (even the concubine) in Avraham’s family. He brings his own sar, with the name ‘mouth of the people’ representing the normal way in which the world is run – and is a direct contrast to Avraham’s wife.
Avimelech is literally a ‘son of the powerful.’ Yet he sees Hagar, recognizes how blessed Avraham is, and nearly demands that Avraham treat his children well. Avraham is the one with assured future – the one it is worth making a multi-generational covenant with.
This covenant is more than an agreement about future relations, though. Avimelech never says it, but it is an act of Teshuva. When Yitzchak comes to Gerar, Avimelech (or his son, Avimelech the 14th) doesn’t touch the much younger Rivka. She is not taken. Avimelech has improved his behavior, or that of his family. He is the first, and only, of the sons of the powerful to do so. It is a critical and fundamental lesson about a way in which we can improve the world. The agreement between Avraham and Avimelech is sealed with the sacrifice of seven lambs. This act (and the story behind it) became a part of our commemoration of Rosh Hashana.
Avimelech, and Hagar, show us a rapid-acting solution to our problem. To rescue our world, the powerful have to do teshuva. They don’t have to confess their crimes. They just have to realize that G-d is with us. By seeing the success of Israeli and Jewish women, particularly those under strain and those who are nourishing our next generation, the powerful will recognize that their own futures and legacies are dependent on ours. Whether they are in Lebanon, Gaza, Russia, America or Saudi Arabia they will intrinsically realize that we – the only developed nation whose population is actually above replacement rate and whose women have Western-style rights – represent the future.
Israel has plenty of women under strain. Their husbands are at war. They are holding up their households alone. And yet I am certain that so many of them are blessed. To change the world, we shouldn’t be trying to point out how hard we have it – I assure you the women of our enemies have it far harder. Instead we should point out the unbelievable accomplishments of a home society filled with effectively single mothers under the threats of war. Show the blessings, large and small. Show how G-d is blessing our next generation. Yes, these women have it tough – so did Hagar. But I’m sure that many of them are blessed.
Many will hate us for showing how well we have it under the cloud of war. But we aren’t trying to win sympathy. We are trying to win allies. In this effort, the subconscious realization that the path to their own blessings runs through us is one of the most powerful tools we have.
Another is already being deployed. Nobody took another Jewish woman in the Five Books of Moses after Shimon and Levi wiped out Shechem and its scheme to swap daughters as some sort of follow up to Dinah being taken. While I am certainly not calling for any similar actions, the war against Hamas has very effectively demonstrated the negative consequences of targeting and raping women (the unfortunate deaths of women due to the fighters in their society trying to use them as human shields only doubles down on the sinfulness of Hamas).
What are the actions we need to avert the flood and to better our society?
In the long term, we should take responsibility, build relationships, enable people to be people and punish crime. We should raise our boys to be men, real men. Like Avraham, they should respect, rely on and value women as more than decorations, playthings or servants. They should see and support both the power and the holiness of women. Not holiness as separation, but holiness as creating and protecting forever. As the flip side of this, we should raise our girls to be women, real women. They should not see themselves as mere decorations, playthings or servants. They should embrace their own archetypical capabilities as both innovators and administrators and their own paths to making our future a better one. We should raise them in the image of Chavah and Sarah.
This is a lot. Thankfully, in the short-term, the prescription is far simpler to implement: find ways to show the blessings that the women of Israel experience – despite the challenges they face. Through our women, demonstrate to the world that the path of their legacies and the legacies of their children lays with the people of Israel and not with our enemies.
I want to add two final notes.
First, the Jewish people are often considered as a bride to Hashem. While we certainly are not the only people with a relationship with G-d, we are perhaps a first wife – akin to Sarah. This has two implications. First, we desire Hashem and Hashem can rule through us, just as the Torah says about Chava. This implies that we are critical for spreading the word of G-d and making His presence tangible in this world. Second, it implies that we should be adopting the holy ideals of post-expulsion Chava, rather than those of the Chava that came before. Our emphasis has to be on long-term creation, even at the cost of short-term pain.
The other major lesson involves Parshat Mishpatim. This Parsha immediately follows the ten commandments. In it there is a collection of laws. The initial laws are enforced by man, the later laws are not enforced at all. In the middle, are just a few laws enforced by G-d. One of these is:
And a stranger shalt thou not wrong, neither shalt thou oppress him; for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt. Ye shall not afflict any widow, or fatherless child. If thou afflict them in any wise–for if they cry at all unto Me, I will surely hear their cry– My wrath shall wax hot, and I will kill you with the sword; and your wives shall be widows, and your children fatherless.
Who is ‘the stranger.’ The word is literally ‘HaGer.’ It is the same letters as Hagar. When Hagar is first driven away because Sarah literally oppressors her (using the exact same word, ane), she prayers to G-d and her prayer – arguably the first in Torah – is answered. We read:
And the angel of the LORD said unto her: ‘Behold, thou art with child, and shalt bear a son; and thou shalt call his name Ishmael, because the LORD hath heard thy affliction. And he shall be a wild ass of a man: his hand shall be against every man, and every man’s hand against him; and he shall dwell in the face of all his brethren.’
Hagar’s descendants are the Ishmaelites, the Arabs. Even today, they make our wives widows and our children fatherless. Sarah was not blameless; she was not without fault. While Hagar’s behavior was poor, Sarah drove her away twice. As a people trying to follow in the footsteps of Sarah perhaps nothing is more challenging than finding a way to constrain the destructive intent of the likes of Hamas and Hezbollah while also finding a way not to oppress the stranger.
[1] This is a very early and undeveloped thought, but the word tzalah is also used as a verb when Yaacov is injured by the angel. He ‘limped.’ I have a hard time connecting the existence of a rib to a limp. I see this far more genetically. Woman is XX, man is XY. If you have extra chromosomes, specifically XXY or XXXY, you end up with a number of physical challenges. Among them is a lack of coordination. You also end up with less testosterone, possible breast tissue, smaller testes, infertility etc… In other words, you become more male with the loss of the extra Xs (there can be more than 1) and the woman becomes more attractive. ‘Animal’ humans wouldn’t have been woman free like an XXY or XXXY Adam. Adam might see a loss of bone, but that isn’t how the narrator describes it. This is one of the most common genetic disorders. Interestingly, tzalah can actually mean a cross, or an X.
[2] Interestingly, when women are captured later in the Torah, the men who capture them aren’t allowed to do anything to them – at least initially. They are shaved, their nails are pared back, she wears mourning garments and she is to wail for her family for a month. Even as a captive, the spark of the moment sexual desire and desire for domination is suppressed. You are forced to see the captive as a human before you can marry her. This isn’t exactly an ideal setup, but in ancient context it was a huge step upwards.
[3] Adam’s mother was seemingly unworthy of mention or name. So, instead of leaving his mother, as Adam was supposed to do, Avram leaves the land of his birth.
