The Unexpected Quality   

It was so painful that I embarrassed myself further by saying aloud, "I'm so ashamed," as I covered my red face with both hands. We had just concluded Shabbat lunch, when the rabbi announced that we would begin the afternoon service with a fifteen-minute study of the laws prohibiting gossip. The friends and family gathered to celebrate a Bar Mitzvah were generously silent in response to my shame, that is, until a young man, without care or concern for the dignity of a rabbi, asked, "Why are you embarrassed?"

"Don't you realize," I asked him and all who sat at our table, "we spent last night's meal, today's Torah reading, and now this meal, gossiping. It was, of course, gossip in its highest and purest form: a passionate interest, lit by humor, above malice, but still gossip." My tablemates all feigned shock, innocently ignorant of any gossip, righteously declaring, "we have only discussed this week's portion!"

"Exactly my point," I said. "We have been gossiping and sharing at least a thousand years of gossip about Isaac, Rebecca, Esau and Jacob. Were they alive, would our discussions not qualify as gossip?"

I can't imagine a better way to study biblical stories than to imagine that I am gossiping about someone alive, and, Oh! This week's portion offers such juicy tidbits.

Had I been among the shepherds gathered around the well, receiving rebuke from Jacob, a poor stranger just arrived in the village, I would have shared my feelings that night with everyone in the local pub! I would have waxed poetically, certainly after a few drinks, about the way that self-righteous @!$% publicly hugged and kissed the innocent Rachel after having the chutzpah of criticizing our time management skills (See: "First Impressions Part One") .

Our discussion of Laban's switch of Leah for Rachel, although cheered in the aforementioned pub, would, in the high-end coffee house, be a more sophisticated critique of a man sustained by the energy of his own pretenses.

Let's share some juicy gossip about Rachel and Leah, specifically their transformation from pure organic juxtapositions of beauty and swollen eyes, loved and hated, decisive and passive, into the quality of the unexpected. Leah, as did Jacob a decade earlier, "goes out," she leaves her shell and brings her husband into her tent. Rachel, who helped manage the famous switch to avoid confrontation, stands up to her roiled husband and says, "Instead of yelling at me, take Bilhah to produce children for me!" The sweet supportive sister we all spoke of with such admiration demanded that Leah hand over the flowers gifted by her son Reuben.

We sit quietly discussing the transformation of the two women as we wait for the local psychologist to offer her insights. Dostoyevsky appears and offers his perspective as a novelist, claiming that, this was all logical, and the underlying truth in their personalities.

We are soon joined by another writer, Brian Moore, who insists that we focus on Laban's reaction to the changes he observes in his daughters. "I wrote about this in The Emperor of Ice-Cream, when Gavin's previously disapproving father, "seemed aware of this change. He leaned his untidy, grey head on Gavin's shoulder, nodding, weeping, confirming, 'Oh Gavin,' his father said, "I've been such a fool. Such a fool.'"

The psychologist provokes an uncomfortable silence when she insists that all of us are simply projecting our own experiences onto Laban and his daughters. Well, of course we are! Is that not an important ingredient in the pleasure of gossiping?

To the horror of my fellow gossipers, I offer admiration for Laban's parenting skills. "So Laban went into Jacob's tent and into Leah's tent and into the tent of the two female servants, but he found nothing. After he came out of Leah's tent, he entered Rachel's tent.  Now Rachel had taken the household gods and put them inside her camel's saddle and was sitting on them. Laban searched through everything in the tent but found nothing. Rachel said to her father, 'don't be angry, my lord, that I cannot stand up in your presence; I'm having my period.' So he searched but could not find the household gods (Genesis 31:31-33)."

Laban clearly suspects Rachel of stealing his idols, and saves her tent for last. He even searches Leah's tent twice to provoke her protective younger sister, and then simply accepts her excuse for not moving from her saddle. He is not an idiot, and clearly understands that Rachel, who refused the bait to protect her sister is now willing to stand up to her father. Rachel is committed to her transformation, pushes Jacob into his own transformation so he will finally confront Laban (See: " Learning How To Stand Up To A Bully, " and, " Laban's Gasconade). Laban understands, and acts as a father, and observing his daughter's commitment to her choices, willingly steps back.

The stories of Jacob and his family lend themselves to the juiciest gossip, but we soon realized that our gossip became a meaningful discussion of parenting and choices. So, let's gossip about this strange, ever-evolving family. We'll learn quite a bit, and hopefully, achieve this sense of VaYeitzei, going out of our self-defined lives, and, as did Jacob, Rachel, Leah, even Laban, gain the quality of the unexpected.

Rabbi Simcha L. Weinberg 

President 
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