The dark side of communal convention

Jacob was in an unfamiliar place.

Like Abraham a generation earlier, Jacob left his land and his home. But Jacob journeyed in the opposite direction — out of Canaan and back to the ancestral land Abraham left.

Jacob may have gotten more than he bargained for when he took Esau’s blessing. The text notes that Jacob donned Esau’s clothes to deceive their father and obtain Esau’s blessing, but it never mentions that Jacob ever took those clothes off. One could argue that the Torah’s omission goes beyond characteristic brevity and actually is quite intentional.

The blessing came at a price. Jacob’s assumption of Esau’s identity was not entirely temporary. Some aspects of that identity were more permanent burdens Jacob was forced to carry.

One was that Jacob was no longer a “dweller of tents.” Jacob’s flight from Esau forced Jacob to become the “man of the field” that Esau was.

Jacob’s journey takes him to a field in Haran. There, Jacob finds a well that is sealed — a large stone covers it — and a group of shepherds loitering beside it.

Jacob is puzzled. It is the middle of the day. He asks the shepherds: “Why don’t you water your flocks and take them to graze?” (29:7)

They answer: “We cannot. We can only roll the stone from the well when all the flocks have gathered together.”

Suddenly, Rachel appears over the horizon, leading her father Laban’s flock.

Rachel’s appearance prompts Jacob to act. He rolls the stone off the well and waters Rachel’s flock himself.

It’s a strange story, worth exploring.

One interpretation is that the rock covering Haran’s well was too substantial for any shepherd or even a group of shepherds to lift alone. They all needed to work together. In that light, the story testifies to Jacob’s profound strength or his love for Rachel — or both — that enabled him to do the impossible.

But there are several problems with this interpretation.

First, if the rock was physically difficult for any shepherd to lift alone, Jacob’s question — why stand around and not water your flocks? — seems silly. Isn’t the answer — that a giant rock sits atop the well — obvious? One could suggest that Jacob’s great strength made the rock seem insignificant — “like removing a bottle’s cork,” Rashi said — but that seems like a forced interpretation.

Second, how does the story connect with the rest of the narrative? Jacob’s superhuman strength features nowhere else. Indeed, it seems lost on its beneficiary, Rachel, who makes no mention of it to her father. Which is striking when one considers a similar episode with Moses in Exodus. There too, an encounter takes place at a local well. There too, Moses acts heroically and saves Jethro’s daughters from shepherds who harassed them. There too, Moses waters the girls’ flock. But there, unlike here, Jethro’s daughters tell Jethro that Moses “saved us from the hands of the shepherds and drew water for us and our flock” (Exodus 2:19). If Jacob acted heroically, why does Rachel stay silent?

Third, and more fundamentally, why does the Torah relate the story at all? If the story is a testament to Jacob’s physical strength, as some commentators suggest, why does Jacob’s physical strength matter at all?

In a 1952 sermon, the late Rabbi Dr. Norman Lamm interpreted the story differently — as the triumph of Jacob’s positive can-do attitude (“ki sarita…vatuchal”) over the shepherds’ negative defeatism (“lo nuchal”).

“The reason the shepherds couldn’t roll the stone was that they were convinced they could not do it. When a man thinks that a particular task is impossible, then for him it becomes impossible…. Jacob, however, had no such difficulty. He thought it was possible, and for him it became possible….

Implicit in this interpretation is that Jacob’s removal of the rock was not miraculous. Any shepherd could have removed the stone. They did not, according to Rabbi Lamm, because they convinced themselves that removing it without others’ help was impossible. Their own negative attitude — rather than any external or physical restraint — was what stopped them.

I want to suggest that what constrained the shepherds was something else: societal convention.

In addition to “possible” and “impossible” in the physical sense, the word “yachol” can also mean “acceptable” or “unacceptable” in the context of custom and convention. For example:

1. In matters of inheritance, a father cannot prefer a younger child over the first born. “It is unacceptable (lo yuchal) for a father to prefer the (younger) son of his beloved wife over the firstborn son of his hated wife…” (Deuteronomy 21:16).

2. A man who defames a woman betrothed to him may not divorce her. “It shall be unacceptable (lo yuchal) for him to send her away all of his days” (Deuteronomy 22:19).

3. A man who divorces his wife may not remarry her if she subsequently marries another. “It shall be unacceptable (lo yuchal) for the first husband…to take her again…” (Deuteronomy 24:4).

Haran’s shepherds were following a convention. In this town, by this well, the convention was to wait until all shepherds had assembled before drawing. It was not acceptable to draw alone. Jacob’s removal of the stone was not an act of physical strength. It violated a societal norm.

Indeed, community and convention feature throughout the story. Laban does not merely give his daughter in marriage, he “gathers all of the people of the place” for the ceremony, reinforcing its communal significance. When Laban substitutes Leah for Rachel, the reason he gives is that “It is not so done in our place, to give the younger before the elder” (Gen. 29:26). It may be why Rachel avoids reporting Jacob’s unconventional act to her very conventional father.

Social conventions have their benefits. They foster order and communal and familial harmony. They recognize that individual acts have communal consequences. They transform watering holes into meeting places. And they instill order in what could otherwise be chaos — a free-for-all at the watering hole or familial strife as siblings seek marriage partners.

But societal conventions also have a dark side. They can serve as dividing lines between “insiders” and “outsiders,” and be used by the strong to exploit the weak. As they were in Genesis.

When Abraham seeks to purchase a burial plot for his wife, Sara, from the Hittites, Abraham says, “I am a stranger and sojourner among you.” The Hittites respond, “You are a prince of God within our midst” (Gen 23:4-6) — a superficially flattering response that is actually a pointed rejection of Abraham’s landholding status. No, Abraham, you are not a foreign settler transitioning to citizenship, but a “man of God” destined to be permanently stateless and landless, as priests were in those times (see e.g. Deuteronomy 18:1). There too, Efron takes advantage of his status as an insider — the Torah notes that “Efron the Hittite was sitting among the Hittites and answered Abraham within earshot of the Hittites before all at the city gates” (23:10). Abraham successfully purchases a plot only after extensive negotiation and the payment of an exorbitant price.

So too Isaac, who encounters constant abuse during his journey to the Philistine land of Gerar. When Isaac arrives, the locals “ask of his wife,” forcing Isaac to pretend that Rebecca is his sister. When Isaac grows wealthy, the envious Philistines block his wells. Eventually, the Philistines expel him from the land — “you have become too strong for us.” Yet even after Isaac departs, the Philistines’ harassment continues — Isaac digs a well and they claim it; he moves on, digs another well, and the Philistines claim it too. Eventually, the Philistines sue for peace. But that peace comes with a subtext of coercion — the Philistine king Avimelech requests it accompanied by “Pichol, the captain of his army” — and the “truce” they propose runs entirely in the Philistines’ favor.

The abuse that worried Abraham and Isaac — women forcibly taken by powerful locals — is visited upon Jacob. Jacob’s daughter Dina is kidnapped and raped by Shechem, a Hivvite noble. Shechem offers a settlement to marry Dina — ”Let me find favor in your eyes, and I will give that which you say” (Gen 34:11) — but his offer is hardly generous. It comes after Dina is already “defiled” and a hostage still sitting in Hivvite captivity, and seems motivated more by Hivvite self-interest than personal accountability (see 34:23). Jacob is in no position to refuse, and Jacob’s subdued reaction — “Jacob heard…and held his peace” (34:5) — betrays his powerlessness. Indeed, when Jacob’s sons smite the Hivvites in revenge, Jacob reprimands them: “You have undermined me, to make me loathsome to the inhabitants of the land…and, I am few in number…” (34:30)

Abuse of outsiders was common, and not unique to the patriarchs. Sodomites seek to abuse messengers who visit Lot (Gen 19:5), and when Lot seeks to intervene, they turn on Lot himself and cast him too as an outsider (“this fellow came to sojourn, and he plays the judge…”).

Only Abraham and his family treat outsiders with compassion.

“And the Lord appeared unto [Abraham] by the terebinths of Mamre, as he sat in the tent door in the heat of the day. And he lifted his eyes and, behold, three men stood over him, and when he saw them, he ran to meet them and bowed before them. He said, ‘my lord, if I have found favor in your eyes, pass not by your servant…’ “(Genesis 18: 1-3).

And that compassion, which was a radical departure from ancient norms, became a central feature of the Abrahamic tradition that eventually became Judaism.

“When a stranger resides with you in your land, you shall not wrong him. The stranger who resides with you shall be to you as one of your citizens; you shall love him as yourself…” (Lev 19:33-34).

Judaism long recognized that a society’s strength is measured by how it treats the weak. It always insisted that our societal conventions always be rooted in justice and kindness. And so should we.

Yigal Gross is an attorney and community organizer. He lives in Teaneck.

Opinion

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