Rabbi’s Message
The Torah’s description of the rape of Dina, the daughter of Jacob and her subsequent kidnapping by Shechem and Hamor his father and the Hivites, a local Canaanite clan concludes with a classic ethical dilemma.
The Torah does suggest that after the rape Shechem seemed to be sincere in his attraction to Dina the daughter of Jacob. However the Torah also repeatedly reminds the reader that Dina has been defiled and degraded. The sons of Jacob upon hearing of her rape and kidnap devise a ruse to bring her back and avenge this atrocity. And the Torah is honest in its assessment here as well: “Jacob’s sons answered Shekhem and Hamor his father with deceit”. What is the deception? That all of Shekhem’s males have to circumcise themselves for the two clans to live happily ever after. And while the males are recovering, Shimon and Levi enter their area and slaughter all the men, save Dina, and take the women and children as spoils. This leads to a confrontation between Jacob and his two sons. Jacob’s response is that this mass murder has caused me and mine to become odious in the eyes of the local clans; you have put us all in danger. Shimon and Levi’s response is “should you allow Dina to be treated like a whore?” For how will we be safe if local strongmen feel they can abuse our women and take of ours what they will with no consequences.
The Torah ends the narrative here, other than to share in the next chapter that Jacob’s fear of reprisal was for naught due to “a terror from God fell on the cities round about, so that they did not pursue the sons of Jacob”.
Commentators weigh in on both sides. Some provide Jacob’s final words to Shimon and Levi on his death bed, that “Their weapons are tools of lawlessness. Let not my person be included in their council” as evidence that the Torah clearly remembers and condemns their behavior. Others seem to appreciate Shimon and Levi’s response. Rabbi Yakov Tzvi Mecklenberg justifies their actions because Shechem and Hamor were themselves deceitful, pretending that Dinah wanted to marry Shechem and join their clan, and there was no local system of justice to which they could bring a suit against Shechem.
Rabbi David Kimhi’s (Radak) response is most interesting. “Jacob reacted in the time-honored fashion of being afraid, as is his custom, whereas his sons were stout-hearted men willing to avenge the shame inflicted upon their conscious.”
It is clear that Radak is on team Shimon and Levi. But it is his discrediting of Jacob that I find remarkable. Is this Jacob a scaredy-cat? Has Jacob changed from trickster to coward? Was he not just given a new name Yisrael, because he has fought with divine beings and human and prevailed?
Jacob has fought many battles to overcome his circumstances. He was born second to his brother despite oracles proclaiming he would be mightier. His brother won his father’s heart due to the material gifts he could bring his father. He tricked his father to get the desired blessing. He had to self-exile out of fear of his brother. He had to marry two sisters, in order to marry the woman he loved. He used guile to get fairly rewarded after being exploited for years by his father-in-law. He oversaw a tense household with competing jealousies. And he made amends with Esau after 20 years. He has grown, he has changed. He has become a responsible clan leader, not only looking out for what is best for him but what is best for the family and its extended members.
When he was a young man, he justified tricking his father and stealing from his brother because, well, it was the right thing to do. Esau was not fit to be the father of the future chosen people. Call it stealing, call it balancing the scales of justice or realizing a Divine Oracle, but getting that blessing whatever way necessary was what had to be done. When he prays during those days, all is transactional: “If God remains with me, protects me, gives me bread to eat and clothing to wear, and if I return safe to my father’s house—the LORD shall be my God…and of all that You give me, I will give you 10 percent.”
But after a life of struggles and experiences that have taught him that it is not just doing the right thing that is crucial in life but doing it the right way, he is a changed man. Returning to Israel, before reconciling with Esau he prays: “O God of my father Abraham and God of my father Isaac…I am unworthy of all the kindness that You have so steadfastly shown Your servant: with my staff alone I crossed this Jordan, and now I have become two camps.” Jacob has humbly come to appreciate what he has achieved, not by his own power but by God’s grace. And in this moment of great fear, he doesn’t make a deal with God, I to give you 10 percent, or I promise I will be a good boy forever, for those are immature prayers that we all make in our fear and desperation. Jacob merely says, “I need you, God. Please help. All I can ask is that You please continue to believe in me."
Rabbi Reuven Hammer has argued that the mysterious stranger that Jacob faces after this is himself. “Jacob was left alone and a man wrestled with him” (Genesis 32:25). Either he was alone or there was a man there. If indeed he was alone, then the man with whom he wrestled was none other than himself. Thus the outcome of that battle, writes Rabbi Hammer, “Perhaps the real enemy that Jacob had to overcome was not Esau, but himself…. Which will prevail, the crooked part of his personality or the straight – ya-akov or yisrael? (supplanter or the forthright one)?”
He has seen enough to know that the impulsive decision is not the best decision. No matter how good and justifiable it may seem in the emotions of the moment, one must be able to in the words of the Sages, ‘to see the outcome of one’s deeds.’ And as Rabbi Hammer notes, this is what bothered him about his sons’ extreme response. There might be cause in avenging Dina’s rape and it might be that all the clan was guilty for Dina’s rape and coverup, but that does not make your actions correct. He was once a person tempted to act on impulsive emotions but he has grown.
We can all appreciate Jacob’s concern. He sees his own failings in his sons and wants them to know what he has learned. For we too in our lives, are often left alone to struggle with ourselves “until the break of dawn”, to struggle with temptations, emotions, desires. If we are fortunate, we may like Jacob emerge with a limp but bearing a blessing. In the words of Rabbi Hammer, “The tragedy is not that we have urges and impulses that lead to unworthy deeds. The true tragedy is when we do not find the strength to confront these urges and to wrestle with them. Only then can we prevail.”