Today is Jewish Women’s Aid Shabbat. JWA is a British Jewish organization which works since the 1980s supporting Jewish women and children affected by domestic abuse & sexual violence. Once a year, during Shabbat Vayetzei, we highlight their work by dedicating a shabbat in their honour and express our gratitude for their often-heroic work. This Shabbat JWA invites us to reflect about healthy and unhealthy relationships.
Although it may seem simple to perceive a healthy relationship, sometimes it is difficult to see that a relationship became (or always was) unhealthy. The lines can be blurry. The simple lesson taught by North American Non-Profit Organization Planned Parenthood is: “Nobody’s relationship is perfect, and people make mistakes. But if you feel like you’re being treated badly, you probably are. Listen to your gut. Healthy relationships make you feel good about yourself — unhealthy relationships don’t. Lying, cheating, jealousy, and disrespect are signs of an unhealthy relationship. So is trying to control a partner.”[i] The most important thing to be said in this context today is that unhealthy relationships also happen within the Jewish community, even though we want to believe that they don’t. Unhealthy relationships, abuse and violence can happen within our families, and we may not want to really see them, which makes it even more dangerous for those who are trapped in unhealthy environments. Seeing, listening, and using our guts may save lives.
Rabbi Sandy Sasso, teaches when commenting about parashat Vaietzei, that Lila just beautifully read for us today[ii]: “We are responsible for the stories we tell and for those we choose not to tell. Our silences speak volumes about whom and what we value”. As Jewish women, we are suffering nowadays with the silence of many global feminist leaders and organizations about the rape and desecration of dead Israeli women’s bodies by Hamas terrorists during the 7th of October attack. The silence of these women is a message that rape is forbidden unless it is inflicted on Israeli women, on Jewish women.
This tragic example of some Feminists’ silence teaches us again that it is our responsibility to make sure that every story is told. That within our community we make safe spaces for women to tell their stories. It is our responsibility to make sure that Jewish women tell with their own voices their stories of fear, insecurity, or violence suffered outside and within our communities, even inside their homes. We may have created inclusive spaces, but we are not prepared to listen to different perspectives. We are not prepared to listen to what happens under our own roofs.
This week’s parashah talks about our forefather Yaacov (Jacob) going to his mother’s land to run from his brother and, in that land, beginning a new family. We read about his relationship with his own family, with his wives and their family; we read about Lea and Rachel’s relationship with their father and among themselves. The biblical text uses only Jacob’s perspective to explain all those relationships.
In our parashah, the story of Rachel and Leah can be interpreted as an unhealthy relationship, a classic narrative of sibling rivalry between the unloved fertile wife and the loved and beautiful barren one. However, we barely get a glimpse of what Rachel and Leah thought or felt. What if they were to speak? Maybe, if their story was told by their lenses, Rachel and Lea would be an example of sisterhood resisting other kinds of aggression.
Looking for the perspective of our foremothers in their relationships, in their stories, may bring us new narratives that help us reflect and see their relationships in different ways and therefore, rethink our relationships. The fact that we never hear the women’s voices and feelings is the centre of the problem. Only they can really tell us about their lives and feelings. Modern feminist midrashim are written to give voice to our women. This is what JWA allows Jewish women to do. This is what we expect every feminist authority and movement to do with all women, no matter their colour, their race, their religion, their sexual preference.
Knowing the boundaries of a good and a bad relationship is a very important tool for our girls and women to understand their realities. Judging situations without prejudice of any kind and really listening to different narratives is what makes it possible for girls and women to be safe. The key is to enable girls and women to tell their stories with their own voices. By hearing their stories, we can tell those stories. And “we are responsible for the stories we tell and for those we choose not to tell.”
May we be able to hear women’s hidden stories, and echo words, and not silence. May we turn our faces to our girls and women, may we shine a light upon them, and may we bring them safety.
Shabbat Shalom.
[i] https://www.plannedparenthood.org/learn/relationships/healthy-relationships/what-makes-relationship-unhealthy#:~:text=Healthy%20relationships%20make%20you%20feel,who%20they%20hang%20out%20with
[ii] Rabbi Elyse Goldstein. The Women's Torah Commentary . Turner Publishing Company. Kindle Edition.
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