Before Whom and To Whom We Pray
Parashat Vayetzei
November 16, 2002 

Today’s parashah begins with an inspiring moment. Jacob, we recall, is fleeing from his home. He’s frightened. He’s terrified. He’s exhausted. He falls asleep and dreams about that famous ladder to heaven, with angels going up and down. Upon awakening, he realizes, “God is here, in this very place. I just didn’t know it.” He then prays to God.

Now, it is true that his prayer really seems more like a bargaining session with God than truly heartfelt prayer, but to the rabbis, Jacob is credited with the creation of the practice of praying to God at night. What we today call the Ma’ariv service arose out of Jacob’s practice of attempting to speak to God at night, at a time when it is dark and scary, a time when we might not think that God is listening. And so, Jacob is a spiritual hero of sorts, an inspired man who knows how to speak to God.

But later in the parashah, in the section with which we began our reading today, Jacob is far from inspiring. In fact, one could call him cold, heartless, even cruel.

That moment comes at the beginning of Chapter 30. Jacob has already met and married Leah and Rachel, and has started to build a family. Unfortunately, only Leah is fertile, and she quickly conceives and bears him four sons: Reuven, Shimon, Levi and Judah. Rachel, though, was barren. Unlike Leah, she was, as Matthew reminded us, beloved of Jacob, but she could not conceive, and this was the cause of tremendous pain and sadness.

Chapter 30 begins with a plea from Rachel: “When Rachel saw that she had borne Jacob no children, she became envious of her sister [Leah] and she said to Jacob: “Hava li banim; v’im ayin, meitah anochi!” “Give me children, or else I shall die!” (Genesis 30:1)

Painful, heartfelt words! One would expect—one would certainly hope—that our ancestor Jacob, who understands what it means to feel lonely, scared, abandoned, would react empathetically to this plea, but he doesn’t. Instead, he gets angry! Angry at Rachel! And he explodes with an indignant response: “Ha-takhat Elohim anochi asher manah mimech pri-vatem?” “Can I take the place of God, who has denied you fruit of the womb?” (Genesis 30:2) This kind of rhetorical retort is reminiscent of Cain’s response when God confronted him after he’d murdered Abel: “Ha-shomer akhi anochi? ” “Am I my brother’s keeper?” Just as then, we are not sympathetic to Cain, realizing that indeed he does bear some responsibility for Abel’s disappearance, so too here we may wonder, after this outburst, whether Jacob is himself partially or even entirely responsible for Rachel’s condition. True, Jacob was able to father children with Leah, but perhaps there is some sort of incompatibility between him and Rachel that is responsible for her failure to conceive.

In another case in the Bible where a bereft, infertile woman cries out to her husband, she is similarly rebuffed. In the book of Samuel, when Hannah shares her pain with her husband, Elkanah, he is similarly obtuse: “Hannah,” he says, “Why are you crying? Why aren’t you eating? Why are you sad? Ha-lo anochi tov lach me-asarah banim? Am I not more devoted to you than ten sons?” (Samuel I: 1:8) The answer, of course, is “Well, no!”

Now, were it not for the story of Jacob’s dream, that incident where he’s revealed to be inspired and spiritual, we might be able to explain this away by saying that Jacob is no better and no worse than any other unfeeling husband. But how could someone so “spiritual” be so cruel?

The rabbis do not let Jacob off the hook. They excoriate him. They condemn him in harsh language. They suggest that his anger stems from his own selfishness. Jacob, after all, loves Rachel, and is therefore hurt (as presumably Elkanah later was) to learn that love wasn’t enough for his wife. Such selfishness is inexcusable. Jacob was guilty of failing to heed the advice of Hillel, who said, “Don’t judge another until you have stood in his or her place.” (Avot 2:4) Jacob looked at the situation from his own, self-centered place, and thus he failed his wife, Rachel, when she needed him. The rabbis go on to say that, as a punishment for his heartlessness, the very sons whom Leah has already borne Jacob, as well as Jacob himself, will one day bow down before the son whom Rachel will eventually conceive, namely, Joseph.

And so Jacob is condemned. And yet the rabbis are still troubled. For how could it be that Jacob, such a master of prayer, could be so rejecting of Rachel’s plea to him? Could it be that somehow, notwithstanding his inadequacy as a communicator, Jacob is nonetheless teaching Rachel—and us as well – something important about prayer?

Moses Nachmanides, the brilliant Biblical scholar, physician and community leader, who lived in Spain in the thirteenth century, suggests exactly that.

Why did Jacob get so angry? What was it about what Rachel said and did that bothered him so?

What she did was to turn to him—to him, and not to God—and say, “Give me children or I shall die!” This offended Jacob, Nachmanides suggests, because it implies that Jacob has an “in” with God. It suggests that Jacob, because he knows how to pray for himself, can do so on behalf of Rachel and it will be efficacious. False, says Nachmanides. First, there are never any guarantees in prayer; second, no one can rely on someone else to pray for him or her: this is something we must do for ourselves.

This is a fundamental religious principle in Judaism: there are no intermediaries between us and the Holy One. Yes, Jacob dreamt about angels, but when it comes to prayer, we cannot imagine that the efforts of a spokesperson will suffice. We must do the work ourselves.

That was the lesson, according to Nachmanides, that Jacob—perhaps clumsily and unkindly—was trying to teach Rachel. The text seems to confirm this when, later (in verse 22) we read, “And God remembered Rachel; He heeded her—[that is, He listened to her]—and opened her womb.”

God didn’t listen to Jacob on her behalf; He listened to her . This was a lesson that Jacob wanted Rachel to learn, because it was a lesson he’d had to learn himself. Only when he was alone and abandoned, in no-man’s land at the border at the edge of the land of Canaan, was he able to gain insight into the awesome mystery that God can be with us even during our darkest moments, even—perhaps especially—when we are alone.

We, too, can learn this lesson. True, we sometimes pray on behalf of another. We pray that they’ll be well, that they’ll survive the surgery, that they’ll recover from the accident. But in a sense that’s more about us and our relationship to that other person, that person whom we’re concerned about, than it is about God and that person’s relationship with God. Each of us must take responsibility for our own relationship with God. No one can do it for us. (See Rashi’s commentary on Genesis 21:17.)

Tov la-khasot ba-donai, mibtoach ba-adam
Tov la-khasot ba-donai, mibtoach bi-ndivim.
It is better to trust in the Lord, than to trust in mortals.
It is better to trust in the Lord, than to trust in the powerful. (Psalms 118)

Not all prayers are answered. Not all maladies are healed. Not all tragedies are averted. But if we are to seek comfort, support and hope, we must turn ultimately not only to other human beings, however caring and supportive they may be, but also to God.

Shabbat Shalom.