Hi everybody. I hope this finds you all in good health and good spirits.

The portion of the torah that we read this week is a continuation of Yaakov’s (Jacob) journey to becoming Israel.  It includes the reconciliation of him and his brother Esau, and the destruction of the city of Schem, the death of Yaakov’s parents and his wife Rachel, and ends with Esau moving to make room for Yaakov, which is followed by a strange, repetitive listing of Esau’s descendents.  While going thru Esau’s generations might be fun, this time round I want to look at something else that has always puzzled me:  why do we mention Yaakov and Leah’s daughter Dinah by name?  Her roll seems very small.  She is born.  She gets seduced by Schem which leads to the destruction of the city that is his namesake.  And then we never hear from her again.  Why do we need to name her?  Why doesn’t the Torah just say “Yaakov’s daughter?”

To answer this, we need to look at what her name means.  Dinah comes from the root word din which means judgement.  Bilah’s first son has the name Dan which comes from the same root.  Rachel gave him this name because haShem (God) had judged her favorably.  From this we can deduce that Dan, or the masculine form of judgement, is a lenient judgement.  And in the Jewish tradition, the male is considered chesed or kindness.  Logically then, Dinah is strict judgement, and in Jewish tradition, the female is gevorah which is strength and discipline. (The word for hero comes from this word too, btw).

So what does it matter that Dinah is strict judgement?  Well, Yaakov is all about balance.  Remember the story of the 3 bears?  Papa (Abraham) bear’s chair was too soft (chesed).  Mama (Yitzhak/Isaac) bear’s chair was hard (gevorah).  Baby (Yaakov) bear’s chair was just right.  Yaakov is about balance, about being just right.  To be just right, one needs both chesed and gevorah; one needs to know when to be lenient and when to be strict.

Now hold on to your hats folks, because this is where we start to take off.  To understand what is going on in regards to Dinah’s abduction and the destruction of Schem, we need to understand what it means to be Yaakov, and what it means to be Israel.  One of the meanings of Israel is, “Straight to god” (Ishar = straight, el = god.  And in Hebrew, the same letter can make the sound ‘s’ or ‘sh’).  One of the meanings of the name Yaakov is heel.  He was named so because he was holding Esau’s heel when they were born.  Now, remember Yaakov’s ladder?  It went from the earth (the heel) to heaven.  Yaakov/Israel’s task is to go up and down this ladder, to connect straight to haShem and bring that connection back down to earth, to the everyday.

How does he do this?  At the beginning of the parsha (weekly Torah reading), we find Yaakov wrestling with a “man” who gives him the name Israel.  So he is now on this high level.  After his reconciliation with his brother, Israel decides to settle near next to the town of Schem.   Schem is ruled by a man name Hamor (Schem is also the name of Hamor’s son).  In Hebrew Hamor means donkey and represents the material world.  So, by moving next to Schem, Israel is trying to bring the spiritual close the the physical.  He figures he can do this because he is balanced in his judgements and decisions.

He doesn’t anticipate what happens next.  Schem, the son of the material world seduces strict judgement (Dinah) away from Israel, by appealing to her heart and her emotions.  She gets overcome and swallowed up into emotions and materialism.  The results are devastating.  The material world tries to become spiritual in the wrong way (the covenant of circumcision is only for the house of Abraham) and they get destroyed (which is what happens when one takes the wrong path to the divine) by strict judgement that does not have lenient judgement to balance it.  Israel, the spiritual man, loses control of his hearing (Shimon from the Hebrew word shma which means to hear) and his connection to haShem (Levi means to accompany), and he falls back down to being Yaakov and feeling a lack of connection to the divine.

I hope you are still with me, because we are through the worst.  Strict judgement is now escorted back to Yaakov because she can hear the divine (or in the story, Shimon and Levi bring Dinah back to Yaakov).  With Dinah returned, Yaakov can hear haShem (for Shimon has returned as well), and haShem tells Yaakov to go to Bet-el, to the place he was when he was last confused (when originally fled from Esau).  Where is Bet-el?  The name literally means house of God or house of power.  A house is a place of refuge.  It can be a building, or it can be a quiet place inside oneself.  haShem is telling Yaakov to go within and find that quiet place of strength, that place where god is, the place where he can connect to the divine.  And when he gets there, haShem tells him what he already knows:  “Your name is Israel.”

Ok.  What a great story, and what a complicated interpretation.  But what does this have to do with anything?  Last week was a lesson on taking responsibility for one’s actions and letting go of trying to control everything else.  This story is telling us that we will make mistakes, and we will get caught up in our emotions, and in the goings on of the world around us.  When we do, it then shows us that if we can find a little discipline (our Dinah), we can go back to our place of power (Bet-el) and reconnect with the divine.  And from there, we can rise back up to being responsible, divine beings (Israel), knowing we are in touch with god (Shimon), and that god is always with us (Levi).

I bless everybody that they remember this when life seems to be blowing you like a leaf.  And that from this vantage, you see what needs to be done to rectify any problems your mistakes have caused, for the Jewish tradition teaches that sincere fixing of a hurt you cause another person, brings you and that person closer together, and turns a sin into a blessing.

About the Author

Shmuel Shalom Cohen spent 10 years studying Torah in Jerusalem. Six years ago, he started Conscious Torah to help Jews connect to their tradition in ways they didn’t think possible. Shmuel also started, and is the executive directory of Jewish Events Willamette-valley, a non-profit whose mission is to build Jewish community, pride, and learning. In his free time, Shmuel likes walks in nature, playing music, writing poetry, and time with good friends.