Parashat Vayishlach: Listening, and Responding to Victims of Sexual Assault

(delivered by Rabbi J.B. Sacks on December 2, 2023)

One of the phenomena we are witnessing in the aftermath of October 7 is the attempt to erase and deny the brutal sexual violence that Hamas perpetrated that day against Israeli women and girls. This has even been true of international women’s rights groups whose mission is to document sexual violence as a weapon of war. To ignore the violence perpetrated against Israeli women is to erase their experience. To explain away the violence against Israeli women as resistance is to both blame the victim and demean the entire idea of resistance. Today’s parashah reminds us of these dangers and more.

The story of Dinah that began today’s reading is often overlooked in a parashah rich with other narratives that are easier and more pleasant to explore. But this is not a time to shy away from difficult stories or avoid stories of sexual violence. Shabbat Vayishlah can be an opportunity for our communities to center the stories of women and girls in their fullness and explore the ways our communities can transform from communities of silence to communities of support.

Dinah is a singular character in Genesis. The only named daughter born to Jacob, her existence is something of a paradox in the Torah. Her whole story is contained in two verses. Far more attention is given to the story of her brothers’ avenging of her rape than the story of the rape itself. We know nothing of Dinah’s story before or after. Dinah herself never speaks. Let’s look at the text.

Genesis 34:1

וַתֵּצֵ֤א דִינָה֙ בַּת־לֵאָ֔ה אֲשֶׁ֥ר יָלְדָ֖ה לְיַעֲקֹ֑ב לִרְא֖וֹת בִּבְנ֥וֹת הָאָֽרֶץ׃

Now Dinah, the daughter of Leah, who she bore to Jacob,

went out to visit the daughters of the land.

 PLEASE CONSIDER:

• What reactions, comments, or questions do you have of this text?
• Why is she named in this way? Why is she called by her mother’s name and not her father’s name? Don’t we already know that Jacob was Leah’s husband?

But here it’s hard to know what Jacob and Leah’s relationship is. Rashi, citing several midrashim in Genesis Rabbah, comments that this is to emphasize that she has inherited an undesirable characteristic of Leah’s. Like her, Dinah is called a “yatzanit—one who goes out.” Apparently she “goes out” with some frequency, just as Leah went out to meet Jacob to seduce him with the mandrakes.^[1] Perhaps this suggests that Dinah is a seductress.

This is in contrast to the women in Jacob’s family of origin, Sarah and Rebecca, who traditionally stayed in their tents.

Ramban explains that the reference to Jacob is to draw the connection to Dinah’s brothers, Simeon and Levi, who will avenge her. In these explanations, Dinah is blamed for her rape, as women often are.

Genesis 34:2

  וַיַּ֨רְא אֹתָ֜הּ שְׁכֶ֧ם בֶּן־חֲמ֛וֹר הַֽחִוִּ֖י נְשִׂ֣יא הָאָ֑רֶץ וַיִּקַּ֥ח אֹתָ֛הּ וַיִּשְׁכַּ֥ב אֹתָ֖הּ וַיְעַנֶּֽהָ׃

Shechem son of Hamor the Hivite, chief of the country, saw her,

and took her and lay with her and disgraced her.

PLEASE CONSIDER:

• What reactions, comments, or questions do you have of this text?

A Reform colleague forwarded me a draft of the new translation and commentary for a new Reform movement chumash that probably won’t appear until sometime in 2025. I was shocked that this commentary suggests, along with a minority of scholars that Dinah was not raped, but had a sexual encounter and was debased or perhaps was not even debased but that she nonetheless felt debased. The commentary seems to argue further that debasement is not rape.

But shachav et–always refers to a sexual assault. For example, In 2 Samuel Amnon arranges for his step-sister Tamar to be alone with him. He urges her to shachav im, to sleep intimately with her. She refuses to shachav im, to sleep consensually with him. He then shachav et, forces himself upon her.^[2]

The focus is then diverted from Dinah to her brothers’ vengeance; their interpretation of what happened to her, and their decision of how to react. We never hear from Dinah again.

In her introduction to Dirshuni: Contemporary Women’s Midrash, Tamar Kadari elucidates the limitations of midrashim and commentaries written by men in a time when women’s lives and women’s agency were understood through a very narrow lens. She writes that these perspectives express “mistaken understandings of G!d’s will and intentions . . .. This is not what G!d truly wants.” In these cases, we may need to depart from classical rabbinic literature and create new interpretations, especially since we need to apply ethics in our interpretations, and our ethics includes the dignity of women and the dignity of women’s bodies.

In her midrash in Dirshuni, Rivkah Lubitch offers a few alternative readings. If it is Dinah’s “going out” which likens her to Leah, Lubitch suggests it is referring to going out for an act of mitzvah (proactively seeking procreation with Jacob). Lubitch further notes that “going out” also makes Leah like her father who went out on account of his brother, Esau.^[3] Likewise, she went out “on account of her brothers, to find a place for herself. Dinah, Lubitch writes, knew her place wasn’t with her brothers, “and went out to see the daughters of the land. As it says, ‘Either friendship or death.’” Dinah was isolated, the only sister among brothers, and went out seeking friendship among the women of the land.

Lubitch also expounds on Dinah’s silence:

Dinah was a quiet person and had no voice. Why to such an extent? Because the members of her household did not listen to her and didn’t engage her in conversation, as the sages said, “Do not engage in excessive conversation with a woman.” And that is why she went out to see the daughters of the land.

 Dinah was like a mute, as it says, And Dinah went out . . . to see. She went out to see and not to hear. What’s more, it says, he bedded her and abused her, and it does not say “and Dinah cried out.” Is it conceivable that she did not? But it’s as if she was mute, out of the pain and the shame she hushed up and fell silent.

Perhaps this is one more way that Dinah took after her father. As Sagiv asks, “How is it possible that Dinah’s father, Jacob, was silent after she was raped?”

Many of the women and girls who were subjected to terrible sexual violence on October 7 have no voices—they were murdered or kidnapped or are suffering from unimaginable trauma. Those in the international community who would deny the sexual violence inflicted with such brutality on that day are willfully averting their eyes to further their own agenda at the expense of Israeli women–and debasing, demeaning, and devaluing them on top of the debasing, demeaning, and devaluing they already experienced.

There is another group of Israeli women who, like Dinah, saw and were not listened to: the tatzpaniyot, the spotters. We have learned more about these women from reports in recent days. Apparently for months before October 7 these young women soldiers, whose job it was to constantly survey the border with Gaza, repeatedly reported deeply concerning observations that they asserted were Hamas training for incursions against Israel. They were ignored and overlooked. And they paid some of the highest prices on October 7. Listening to their brave and insistent voices will necessitate an important reckoning on the climate for women in the Israeli Army, and on the Army’s state of preparedness before that terrible day.

All too often, women are blamed, silenced, and forgotten. Earlier in the parashah, after their dramatic reunion, Jacob says to Esau that seeing his face “is like seeing the face of G!d.”^[4] Similarly, blaming Dinah for her rape, or obscuring her story, conceals the face of G!d. As painful and uncomfortable as the story of Dinah is, we must not ignore it or shy away from it. We must grapple with that text, and what it teaches us about the rabbinic understanding–or misunderstanding–of women’s experience and learn how we must repair what is damaged and missing. We must recognize that we see more of the story and indeed more of the face of God when we see every member of our community. In the name of Dinah, as Israeli women give testimony, we must listen, we must recount their stories, and we must amplify their voices.

If we don’t listen, we can’t speak about it.

If we don’t speak about it, women must hide their truths.

If women hide their truths, they can’t feel safe.

If women can’t feel safe, they can’t thrive.

When people can’t thrive, we are hindering them from becoming what G!d set them here to become.

We’ll need to listen, so we can respond, and build a world in which all are safe, all have a voice, and all build a world under G!d’s protection wherein everyone can thrive.

Alevai. So may it be.

Shabbat shalom.

^[1] Gen. 30:16: וַיָּבֹ֨א יַעֲקֹ֣ב מִן־הַשָּׂדֶה֮ בָּעֶ֒רֶב֒ וַתֵּצֵ֨א לֵאָ֜ה לִקְרָאת֗וֹ.

^[2] 2 Sam 13:9-14. Compare especially the verbs in 13:11 and 13:14. See also Gen 19:33, where Lot’s daughter sleeps with him when he’s drunk; Gen. 26:10 where Avimelech’s men might have laid Sarah; Gen. 35:22, where Re’uven assaults Bilhah in an attempt to take over the leadership of the family clan; I Sam 2:22 Samuel’s sons misbehave with women working at sanctuary; Ezek 23:8, where Samaria and Jerusalem are portrayed as whores who get assaulted; and Lev 19:20 where a master forcibly sleeps with a slave.

^[3] Genesis 28:10.

^[4] Genesis 33:10.