November 17, 2023
4 Kislev 5784
Rivka didn’t have trouble, like our other matriarchs, conceiving, but her pregnancy was painful, difficult, and exceedingly challenging. At the very beginning of this week’s parsha, the Torah tells us that there are two babies inside of her, two children that are struggling with each other. Already, before they are even born, they are fighting.
Rivka’s response is an existential cry. She says, “eem ken, lama zeh anokhi?” If so, why do I exist? There are many ways to read this question in light of her experience. If I was meant to have these children, and this is so painful, what’s wrong with me? If this - this struggle, this difficulty already inside my womb - is what it means to bring new life into the world, is it even worth it? If this is what life is about, why should any of us exist?
The bitter weeping of Rivka, her wail, is a call that many of us hear so viscerally now. She turns to God in that moment, and God tells her that indeed there are not just two babies in her womb, but there are two nations inside of her. Two nations that will continue to struggle. These two boys are not only fighting in utero, but they will be in conflict as they develop.
God’s response to Rivka, I imagine, makes her initial question ring even more true. If she knows that they will be warring brothers throughout their lifetimes, what value is it to bring them into the world at all? I hear in Rivka’s cry (and in her silence after God’s response), the cries of all our matriarchs. I hear Sarah’s pain of infertility and the cries of her death after Isaac’s Binding. I hear the cries of Rachel who died in the moments Benjamin was born. I hear the cries of all mothers who desperately wanted to bring children into this world, hoping it would be a world of peace, of love, of harmony. I hear the cries of mothers who have lost children. I hear the cries of Israeli mothers who have witnessed their babies killed or kidnapped, mothers who have sent their children off to war. I hear the cries of Palestinian women who have lost their babies, who have been displaced, who wonder if their children have a future. If so, why do I exist?
Towards the end of the parsha, when the boys are grown up, the birthright blessing has been stolen, and so much of the damage has been done, Rivka asks, “Lama li chayim?” Why do I need life? She has only seen a life of fighting.
These questions are painful and raw. Rivka knows a pain that we all too well know: In moments of existential anguish, in moments of unbearable difficulty and struggle, it’s so easy to question why. So I think about Rivka this week asking the hardest question, and I think about all mothers in the world asking this question from the depths of their being. I wish I could reach out to all of them, as a Jew, as a human, as a mother, to offer a hug, to try and offer some hope. I wish I could reach out to Rivka and tell her I’m sorry that she’s in such anguish, that I’m sorry that these two boys of hers are fighting. I’d like to tell her, I’d like to tell all the mothers (and maybe those mothers can tell me, too), that one day those brothers won’t fight, that one day they won’t hate each other. I’d like to sit with her - because that’s all we can do, really - and together, pray, and weep, and hope, and pray and weep and hope.
Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Sarit
