Last week we witnessed the Biblical love-at-first-sight story of Jacob meeting Rachel. Heroically, Jacob rolls the massive stone from atop the well to water her flock. Romantically, he preceeds to kiss her and then lifts up his voice in weeping. Though this is love at first sight, its consumation is vastly delayed. Jacob has to work seven years for his deceptive uncle Lavan before he is able to finally marry Rachel. A strenuous exercise in delayed gratification. And yet, their love is so great that the text tells us that the seven years were but a few days for Jacob. Because of this morphing of time he was able to withstand the waiting period. And his commitment becomes a model for a love that transcends time and space. Indeed, this sense of time transcendance takes us back to the moment of Jacob''s weeping at the well. For the Midrash shares that Jacob wept because he saw with prophetic foreknowledge that he and Rachel would not be buried together(1). In this week''s parsha we see his premonition fulfilled. Rachel tragically dies in childbirth and is buried “along the road to Efrat” as opposed to in the family burial site. At that moment of the kiss, the bonds of time were trancended and he was able to have a prophetic vision of the future. Granted, it is a painful vision. But its not unlike the story of Rabbi Akiva who laughed when he beheld the tragic destruction of the Second Temple(2). He laughed because he realized that if the negative prophecy of destruction came true, then that would necessarily mean that all the positive prophecies of return and rebuilding would also come true for the Jewish people. Indeed, we in our own days have had the enormous gift of witnessing the fulfillment, partial thought it may be, of the myriad prophecies of return to the Land of Israel. We are the living recipients of that prophetic fruit. In the poem below Rachel weeps for the fulfillment of the prophecy of her children''s return to this land. She reminds us that just as Jacob love for her transcended time and allowed him to make it through those 14 years of work, so too if we beleagered builders of Jerusalem can but access the vastness of our love for this land, then we can also weather through whatever waiting periods time may hold. May we merit to witness the fulfillment of a true and enduring peace in this holy land. The Wait You wept As wet as wells Having spilled The crowning ton of stone Onto the sand With withered hands but high romance Made the skinny shepards call the place - the wailing well - for generations to come And seven years grown old between your gaze and mine - was like a day - held between the gates of withered hands and weathered wait And know that I weep as well when memories of the future spill into our tent and premonitions limp into our lamp-lit den For if this ominous prophecy must be then promise me to plant your stones on that baneful road where house my bones And let memorial stand, a somber marker in a severed land To mark the promise of prophecy of transcendance of time and of distance with a mother''s mad insistence that the exile of her children must end And when finally march our children by from their battered walk through genocide I will be weeping3 loud with pleading at that cornerside - where Jerusalem meets Gush Etzion with her border guards and building zones And I will lament with rage the historic parade through Europe, Arabia Aushchwitz, Asyria and back to my grave at Bethlehem''s barricades And with the force of my weeping and the form of your rocks4 will our children return to the road to Efrat And nineteen hundred years - will be like a day - held between the gates of withered hands and our children''s will to weather the wait. *To see/hear an audio-visual form of this piece please go to: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k17FD0OSYCg&NR=1 Endnotes: 1 Bereshit Rabbah 70:11 2 Talmud Makkot 24B 3 Foreseeing that the Jews on the way to exile would pass by the site, the Patriarch Yaacov buried her on the road on the way to Ephrath and not within the city so that she would sense their anguish and pray for them (Bereishit Rabbah 82:10). Add to this the quote from Jeremiah, “A voice is heard in Ramah, lamentation, and bitter weeping, Rachel weeping for her children; she refuseth to be comforted for her children, because they are not.” (Jeremiah 31:15) Thus, Rachel stands as the archetype for the mother weeping for her children. 4 It is interesting to note that Jacob in both of these stories is engaged in the moving of rocks. First he makes a stone altar (a matzava) at the site of his famous dream of the ladder. Then he moves the massive stone from atop the well for Rachel. And finally, in the story of her death, he again creates a matzeva, a stone memorial, upon Rachel''s roadside grave.
(photo credit: The Jerusalem Post)