Parshat Vayeytze

2002

The Impact of Words

This week's Torah portion, Vayetze, has all of the elements of a mini-series: a young man on a journey toward a new life, family intrigue, surrogate motherhood and big business. (So the business was goats and sheep - life on the ranch made "Dallas" popular in the Seventies.)

In the following verses, after many years of service to Laban, Jacob has left his father-in-law's household and has begun his journey back to Canaan. Ten days into the journey, Laban has caught up with Jacob and his family in the hill county of Gilead. Not only is he angry that Jacob left in secrecy but also that his household idols have been stolen.

Read the verses below, taking notice of the words in brackets.

Genesis 31:33 -48
33: So Laban went into Jacob's tent and into Leah's tent and the tents of the two maidservants but he did not find them. Leaving Leah's tent, he entered Rachel's tent. 34: Rachel, meanwhile, had taken the teraphim (idols) and placed them in the camel cushion and sat on them; and Laban rummaged through the tent without finding them. 35: For she said to her father, "Let not my Lord take it amiss that I cannot rise before you, for the period of women is upon me."

36: Then Jacob became angered and he took up his grievance with Laban; Jacob spoke up and said to Laban, "What is my transgression, what is my guilt that you should pursue me? 37: You rummage through all my things; what have you found of your household objects? Set it here before my kinsmen and yours and let them decide between us two. 38: These twenty years I have spent in your service, your ewes and she-goats never miscarried, nor did I feast on rams from your flock. 39: That which was torn by beasts I never brought to you; I myself made good the loss; you exacted it from me, whether snatched by day or snatched by night. 40: Often scorching heat ravaged me by day and frost by night; and sleep fled from my eyes. 41: Of the twenty years that I spent in your household, I served fourteen years for your two daughters and six years for your flocks, and you changed my wages time and again. 42: Had not the God of my father, the God of Abraham and the Fear of Isaac, been with me, you would have sent me away empty-handed. But God took notice of my plight and the toil of my hands and God gave me judgment last night."

43: Then Laban spoke up and said to Jacob, "These daughters are my daughters, the children are my children and the flocks are my flocks; all that you see is mine. Yet what can I do now about my daughters or the children they have borne? 44: Come, then, let us make a pact, you and I, that there may be a witness between you and me." 45: Thereupon, Jacob took a stone and set it up as a pillar. 46: And Jacob said to his kinsmen, "Gather stones." So they took stones and made a mound; and they partook of a meal there by the mound. 47: Laban named it Yegar-sahadutha, but Jacob named it Gal-ed. 48: And Laban declared, "This mound is a witness between you and me this day." That is why it is called Gal-ed.

Guiding questions:
1. Why does Jacob refer to the idols as household objects?
2. Why does the text tell us the name that Laban gave to the place where the pact was made if it was not called by that name in the end?
3. Is there anything idiosyncratic in one's speech that can be linked to the area in which one is raised? Can others view this idiosyncrasy as offensive?

"Yegar-sahadutha," the name given by Laban in verse 47, is the first use of Aramaic in the Hebrew Bible. Both this name and its Hebrew counterpart, "Gal-ed" can be translated as "the mound is a witness." Sforno, a 16th century scholar, suggests that though both men gave the place the same name, the Torah includes each to teach us that Jacob would not abandon the holy language even though he lived with Laban for a number of years. In verse 37 the choice of words is far more loaded. In calling the household idols for which Laban is searching "objects" instead of the name Laban would have used - teraphim - Jacob's disdain for the items is clear.

A Word:
On college campuses, or other places where large numbers of people from diverse backgrounds gather, there are likely to be differences in language and usage. One often hears conversations in which the merits of the words pop and soda, or gym shoes, tennis shoes, and sneakers are discussed. In the last number of months, language aficionados such as William Safire have written on the relative virtue of such politically loaded words as "freedom fighter" and "terrorist." During the month preceding Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, we are often hyper-vigilant about the words we choose. These verses from Vayetze reminds us that we should be deliberate in our speech all the time, not merely on the days when we are aware that judgment is at hand.

Prepared by Rabbi Toby H. Manewith, Senior Director of Education, George Washington University Hillel.