Author’s disclaimer: Please note that what follows is a modern, exploratory and creative midrash, centering on Leah Immeinu’s narrative in Parashat Vayeitze which was originally written in 5777, was subsequently amended in 5779 and at the time of your reading may not necessarily reflect my current thinking and approach. In this midrash, I seek not to offer an absolutest reading or make factual claims–quite the contrary. Modern midrash is a spiritually creative, exploratory art, opening a door of possibility. The art of the modern midrash is about emotional, spiritual and psychological inquiry. My interest in writing was to explore Leah’s inner life and spiritual yearnings which is also as much about my evolving understanding of this episode in our Torah. In this piece, I imagine Leah practicing hitbodedut. When a person engages in the practice of hitbodedut, they are davka supposed to express the full range of their raw human emotion, which I try to do here as well.
Dear God, the God of Abraham, Isaac and my husband, Jacob,
I am in such anger and despair. Sometimes, I honestly don’t know if you are a God I can turn to in joy and sorrow. I am angry at you, which means I clearly care about you, but I can’t take the next step of imagining that you might care about me as I apparently care about you right now. I’m still puzzling that one out, and that matters for what I have to ask you next.
Why did you make it appear that I never was able to find satisfaction in the life I was dealt, in the cards I was handed? Why is it that when I am introduced, the only thing that anyone hears about me are that my eyes were weak? And why is it that in later tradition, my eyes are explained away as being weak because I cried and cried upon learning I’d have to marry Esau?
I am portrayed as a woman earnestly yearning for the love of a man whom I knew never loved me, no matter that I bore six sons. With each subsequent birth, my despair grows, and yet I never find the love I want. All that was important to record about me was these births and my attempt when naming each child to pick something that fit my emotional and spiritual state, which was one of great, even existential anguish. Here I am, hoping with each son my husband will love me and nothing ever changed, I fear. Interesting. No thought was given to my inner or spiritual life. I can’t see too well, but that male gaze is bearing down very hard on me, so hard I can feel it. Many people like me, who don’t see as well as others, speak about feeling the stares of others as they go throughout their lives. It’s not the stares of my family I feel—I feel nothing from them, only exclusion. I know a lot of people who are like me feel excluded from their families and God, that makes me feel such sorrow and heartbreak.
I don’t see as well as others. That’s always been true. And when the midwife discovered that my eyes were weaker than they should have been at birth, she told my mother that they should try to pass me off as sighted as possible because otherwise there was no reason for me to stay alive. So I have always, always, felt like I was at the bottom of a ladder I never created or consented to climb. The expectation was that if Rachel, my charming, beautiful younger sister was to land a handsome man, I’d marry him, too, because that was the best outcome they could possibly imagine. Nonetheless, I was not able to completely flourish in my society, and in our world, ability means everything. People don’t know what to do with people who aren’t like them, God. I don’t know why.
I thought you said something in the book you write about me, towards the beginning I think it is, though I don’t know for sure that every human being is created in your image. When you made such a statement, did you forget me? Sometimes I feel like everyone else but me was created in Your image, but I know that can’t be true, right?
So when I was supposedly deceptively married to Jacob that was to ensure my survival, literally. And I have to tell you, those signs Rachel gave me were really helpful. But I had to act like I wasn’t sad, didn’t know in the depths of my soul that this treatment is the exception, not the rule. That I might never feel so loved again. That hurts more than I can articulate.
Eventually, as you know, I bore six sons and a daughter, Dina, and that wasn’t enough. With each birth, I named my child something that reflected my deep yearning and seeking, both spiritually and also, more immediately, for my husband’s love. And I never got that. Hope would arise within me whenever I conceived, only to be dashed. God what is wrong with me? I always felt like no one in my family thought that perhaps I am a human being worthy of love and acceptance. Pregnancy was as close to another human being as I ever got. How sad for me and how utterly tragic.
I have had a lot of time to think about my life, now that my elder years are upon me. This world is such a cruel and unfair one, God. I am grateful that I found a way to empower myself in this world through giving birth to children, but the body you gave me never met man-made standards. Did I perhaps allow those man-made standards to dictate my worth? God, I know my worth to you is inherent, unconditional. Why do I struggle so mightily to internalize that?
I thought it was you who says don’t put obstacles before the blind. Those aren’t just physical, God. How many obstacles have I had to overcome, and none of them needed to exist? Just because I am a woman, just because my eyes are weak, did I have to bear these burdens? NO! My life means something!!! As I said before, I am grateful you gave me one redeeming feature, but come on! No one cared about my heart and soul. We all have feelings and desires you know.
Don’t you tell Moses—some distant descendant of mine or so I understand—that is you who creates deaf people and blind people, people who speak verbally and people who communicate in other ways? Don’t you say, without any question or hesitation that Aaron will speak for him, that Moses’ speech impediment was fashioned by you, that it is not something that will hold him back from leading our people out of Egypt where we sojourned and were later enslaved? You made me, too, God. My weak eyes are no punishment. They are part of me, but not all of me, a part that many so-called normal people allow to wholly define my life, because they cannot imagine living in this world as I do. I am so sorry for people’s narrowness of imagination and lack of generosity of spirit. I really am. I am grateful that you gave me a way out, God, a way to assure my status. But I do have to say—though my social status and survival were assured through my sons, I never was afforded a more nuanced understanding. I feel like I’m just the unloved one, yearning for love with every son she bears. That’s not me. I don’t want sympathy or pity. I want community. I want to be seen in my fullness; I want people to recognize me as a person, no different than they are. Don’t You uniquely stamp each of us so-to-speak—just like coins are uniquely stamped–because all of our neshamot are precious and matter to you? Even when other people treat some of us neshamot differently, we all matter to You, right?
But You aren’t doing anything to change how people think and act! Ok so you give human beings free will I get it. And I understand that they use that free will to conceal their own divine spark by acting in ways that aren’t aligned with how to treat people in this world. But how can I turn to you in times like this when I feel like nothing ever changes? It’s like what Shlomo HaMelech—I think he comes along a lot later—writes in Kohelet—there’s nothing new under the sun. Are humans always going to be so narrow?
I want to believe that you are always there for me, that you are a God of resilience that you side with the oppressed and that you don’t abandon me, though I certainly feel like you’ve hidden your face from me. Sometimes I do wonder, though, God. Being on the outside looking in, I get a unique perspective on how others behave and I get a good read on people’s characters. I’m trying to co-create a better future with you, God through figuring out what kind of person I want and yearn to be—someone who isn’t interested in superficiality, someone who tries to treat everyone with proper kavod—even my husband who I know doesn’t love me. That still cuts like a knife, God, but sometimes I wonder. Have you given me a gift? The ability to challenge the status quo? To move my family towards a better future?