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Every year when we learn Parashat Vayetze, we get a real chizuk in emunah. Emunah is all over the parasha, but let’s take one of the stories that gives us a personal chizuk: the story of Rachel and Leah.
The story starts off with two sisters, one much more successful than the other in so many ways. One of the main differences between them is the look. You might think looks don’t mean much, but for the mission Rachel and Leah had in the world, to build a family together with Yaakov and bring the shevatim into the world, it is a very important and crucial thing. And that is why Yaakov chose Rachel over Leah. The way you read the pesukim, it is very clear that Yaakov was interested in Rachel, and it is not to say that her looks didn’t matter to him: וְעֵינֵי לֵאָה רַכּוֹת וְרָחֵל הָיְתָה יְפַת תֹּאַר וִיפַת מַרְאֶה. וַיֶּאֱהַב יַעֲקֹב אֶת רָחֵל וַיֹּאמֶר אֶעֱבָדְךָ שֶׁבַע שָׁנִים בְּרָחֵל בִּתְּךָ הַקְּטַנָּה (Bereishit 29:17–18). Since one pasuk follows the other, and this is also how some of the Rishonim explain it, Rachel was loved because of the ma’alah she had, that she was yefat to’ar vifat mar’eh.
So Rachel starts off way ahead. She has everything going for her, and Leah is very much behind. Her eyes, as the pasuk says, are soft; she didn’t look good. And the reason is another thing Leah didn’t have going for her. Everybody was saying, as Rashi brings: שְׁנֵי בָנִים לְרִבְקָה וּשְׁתֵּי בָנוֹת לְלָבָן, הַגְּדוֹלָה לַגָּדוֹל וְהַקְּטַנָּה לַקָּטָן. It was already predestined how the shidduchim would go: the younger to Yaakov, the older to Esav. Leah was a very big tzadeket, and she was destined to marry the head of the mafia, the worst person in town. שֶׁהָיְתָה סְבוּרָה לַעֲלוֹת בְּגוֹרָלוֹ שֶׁל עֵשָׂו: she was convinced, Rashi says, that she would be married to Esav.
What are you supposed to do when you are in such a bad situation, destined to marry somebody who is far from who you are? Leah starts crying and praying to Hashem.
Sure enough, Yaakov meets Rachel and wants to marry her. And not only does he want to marry her, he tells Lavan he is willing to work seven years for her. Such a beautiful investment for a wife. And the time flies by because of his love for her: וַיַּעֲבֹד יַעֲקֹב בְּרָחֵל שֶׁבַע שָׁנִים וַיִּהְיוּ בְעֵינָיו כְּיָמִים אֲחָדִים בְּאַהֲבָתוֹ אֹתָהּ (29:20).
Leah’s Tool: Tefillah
Rachel is all the way ahead of the game, and you would think Leah has no chance. The only thing available to her is the power of tefillah, and Leah invests in that power. She prays and prays. As we explained last year, in the beginning Leah was pretty as well; she ruined her looks herself with her crying. She cried and cried until she ruined her eyes, which is not such a good thing for someone who needs it for shidduchim. But Leah doesn’t mind. She tries again and again; she fills buckets with tears.
And what happens in the end? It’s unbelievable. Leah gets to marry Yaakov first. But she is still not happy, because two things are not going well for her. First, she was an akarah; Chazal say all the Imahot were, and the pasuk indicates it when it says Hashem opened her womb. And second, she doesn’t feel loved by her husband.
Yet at the end of the story, Hashem turns things around for Leah in every possible way. She marries Yaakov and not Esav. She has the shevatim, one after another. And who stays behind? None other than Rachel. Leah is even buried together with Yaakov; Rachel was not.
We see from here that a person sometimes starts off and things are not going so well for him; he is not getting what he wishes for. But life doesn’t turn out according to the way a person starts. A person can start way ahead and within a short time be very much behind, and a person can be very much behind in the beginning and in time go very much ahead. Success is not determined by what we see with our eyes in the beginning. Hashem turns life events according to His understanding, and we can use our power to change things. And that power is tefillah.
Leah cried again and again to Hakadosh Baruch Hu and begged Him: let it be that I don’t marry Esav; I want to marry someone good. And with that she went mi’bira amikta l’igra rama, from the deepest pit to the highest roof: from the worst gangster in town to the gadol hador, the biggest tzaddik possible, one of the Avot Hakedoshim. And she received most of the shevatim besides.
It’s interesting that even Yosef, who was given to Rachel, turned around in the end. Leah, too, had a share in the children of Yosef. Leah was carrying a boy, and because of her prayer the child changed to Dinah, so that her sister would not be embarrassed by having fewer children than the shefachot. Dinah was later violated in Shechem and had a daughter called Osnat, who eventually married Yosef, and from them came the shevatim of Menashe and Efraim. So even in her sister’s portion, from her effort to make sure her sister would be okay, Leah ended up with a part of those shevatim. It’s an unbelievable mussar and chizuk.
Why Rachel Is Told to Stop Crying
But Leah is not the only mother who cried. The Navi tells us of another mother crying, and that is Rachel: קוֹל בְּרָמָה נִשְׁמָע נְהִי בְּכִי תַמְרוּרִים רָחֵל מְבַכָּה עַל בָּנֶיהָ מֵאֲנָה לְהִנָּחֵם עַל בָּנֶיהָ כִּי אֵינֶנּוּ (Yirmiyahu 31:14). Rachel cries because she sees the children of Israel going on the road of exile, and she wants to see her children come back. So she uses the tool she saw her sister use, the tool she knows always works: the power of prayer.
And what does Hakadosh Baruch Hu tell her? מִנְעִי קוֹלֵךְ מִבֶּכִי וְעֵינַיִךְ מִדִּמְעָה כִּי יֵשׁ שָׂכָר לִפְעֻלָּתֵךְ… וְשָׁבוּ מֵאֶרֶץ אוֹיֵב (31:15). Stop crying; there is no reason to cry anymore. You will get what you want; the children will come back home.
Why is Rachel told to stop crying, while Leah, who also got exactly what she wanted, is never told to stop? As much as Leah cries, Hashem never appears to her and says, stop crying. And as soon as Rachel starts crying, Hashem comes and says, I’ll give you what you want, stop crying. What is the difference?
In Slobodka they gave the following answer, and we learn from it a very strong lesson in prayer. Crying and praying to Hashem have two purposes. One is to get what you want: you don’t want to marry Esav, you want to marry Yaakov; you want the children to come back from exile. That is one thing crying achieves.
But there is another purpose in crying and praying: coming close to Hashem, becoming united with Him, feeling your dependency on Him. The more a person prays and cries, the more he connects with Hashem; he realizes it is all in Hashem’s hands, and he builds a relationship with Hakadosh Baruch Hu. That second purpose works only in this world. In the next world you can no longer build a relationship with Hakadosh Baruch Hu; wherever you are in the next world, that is where you stay. In this world you can keep growing.
So when Rachel cries in the next world, Hashem tells her: you will receive what you want, and that’s it. You can stop crying. But when Leah cries in this world, besides getting what she wants (you want to marry Yaakov Avinu, fine; the shevatim, fine; to be buried with Yaakov, whatever you want I’ll give you), Hashem does not tell her to stop. When you pray in this world you build a relationship with Hakadosh Baruch Hu, and the more you build, the better. On that Hashem can’t tell you to stop. On the contrary, keep on crying; it’s a build-up.
People take prayer for granted. They feel it isn’t working for them, so they don’t put effort into it and don’t take it seriously. And Chazal come and tell you that it stands at the top of the world. A person should take it very seriously, as we see from this parasha.
The Names of Leah’s Children
The second thing we see in the parasha is the naming of Leah’s children. Leah is the one who names each child, and when you go through the names you find something very interesting. The pasuk says: וַיַּרְא ה’ כִּי שְׂנוּאָה לֵאָה וַיִּפְתַּח אֶת רַחְמָהּ (29:31). Leah gives birth to her first child and calls him Reuven: כִּי רָאָה ה’ בְּעָנְיִי כִּי עַתָּה יֶאֱהָבַנִי אִישִׁי (29:32). Hashem saw my affliction, that my husband doesn’t love me; now maybe my husband will love me. The second she calls Shimon: כִּי שָׁמַע ה’ כִּי שְׂנוּאָה אָנֹכִי (29:33), because Hashem heard that I am hated. The third is Levi: עַתָּה הַפַּעַם יִלָּוֶה אִישִׁי אֵלַי (29:34), now maybe my husband will be together with me.
I was just wondering what happened to these children the first time they went to school. First grade, new yeshiva, and the Rebbe calls out the names. “What’s your name?” “Reuven.” “Reuven, nice. I never heard this name. What does it mean?” And the child says: it means my mother was not loved by my father, and Hashem saw, and maybe now he would love her. It’s not a name you want to give a child. How does a child feel talking to his Rebbe and his friends, carrying this name throughout his life? We are already used to the name, but the first person who carried it wanted to know: why did my mother give me a name that nobody ever heard of? And when he asks his mother, she has to tell him what was going on.
Then the second child gets to first grade. “What’s your name?” “Shimon.” “What does Shimon mean?” “My mother was hated, and Hashem heard her and saw how much she was hated, so she called me Shimon.” What’s going on here? The same with Levi, and the same with Gad, where Rashi says the name hints to בָּגַדְתָּ בִּי: Leah felt betrayed, after she had given her shifchah to Yaakov.
The Power of a Name
More than that, the Chida says the name of a child represents his neshamah and his character traits; it gives him powers to be part of what the name represents. The Maggid Meisharim of the Beit Yosef says that the name of a person leads him to be good or bad. Of course, in everything Hashem indicates a person still has the ability to change, but the name gives a certain netiyah, a tendency, whether good or bad. For instance, he says that if you name somebody Avraham, he will have a tendency to do chesed. And Naval, whose name means corruption: Avigail, his wife, said to David, כִּי כִשְׁמוֹ כֶּן הוּא נָבָל שְׁמוֹ וּנְבָלָה עִמּוֹ (Shmuel I 25:25). Just like his name, so is he.
The Gemara in Yoma (83b) tells a story. Rabbi Meir used to be precise with names; he looked at a name and saw what it represented. He was traveling with Rabbi Yehudah and Rabbi Yossi, and they needed lodging with a host. They asked his name; he said, Kidor. Rabbi Yehudah and Rabbi Yossi gave him their money to keep. Rabbi Meir didn’t; he put his money somewhere else. Why? Kidor doesn’t sound good; כִּי דוֹר תַּהְפֻּכֹת הֵמָּה (Devarim 32:20). In the morning they came to Kidor and said, we’re leaving, give us the money. He said, what money? You never gave me money. Only Rabbi Meir had his money. They asked him, how did you know? He told them, don’t you realize his name is Kidor? When a name has such a sound, stay away from such a person; don’t give him money.
The Zohar tells of a person called Elazar who became a baal teshuvah, and the Chachamim told him the reason was that he was helped from Shamayim: Elazar, El azar, Hashem helps him. And in the Midrash on Ruth: רַבִּי מֵאִיר הָיָה דּוֹרֵשׁ שֵׁמוֹת. Elimelech, שֶׁהָיָה אוֹמֵר אֵלַי תָבוֹא מַלְכוּת, to me the kingship will come. Naomi, שֶׁהָיוּ מַעֲשֶׂיהָ נָאִים וּנְעִימִים, her deeds were pleasant. Machlon and Kilyon, because they were wiped out from the world. So the name a person is given indicates how he is going to live his life; it leads him to a tendency to live in a certain way.
So what would these names have done to Leah’s children? Reuven, Shimon, Levi: why did she name them that way?
Two Kinds of “Hated”
I want to say the following. There are two kinds of people who feel hated. There are people who feel hated because the other person really hates them. Sometimes it’s jealousy: they are successful in business, successful in yeshiva, and others get jealous. Others are hated for different reasons, like someone who blocks your driveway on a regular basis. That is one category: people who really are hated.
And then there is another category, and this is what the Ramban brings here. Leah wasn’t really hated. When a man has two wives, like Rachel and Leah, and one is loved more than the other, the other is called senuah, as the pasuk says, וַיֶּאֱהַב גַּם אֶת רָחֵל מִלֵּאָה: not that he hated her. So why does the pasuk call her hated? The answer is that we are looking at how she felt. It doesn’t have to be a woman; it can be a man or a child. How does a person feel when he sees someone else treated better, loved more than him? In a family, things are very, very sensitive. Feelings are very important. It’s like a barometer, a sensitive digital barometer; every little movement makes you feel unwanted, unliked, hated.
That is what is going on here. True, Leah wasn’t hated. She was loved; Rachel was loved more. But on that sensitive barometer, she felt hated. And how does Hashem treat such a thing? He could have said: Leah, you’re exaggerating; your feelings aren’t true; Yaakov loves you too, so what if he loves Rachel a little more? Don’t be so sensitive. Instead, Hashem takes Leah’s side completely. On that little movement of the barometer, Hashem says she is right in that feeling, and He even gives her a child for it.
So when these names are called, Reuven, Shimon, Levi, Gad and the others, they don’t indicate that she was really hated. They indicate the sensitivity she had, the love and connection she had with her husband, so strong that every little thing that wasn’t exactly perfect, she felt so badly about that she already felt senuah. This is not the first category, people who really hate you. This is a high level of love and connection: when it goes down a bit on the barometer, it is felt very, very strongly. And so it is a positive thing, not a negative thing. When a person feels, “I don’t connect with Hashem, I don’t feel spiritual,” he needs to know that this is a good feeling. If he feels that way, it means that is what he wants; he wants to connect. He is on a very high level.
And look what happened to these children. Shimon and Levi stood up for justice; they went and killed the whole city of Shechem. Why? Because they had that sensitivity; they got it from their names. Reuven too: when he saw Yaakov’s bed in what he felt was the wrong tent, he took it and moved it to his mother’s tent, to stand up for his mother. Both were criticized for it, and Yaakov rebuked them. But the feeling of family connection and family unity was so strong in them that they couldn’t tolerate it. Where did they get this from? From the names their mother gave them: the feeling of connection with the other person, the feeling of love. And if you feel that it goes down a little, that is not necessarily a negative thing. It shows how high your level is.
Based on Rabbi Shay Tahan’s class “Vayetsei.The Secret In The Names” (Parashat Vayetze), from his podcast Virtual Yeshiva with Rabbi Shay Tahan.
