Jessica Lowy – Year 11

VaYetse

This week’s Torah portion, Parashat VaYetse, is a highly significant source of both Jewish and broader ethical values.

In this portion, Ya’akov makes his way to Charan in an attempt to find family and someone to marry. He places down a rock to use as a pillow and sleeps, dreaming of a ladder connecting earth and heaven, with “angels” ascending and descending. Ya’akov is told that the land he slept on will eventually belong to his children. He raises the rock into an altar which he calls Beit El, “The House of God”.

When he reaches Charan, Ya’akov stays with his uncle Lavan, working for him and tending to his sheep. Lavan agrees to allow Ya’akov to marry his daughter Rachel, in return for seven years of labour. However, on the day of their wedding Laban decides to swap Rachel with his elder daughter Leah without Jacob’s knowledge. Ya’akov only discovers this deception in the morning, after already having married Leah. He agrees to work for an extra seven years in order to marry his love, Rachel.

Leah and Ya’akov have six sons and a daughter together – Reuven, Shim’on, Levi, Yehudah, Yissachar, Zevulun and Dinah, respectively. However, Rachel is barren and becomes jealous of her sister’s pregnancies. Rachel offers Ya’akov her handmaid, Bilhah, to bear children for them, and together Ya’akov and Bilhah have two sons. Leah’s handmaid, Zilpah, gives birth to two more of Ya’akovs sons. Finally, Rachel gives birth to her own son, Yoseph (and later Binyamin), and her prayers are answered.

I was personally quite angered by Lavan’s deliberate misstep from his agreement with Ya’akov. Perhaps my disapproval is a product of modern values; after all, maybe it was fairly reasonable decades or centuries ago to swap out the wife of a husband to somebody else without their knowledge. But I doubt it, and even if that is the case, I believe his actions are completely immoral. Ya’akov’s strong love for Rachel was exploited to completely manipulate him into working for Lavan for seven more years. It breaks all modern concepts of justice and righteousness; the idea of a contract stems from the belief that the terms of an agreement should be made clear to both parties and followed, promoting honesty and integrity.

In addition, the parashah raises several questions about the concept of surrogacy which are highly relevant to our world today: Who is considered the real mother, legally, ethically and socially? Is motherhood determined by birth or genetics? If using traditional surrogacy, where the surrogate’s eggs are used (the case of all pregnancies with handmaids in the parashah), the surrogate fulfils both criteria – is it then care and child-rearing that labels one a true mother? Is this not the philosophy behind adoption?

Whilst this parashah doesn’t explore these questions in depth, it offers a reference for such discussions, which I believe is highly valuable.