Leah & Rachel
the two faces of femininity
Very excited to have Rabbi as a guest contributor to our “Soul Sketches” series this week. I believe you will great enjoy his deep and learned yet clear and relatable style. See below for ways to continue to learn from him.
Kabbalists have always made it a point to transform the figures of Leah and Rachel into abstract concepts.
Surprisingly, this strange insistence is more relevant to our day and age than you might think.
Complicated Family Dynamics
Our nation is named after our third patriarch, Yaakov (Jacob), also known as Israel. While Abraham’s line required the exclusion of Ishmael, and Isaac’s line required the exclusion of Esau, it is written of Jacob that “his bed was complete” — on his deathbed he merited to see all of his children continuing his path, without the need to exclude any of them. For this reason and more, Jacob is referred to as “the choicest of the patriarchs.”
Having been named Israel after Jacob makes us wish that, at least on the relationship front, his life would have been simple and straightforward — that he would have one eternal love to whom he would be devoted all his days, as the verse urges us to “enjoy life with the [one] wife you love.”
Under the chuppah (wedding canopy), we bless couples that Hashem should grant them joy “as [He] gladdened [His] creation in the Garden of Eden of old.” Wouldn’t we wish for all of our patriarchs and matriarchs to have had such idyllic, Edenic marriages?
The truth is that Jacob himself had no interest in marrying two women. He desired only one woman — Rachel, whom he loved at first sight. Yet, things do not always play out as we wished they would. Jacob was forced through his father-in-law’s ruse to marry Leah, Rachel’s older sister, before he could marry Rachel. Later, at the urging of his wives, when they weren’t getting pregnant themselves, Jacob also married his wives’ maidservants as surrogates. All of this created a strange family dynamic indeed. All he wanted was one wife, and he ended up with four.
Why, then, was it decreed that the “choicest of the patriarchs” would be married to multiple women?
One could answer that it was permissible according to the Torah and widely accepted in ancient times. However, this argument does not apply to the patriarchs. Initially, each of them had hoped to marry only one wife: Abraham desired only Sarah, Isaac only Rebecca, and Jacob, as mentioned, only Rachel. Indeed, Abraham and Isaac largely succeeded in their aspiration: Abraham had a child with Hagar only at Sarah’s request, and Isaac devoted himself exclusively to Rebecca all his life. Jacob was the only one of the patriarchs who was truly married to multiple women over an extended period.
How can we come to terms with our main patriarch having multiple wives?
From Flesh-and-Blood Women to Abstract Ideas
Jacob’s unusual predicament seemed to have troubled the Kabbalists as well. This is evidenced by the phenomenon, unique in the mystical literature, of consistently abstracting the characters Leah and Rachel into spiritual concepts. Again and again, our two beloved matriarchs, more than any other biblical figures, are transformed into representations of ideas, aspects, and higher dimensions.
We can actually discern three distinct Kabbalistic interpretations of what Leah and Rachel symbolize, which can be seen as a three-stage process in understanding their roles and their relevance to our lives today:
Worlds: The first stage is found in the Zohar, where Leah and Rachel represent two worlds (almin). Specifically, Leah symbolizes the “hidden world” (alma de’itkasya), while Rachel symbolizes the “revealed world” (alma de’itgalya). According to this interpretation, by marrying both women, Jacob “inherited two worlds”: he gained a foothold in both the revealed and hidden dimensions of existence.
Personae: In the second stage, the Kabbalah of the Holy Ari (Rabbi Isaac Luria) gives Leah and Rachel an even more heavenly character, portraying them as personae (partzufim) within Godliness. Leah comes to represent the more spiritual and intellectual aspect of the Divine (manifest in the deeper meanings and allegories of the Torah), while Rachel embodies the more earthly and emotional aspect of the Divine (encountered in the Torah’s stories, commandments, etc.). According to this interpretation, by marrying both women, Jacob grasped both aspects of the Divine — the transcendent and abstract, together with the immanent and tangible.
Letters: In the third stage, Chassidic thought internalizes Leah and Rachel even further, seeing them as aspects of the human soul, referred to as letters (otiyot). Leah represents the “letters of thought,” the structuring of ideas within the mind; while Rachel represents the “letters of speech,” the expression of those thoughts in words that are fully articulated and verbalized to others. Through his marriages, Jacob perfected both these levels — learning to clothe his intellect in thought and then to express those thoughts in speech.
Before going into why abstraction may have happened, it should be noted that these three interpretations perfectly correspond to a very important Chassidic model — the three levels of existence as laid out by the Baal Shem Tov:
Olamot (“worlds,” external reality),
Neshamot (“souls,” the human realm), and
Elokut (“Godliness,” the highest reality).
However, this correspondence does not follow a linear progression. The Zohar’s interpretation that Leah and Rachel represent worlds obviously corresponds to the lowest level, itself called “worlds.” The idea that they are Divine personae, in the writings of the Ari, jumps to the highest level, “Godliness.” Finally, the Chassidic interpretation, which sees them as psychological letters, descends back to the intermediate level, “souls.” The historical order seems to be 1-3-2 instead of 1-2-3. What does this mean?
Simply put, this is a beautiful example of reaching a balance, and even a synthesis, between the physical and the spiritual. When the Zohar treated Rachel and Leah as worlds, that was a relatively physical metaphor. The Ari’s approach of elevating them to personae within God made them hyper-spiritual. Finally, Chassidut found the balance between the two and restored the sisters to the human, psychological level. Chassidut demonstrates how both the external worlds of the Zohar and the lofty personae of the Ari are ultimately present within the human soul.
Two Dimensions in One Woman
Why did the Kabbalists repeatedly transform Rachel and Leah into abstract ideas? While it is difficult to know with certainty, one possible explanation is that the Kabbalists struggled with the idea of Jacob having two wives. And why should we think they struggled with it? Because the Torah itself does!
You see, while the (written) Torah permits a man to marry multiple women, it does not encourage it.
The Bible is rife with evidence for this: Adam was created in the Garden of Eden with only one woman, not several; Noach and his sons, and even the animals in his ark, were all monogamous couples; the patriarchs all aspired initially to monogamy; the Song of Songs describes a monogamous love story; and so on.
All these point to monogamy being the Torah’s true ideal, with polygamy allowed only to accommodate it to the norm of ancient times, which was overwhelmingly polygamous.
Indeed, Jewish law finally caught up to this ideal with the famous Cherem d’Rabbeinu Gershom which prohibited the taking of a second wife.
Being attuned to the Torah’s monogamous ideal, the Kabbalists sought to distance Rachel and Leah from the literal reading of them as actual women, preferring to transform them into abstract symbols.
Now, while this approach succeeds in distancing us from polygamy, it also leaves much to be desired. Specifically, it leaves out the humanity of Rachel and Leah.
But is it possible to have both? Can we restore the sisters’ lost humanity without lapsing back to the polygamous reading?
The answer is yes. Once Leah and Rachel are seen as archetypes, they can be viewed as two aspects of a single woman. Every woman has a revealed side, her “Rachel,” and a hidden side, her “Leah.” When a person marries, they believe they are marrying only “Rachel,” the visible, known side of their spouse. But in time, they wake up and discover that “behold, it is Leah!” — there are deeper layers to their spouse they did not initially know. In the end, they must learn to embrace and love both aspects.
A compelling basis for this interpretation is the Kabbalistic view that Rachel and Leah are the counterparts of Jacob and Israel, respectively. But wait, aren’t Jacob and Israel the same person? Yes they are, and that is exactly the point: Just as Jacob and Israel represent two dimensions of one individual, Rachel and Leah should be understood conceptually as two facets of one woman.
May we all learn to discover and appreciate the hidden “Leah” aspect of our spouses, and thereby merit to grow into our own hidden “Israel” aspect.
Rabbi Nir Menussi is an author, public speaker and teacher. He has written and edited several books on Kabbalah and Chassidut, and lectures widely in Israel and abroad. His work is characterized by its unique combination of scholarly knowledge, psychological depth, and clear, lucid explanations. His recent work has explored the themes of gender, femininity, love and relationships in Torah literature. He lives with his family in Israel.
Follow
on Substack 👉 here.
 | A guest post by
|