From Resentment to Resolution - Tehila Gimpel: The Land of Israel Fellowship

hey guys this past week's portion of valliete was so dramatic and so moving that I actually found myself in synagogue getting choked up and misty-eyed just trying to imagine the family drama that's going on here you know usually we pray in our house of prayer in our you know in the farm but we went this week to IBA nachal for a bar mitzvah and I was sitting close to the mother of the bar mitzvah boy and she was all Misty eye because her little boy was reading from the Torah and I caught her eye for a second and she saw that I was all teared up I think she must have thought wow my friend really likes my kid which is true but that's not why I was so emotional if if there was something particularly moving about the dialogue between Rachel and Leia over the flowers for me at least that just broke my heart now it's a weird story you know the story is going on and on about the births of the different tribes and then it's interrupted by these two kind of tangents first we hear about Rachel getting angry at Jacob that she doesn't have children and you can understand why that story is important it's showing her difficulty in Jacob's you know sort of difficulty in in dealing with her pain and not really knowing what to do and then in the middle of chapter 30 we have the second story where Reuben brings these flowers now we know from the sages and also from you know it's it's corroborated in different Greek medical writings that these type of flowers were used for fertility and then Rachel asks for the flowers and then Leia gets upset and she says you know well you want you took my husband now you want to take my flowers and they end up trading uh you know a night with Jacob for the flowers and then the worst part for me is when she goes out to meet Jacob and she says to him which is translated as like I hired you I rented you with my son's flowers and it feels so humiliated for her that she needs to go to her husband like use that as like an excuse that he should come to her not like oh hey you know why don't we have some special romantic time it's like okay I you know I I worked it out financially with my sister I gave her the flowers now you come with me and I'm just cringing at her pain but it seems oddly enough that it brings blessing like she the Torah says that she has become Barren before this story and then suddenly she has two more children so it's it's just a weird story is it good is it bad all in all why do we need all these details couldn't it just say if it was going to tell us you know that she was gonna have two more children that she spent the night with Jacob and she had two more children you know the story is so weird that the sages actually posed as the quintessentially weird story The sages teach us that the king Menasha used to mock the Torah saying look how many meaningless stories there are on the Torah that have just all these unnecessary details and he brought this story as the example which I of course take as a challenge like if the king Menasha thought this story was meaningless it's like oh yeah let's dig even deeper to find the meaning so I've been going through a lot of the madrashim on this and you know most of the midrash takes this story in a negative Direction about Rachel and justifiably so in some ways you know Leia had four children and then each maid servant had two and then another two right the maid service had two and two so then to make the story kind of symmetrical and even it seems like Rachel was supposed to have four children but then after this story Leia gets two more children and and and Rachel only gets two so one way to look at it is Maybe by giving up her night with Jacob and kind of you know being insensitive seemingly to Leia maybe you know this is can be interpreted as like a bad story but on the other hand I kind of have trouble swallowing that because we hear right after this story that Hashem heard Leia's prayers and heard Rachel's prayers if they had done something wrong why is Hashem listening to their prayers so maybe there's a positive way that we can look at this story as actually a guide for our lives I want to kind of dig a little bit more and look carefully what's going on here it's hard to deny that yaakov's house is not in order like really not in order Everyone likes to point out how now in our time of social media everyone puts on this like fake life you always want to look perfect and happy on Facebook and Instagram everyone wants to kind of show how great everything is going keep up with expectations but like underneath there's all this like sadness and emptiness but think about in Jacob's house these are four women living in a fish bowl especially these two sisters looking at each other and it's almost like an arms race like who's gonna look good who's gonna seem like they have it all but in truth underneath there's all these like bad feelings you have these two sisters where one can't have children and one is lonely and feeling unloved and both of them are festering their pain but putting on a show as if everything's great you can kind of Imagine Leia walking around with all these great kids and everything looks so nice to Rachel but we know that Leia herself is dying inside you see her heart because every time she names A Child you hear her pain right but you can imagine how it looks to Rachel and when she looks over to Rachel and sees all the romance between her and Jacob you can you can you know you can imagine how how she feels and we know that jealousy is at the core of this family because in that story where Rachel comes to Jacob and says give me children the verse actually says she was jealous of Leia meaning she didn't come to Jacob and say I want to have children because I just want to build the nation of Israel I want to be a mother it says it says that she was jealous of Lee I mean this whole home is ridden with this jealousy and this unspoken resentment and anger it's so chaotic and Jacob doesn't even seem to know what to do with himself he's so passive it's like okay give him a maid siren okay you're coming with me you're coming with her then this flower story seems to just be adding to the cast but maybe it's not adding to the cast maybe it's the solution to the cast because of everything that's been happening up until now stemmed from dishonesty starting with Jacob you know switching the the with Ace of and then Lavon switching the daughters at the wedding and then this kind of feeling that maybe there was some dishonesty in the business that Lavon felt that Jacob was you know doing something wrong but he wasn't really doing something wrong but no one ever has like an honest conversation about anything maybe the Torah is showing us here that the most courageous thing you can do when your house is not in order is to face it honestly and bravely knowing that when you show your pain the other person might react painfully as well to what you say but you say to them I'm not walking away from this relationship we're going to work it out and maybe that type of posture is so powerful and so Redemptive that it can change everything in this home now I want to look back at that dialogue Reuben brings her these Leia these flowers it could have just said she had flowers why do we have to know that Reuben brought it to her brought them to her because it was more than just flowers they were a sign of this precious unconditional love that you could only get from a child it's that one thing that Rachel lacked you know and Leia's probably thinking herself well I might not have you know the love of Jacob but at least I have these children and when Rachel comes to her and asks her hey can I have some of that Rachel's maybe making herself for the first time vulnerable and openly and honestly sharing her pain with her sister because we know that as the readers that she's jealous but maybe Leia doesn't know maybe Leia thinks that Rachel's the lucky one because she has Jacob's love and then she says something honest she just can I have some of your son's flowers she specifically says your son's flowers she doesn't ask for all of them she asks for some of them she shows her pain her lack of that thing that she needs a child's love that fertility that's brought in those flowers you can imagine Leia's tend to spilled with like little children's drawings and trinkets that her kids brought her and how empty Rachel's tent is she's saying I need some of that can you share with me a bit of your good fortune I know when you see me with Jacob you think my life is so great but my life is not so great this is really hurting me and look how Leia interprets this request her response is like the culmination of all of our fears when we're afraid to open up and show our vulnerability that the other person will respond with like something really mean and hurtful and that's exactly what happens Leah says oh yeah it's not enough you stole my husband you want to take all my son's flowers like whoa first of all none of that is actually true Rachel didn't steal Jacob anything it's the other way around Rachel was supposed to be the one to have him alter herself and then she ended up having to share her with Leia and she didn't even ask to take all the flowers if you look carefully the verse goes to you know takes care to say that you only asked for some of the flowers am I the only person this is sounding familiar to like when things are bad under the surface sometimes it just takes this like one little trigger and all of it comes pouring out Jeremy and I talk about this a lot how like when there's pain in the relationship under the surface it'll come out in the weirdest way like one small thing can be misinterpreted and then all of the resentment and anger come pouring out and they're like whoa I didn't know that that was all under there but it's actually a good thing because For the First Time these two sisters are being real now what could Rachel have done when her sister poured out all that anger and resentment on her she could have tried to prove her wrong and said oh yeah you think I stole your husband I didn't steal your husband you stole my husband he never even liked you anyway and oh your flowers you think I wanted all of your flowers well you can go take your flowers and shut right but Rachel does something so courageous she takes all the hurtful things that Leia is saying to her and she doesn't fight back she looks at what's under the surface what's the pain look at her responses this one word look how one verse but look how in this one verse she fixes their relationship instead of trying to outdo one another and say okay you know I'm you know you're wrong because of this and that she says wait a minute I have what you need and you have what I need instead of festering in our own pain let's try to honestly see how we can be of service and comfort to one another I have a lot of time with you back why don't you take time with yaakov you have these flowers that symbolize fertility and the love of children can you share some of them with me and then after this story we don't see any more strife and jealousy being told about the sisters because when things get real they get painful Rachel doesn't walk away and she doesn't fight back she says you're my sister I'm not letting go of this relationship I will take responsibility to heal this let's see how in this place of honesty we can actually help each other and how do I know I'm touching on something real hard because look at the outcomes the outcomes of this story are you saharan's balloon that are born and in the midrash these brothers are always portrayed as a special pair because known for their Torah learning but it's a balloon for their business Acumen and doing overseas business and we're told by the sages that zvulon would bring money to yesahar so they can learn Torah and issachar would teach the Torah to zoom they became the example of brothers that can look at their strengths and each other's lacking and see how they can complete one another the second thing is that right after this story we hear about both Leia and Rachel that Hashem heard their prayers meaning up until now something was not working in their home but not just in their home something wasn't working in their relationship with Hashem maybe all the jealousy and the hurt and the pain were blocking their hearts from actually having a relationship with Hashem when they put their relationships in their home in order they were able to actually pray and be heard by Hashem and the third thing after that is that yaakov decides to return home after this story why does he return home Benjamin wasn't born yet so it can't be that he returned home because he was done building his family so why does he return home well I went back to the beginning of the portion and I looked at the oath that yaakov made to tithe everything of Hashem brought him back but look at the words he uses in chapter 28 verse 20. it says and Jacob uttered a vow saying if God will be with me and he will guard me on his way upon which I am going and he will give me bread to eat in a garment to wear okay fair enough he asked Hashem to guard him check Hashem did that he asked him to give him food Hashem did that plentifully give him clothing plentifully he's already a wealthy man so what was keeping him in haran look at verse 21 he says and what's the last stage of his journey he says and if I return in peace to my father's house meaning somehow prophetically he knew that it would be time to come home when he returned and peace to his father's home so something in this conversation in Rachel and then Leia's courage to be real to stop putting on a show that everything is okay but to share pain and to be vulnerable and to face the dysfunction in their family bravely and honesty and with sensitivity and to really hear each other's pain and to know that it's going to be a difficult conversation but to have that difficult conversation that is what put the house of Jacob into peace and made them be ready to return home to the land of Israel so you know I think the key here is that this story is telling us that by having these the courage speak honestly no matter what will happen to be able to face those conversations that we don't want to have because we know there's resentment under the surface but to do it anyway and say I'm not letting go of my home I'm not letting go of my relationships it not only can put our own homes in order but it can put our relationships with Hashem in order as a result and the fruits of that are fruits of peace that go on from generation to generation so with that I bless everybody with a good week of Courage of love and relationship and honesty bye guys