Imu Shalev: Hey, it's Imu, and we're back for more parallels between Deception and Revelation. We've seen connections between these stories, tracing all the way up to the fifth command, כַּבֵּד אֶת־אָבִיךָ וְאֶת־אִמֶּךָ, and now we're off to explore the sixth command, “Thou shalt not murder.”

“But wait, dear Imu,” you ask, perplexedly staring off into the middle distance. “There is no murder in the Deception story! Isaac, Rebecca, Jacob, and Eisav, they all make it out alive. How can there possibly be connections between the Deception story and the sixth command?”

Well, we're going to jump right into that question and eventually commandment seven, as we go through this episode.

Join us. From Aleph Beta, this is A Book Like No Other, generously sponsored by Shari and Nathan Lindenbaum.

Rabbi David Fohrman: Okay, Imu, so we're moving over to the second tablet there, “Do not murder,” and we're going through the Yaakov and Eisav story writ large. We're looking at it in order, and Imu, where do we get something that reminds you of “Do not murder” in our stories? Somewhere after the Deception, after Rivkah says to Yaakov, “I'd like to send you away until your brother's wrath abates,” and then that moment of Kibbud Av v’Eim where Eisav and Yaakov seem to abide by their parents’ wishes in different ways. Do you have “Do not murder” there anywhere?

Imu: So what's interesting is, without proceeding in order, I would have said Eisav has the designs to murder his brother, but that takes place before Rivkah has this idea to send him away. In fact, it's the overhearing of that plan that causes her to send him away.

Rabbi Fohrman: Yep.

Imu: So that's not the murder. I can't really see a murder, but I can see a לֹא תִּרְצָ͏ח if I'm looking for that. I can see not someone trying to murder, but someone actually not murdering, right?

Rabbi Fohrman: Restraining themselves from murder.

Imu: Right. So what's fascinating is especially in the way in which we culturally most understand Eisav as this murderous, vengeful guy ends up doing the surprising thing and not murdering his brother, and not just for a week or two. I think if you're Eisav and you really want to kill Yaakov, so he's not here. You know, looking around Canaan, I can't find him anywhere. But after one year, two years, three years, you probably know where he ended up. 

Rabbi Fohrman: Well, let's actually be really clear about it. Let's actually look at the last thing we saw. The very last thing we saw was a Kibbud Av v’Eim moment, a moment when Yaakov and Eisav honor, in effect, both their mother and their father. Now, what Yaakov does is: וַיִּשְׁמַע יַעֲקֹב אֶל־אָבִיו וְאֶל־אִמּוֹ — Yaakov listens to both his mother and his father and goes to Charan to go find a wife in obedience to their commands (Genesis 27:8). 

But what does Eisav do? וַיַּרְא עֵשָׂו כִּי רָעוֹת בְּנוֹת כְּנָעַן בְּעֵינֵי יִצְחָק — Eisav overhears all this, sees that his parents are not into the wives coming from Canaan, and tries to make amends and marry a wife from the family, just like Yaakov was instructed to by his parents.

But in a little bit of a larger sense, we might say that there's another act of Kibbud Av v’Eim that Eisav does at this moment. Because what's really interesting is that it's not just that the Narrator comes along in the text at some point and says, “Oh, by the way, when Rivka and Yitzchak told Yaakov to leave, you should know Yaakov listened to him and left.” No, וַיִּשְׁמַע יַעֲקֹב אֶל־אָבִיו וְאֶל־אִמּוֹ is a parenthetical inclusion to something larger that's happening. 

Imu: All the thing that Eisav saw.

Rabbi Fohrman: It's all the things that Eisav heard, right? The very beginning of that sentence, so to speak, is: וַיַּרְא עֵשָׂו כִּי — And Eisav saw that. What did he see? He saw that A) Yitzchak blessed Yaakov, B) that he sent him to Padan Aram to get a wife, C) that he commanded him “Don't take a wife from Canaan,” and D) he saw that Yaakov listened to his mother and his father and he in fact went to Padan Aram.

Now, if that's true, if it is the Narrator telling us that Eisav overheard all of this, overheard the instructions of exactly where Yaakov was going and overheard that Yaakov in fact went there, and it's the case that Eisav was really mad and wanted to kill his brother, what do you think Eisav should have done next?

Imu: It literally says that Eisav overheard where Yaakov went.

Rabbi Fohrman: Yeah.

Imu: He knew where Yaakov was, it's not a matter of investigation. I'll just say this super clear, if Eisav is overhearing Mom and Dad say, “Hey Yaakov, go to Lavan's house to get a kid,” then guess what he knows about Yaakov's location?

Rabbi Fohrman: Exactly. He's running away to be safe from Eisav. But unfortunately, guess who over here is the runaway plot? The potential murderer. So why doesn't he just go and kill him? He has the motive. 

And Beth, one of our scholars at Aleph Beta, really made this point in one of the videos she did on this topic, that he has the motive, he has the capability. Yaakov is running away on the lam, penniless, unprotected. This is the moment that Eisav could make good on that desire for vengeance. 

Now remember, Eisav never verbalizes the desire for vengeance, as much as we know. The text tells us: וַיֹּאמֶר עֵשָׂו בְּלִבּוֹ — Eisav says in his heart, יִקְרְבוּ יְמֵי אֵבֶל אָבִי — soon my father will die and I'll be able to kill Yaakov (Genesis 27:41). But Eisav has the choice of whether to take that inner state of “Oh my gosh, I'd really like to kill my brother” and translate that into actual actions. He doesn't do it, and you have to ask why. 

And I think this is the argument Beth was making. This really is the ultimate Kibbud Av v’Eim from Eisav, right? It's not just that he saw רָעוֹת בְּנוֹת כְּנָעַן, that the women of Canaan were not pleasing to his parents (Genesis 28:8). That's part of the act of Kibbud Av v’Eim here. But right at that moment that he saw that Yaakov listened to his father and his mother, in a way, so did Eisav. Because Eisav now has the perfect chance to kill him, but he won't.

And the question is why? Why won't he? The answer would be, I can't do it to my father. And therefore, that, in essence, is not only an act of Kibbud Av v’Eim, it's also an act of refraining yourself from murder. It's an act of abiding by the basic imperative of לֹא תִּרְצָ͏ח. 

Imu: That's beautiful, and that's really interesting about murder. It reminds me actually of what you taught, which is, a person who wants to murder someone, right? Why do you want to kill someone else? Somehow you don't feel like this earth is big enough for the both of us. Like, you need to eliminate them because you find their very presence threatening. Why does Eisav find Yaakov's presence on this earth threatening?

Rabbi Fohrman: Because it reminds him of what his father did. Yeah.

Imu: Yeah, it's about Dad. And so here is this delicious present that he overhears, which is, you can finally get what you've always wanted, kill this guy who's been an impediment for you. But Eisav hears the deeper thing that he could possibly get. He actually hears father's values, and after all of it, he decides to try again to earn father's love instead of taking out the competition.

I don't know, my mind is reeling because, number one, what it tells us about the relationships here between hatred of brother and father; number two, because of what it tells us, I think, about murder, possibly. About, like, how whenever you try to kill someone, you're not really going to get what you want. It's probably about something else. And then I think the third thing is…and this has less to do with the pattern of what we've been doing, but just, I'm moved by it. The third thing that I feel is, I don't know, Eisav, like, wow. Look at that self-control.

Rabbi Fohrman: Yeah, in other words, here's this person who is really angry at his father but doesn't want to be angry at his father so he's angry at his brother. And here's this perfect chance to get rid of that brother and to somehow get some respite for that burning unresolved anger at getting jilted for this blessing, which is really an anger at father.

And ironically, what is it that holds himself back from doing that? It's this sense that, you know, I may be upset, I may be really upset, but how could I do this to my father? He's ultimately Yaakov, a child of his father and is loved by father. I just can't do this. 

I wonder, Imu, if these connections are telling us something profound about לֹא תִּרְצָ͏ח. You know, we would imagine that a guy like Eisav, somebody who could consider murder, would just look at what's happening and say, “Ah, I have the location. I'm ready to murder,” in a cold-hearted kind of way.

And I think that's how we all view murderers. Murder is like this terrible thing that no person in his right mind would ever consider doing, and you have to be an evil person rubbing your hands together in glee and a cartoonish villain in order to consider murder. But the fact is that's not true. Real people murder.

And what the Torah seems to be suggesting is, it's kind of understandable why people would sometimes want to murder. I mean, put yourself in Eisav's shoes, right? It may not be justified, but you can sort of understand where he's coming from. I mean, he's really, really angry. He got jilted out of this blessing, and then he's really angry at his father. He's displacing that anger on his brother. He thinks that if he could just get rid of his brother, it's this fantasy that everything would be okay. 

And the Torah's response to that, in a way, when it's telling us all to avoid murder, I think is almost its way of saying, “Hey, I, God, I kind of get it. I get it why you human beings might want to kill people. I understand that things can go so badly in your life that you can feel so jilted, so forlorn, so depressed, that you could give into this illusion that if only that person were not there in this world, all my problems would be better. They wouldn't actually be better, but you could give into that illusion. I understand.” 

And you know why you're not going to murder? In the end, maybe we all have to ask ourselves to do what Eisav did, which is, you don't murder because of Kibbud Av v’Eim. The same way Eisav didn't murder because Yaakov was the child of someone. He was the child of a parent, and that parent was the same parent to Eisav as he was to Yaakov. And I say, “How could I do this to my parent? I can't do that to him,” in a way. Because we're all created with a divine spark, we're all the children of God.

And I wonder if that's what we call upon when we feel like things would just be so much better if I could just get rid of that person, everything would be better. Why don't we? God is saying, “I get it. I understand your feeling. But realize that both you and the person that you seek to murder are children of the same parent, the same Parent in Heaven. How could you do it to that parent? How could you do it to Me? You know how terrible I would feel? One of My creations would kill another of My creations? One of My children would kill another of My children?” It's a father's worst nightmare that one child would kill another. That's what you're doing if you kill.

Hold yourself back, the same way Eisav held himself back, and call upon Kibbud Av v’Eim as the spiritual ammunition that you use to be able to refrain from murder. It's a fascinating jump between the two sides of the Ten Commandments. I'm using the energy of the last command on the first tablet to power the ability to refrain from the great crime at the top of the next tablet, “Don't murder.”

Imu: That's beautiful. 

Rabbi Fohrman: Let's move on to the next command.  

Imu: Alright, the next command, לֹא תִּנְאָ͏ף, “Do not commit adultery.” And thinking about the Deception story for a moment, there is no adultery. So, there you go. Just like there was no murder in the Deception and that was our link to לֹא תִּרְצָ͏ח, since there is no adultery that must be our link to לֹא תִּנְאָ͏ף. Connection found, case closed. Thanks for listening, see you next time.

No, no, I'm just kidding. In this case, there is more going on here. But I'll be honest, because of the absence of overt adultery, we almost questioned whether the parallels really did continue. But as you'll see in our conversation, Rabbi Fohrman wanted to show me that there was something adultery-like in the Jacob story that grabbed his attention. And to explore this possibility, he wanted to take me past Jacob running away, past the famous story of the dream with the ladder, and into what happens to Jacob next. That's where the Torah seemed to be planting some seeds of connection to the seventh command, planted in Jacob's stay in the house of Lavan.

Rabbi Fohrman: Commandment number seven, לֹא תִּנְאָ͏ף. 

לֹא תִּנְאָ͏ף of course means “don't commit adultery.” It's the interposition of somebody that does not belong in a sacred, intimate relationship between a man and a woman that we know as marriage. Does anything like that happen later on in the story?

Imu: Yeah, so my first instinct is, like, if adultery is related to marriage and to messing with a marriage, there's definitely somebody who messes with a marriage. Because right after Yaakov gets to Lavan's house, he engages in a contract to marry Lavan's daughter and that contract doesn't go as expected.

Rabbi Fohrman: That's sort of where I was going. Things don't go according to plan. What happens?

Imu: Yaakov makes an agreement to marry Rachel. He says he's going to work for his father-in-law for seven years. Seven years later, we're at the wedding night, and lo and behold, Yaakov wakes up with Leah, Rachel's older sister.

Rabbi Fohrman: That's right. So now, I don't know if you would call it adultery. I mean, it's not adultery, but it's adulterous-like, right? There's an adulterous-like moment there when someone spends the night with somebody who, you know, isn't their spouse, right? And that is adultery-like.

Imu: It’s interesting to figure out who the adulterer is and who all the victims are.

Rabbi Fohrman: Right, because you wouldn't sort of look at Yaakov and say, “You've committed adultery.” I mean, like, he doesn’t know what is going on.

Imu: Right, because you can't say in that situation that Yaakov is the perpetrator, right? 

Rabbi Fohrman: No, it's no fault of his. He's completely in the dark about it. Now, even though he is completely in the dark and has no idea what's going on, I mean, if you think about it from Rachel and Leah's standpoint, the feelings that we would associate with adultery, one might imagine, speculatively, could be there.

If you think about the moment of the night itself, right, could you imagine? Here you are, Rachel, and this is the night you've been waiting for for seven years, and you're waiting to come down in your white dress, and no one ever calls you, and you hear sounds of joy erupt, and it suddenly dawns on you that this is your sister getting married to the husband of your dreams. What does that feel like to be usurped in that way? 

But even if you look over to Leah, what does it feel like to be Leah? Imagine what it would be like to wake up in the morning and have your husband discover who you are, or even, you know, being intimate with this man who thinks that you're not you and thinks that you're someone else, and whatever it is that he whispers in your ear wasn't really meant for you. It was meant for someone else. These are anguished moments.

Imu: Where you’re going with this is really fascinating actually, because my mind is leaping to this. It's almost like, if you're going to be really algebraic here and look for לֹא תִּנְאָ͏ף, I don't see it in the story, right? There is no adultery, there's no marriage and then you know, Yaakov goes and sleeps with someone else, or, you know, Rachel goes and sleeps with someone else. That doesn't happen.

But what I hear you saying is, it's almost like, look for the consequence of the crime without the crime itself. Because what is the consequence of adultery? Well, how do you feel when you get cheated on? You may feel excluded, you may feel rejected, you may feel shame. And what I hear you saying is, like, let's look at each of the players here. Is it possible that they all almost feel cheated on?

Rabbi Fohrman: And the tragedy in the story is that everyone is innocent. Rachel is innocent, she didn't do this. Leah is innocent, she didn't do this. Yaakov is innocent, he got tricked. There's only one villain in this story, and the villain is father-in-law or father. It's Lavan. I mean, if he's the villain, is he the adulterer? I mean, he's not the adulterer. But in some weird way, if you get to the essence of what adultery is, not the physical act of adultery but the idea of adultery.

Adultery is interposing yourself in somebody else's intimate relationship. That's what Lavan did, right? I mean, Lavan went and messed with Yaakov's intimate relationship with the one that he wanted to marry, with Rachel. And, you know, is he the adulterer? When the Torah comes and says לֹא תִּנְאָ͏ף, “do not commit adultery,” in some way, is that sort of pointing the finger at Lavan and saying, “You messed with somebody else's intimate relationship?”

Now, Imu, if it was just you and me sitting around chatting about this and you would ask me, “Oh, Fohrman, what's your degree of confidence that when the Torah says לֹא תִּנְאָ͏ף, it kind of has in mind Lavan because, look, it's right where you would expect it to be. It follows six commandments. It is a marriage that gets interposed, right?” But this idea that love is the adulterer seems like a stretch. You tell me, give me an odds where zero is like, oh no, for sure that's a coincidence, and a hundred is like, oh, for sure the Torah is talking about Lavan there when it's with לֹא תִּנְאָ͏ף. What would you say?

Imu: It's definitely not a hundred. And I would say, like, for me what's frustrating about this command versus others is that you'd want the evidence to be in the command itself, whereas this is almost entirely contextual. The word לֹא תִּנְאָ͏ף or תִּנְאָ͏ף does not appear. Even though לֹא תִּרְצָ͏ח didn't exactly appear, you have, like, “I'm going to murder you,” and then he doesn't murder, so that's pretty good. But the fact that we have to rely entirely on context clues, the fact that, oh, we see the other commands and we see them in order and this is the only place it has to be, the closest I can get to an adultery is a marriage, and what do you know, that marriage goes wrong.

So now I have to say, okay, I feel pretty confident that the Torah is nudging us to this marriage and saying, like, “adultery.” And now we have to say, in what way? 

Rabbi Fohrman: Right, so you're pretty confident. If you want it to be, like, super confident, you'd say, okay, I'm hearing the thematic echoes, I'm just not seeing it in text. All the other things were like, text, text, text. Show it to me; where in the text is the Torah pointing the finger of לֹא תִּנְאָ͏ף at Lavan?

So Imu, here's the thing. How many times do you think לֹא תִּנְאָ͏ף, the notion of niyuf, referring to adultery, how often does that appear in the Torah? You've got it in the Ten Commandments. Besides the Ten Commandments, do you know where else it appears? It appears only one other time.

Imu: I’m wracking my brain. It's got to be in Leviticus somewhere, probably.

Rabbi Fohrman: It’s in Leviticus somewhere. Leviticus 20:10; the only other time, I think. By the way, it's not clear what exactly that means. We translate it as “adultery,” but it's not so obvious. How do you know it means adultery? The answer is, you know it because it appears elsewhere in the Torah, and there it means adultery.

Imu, go to 20:10 in Leviticus, and let's just read it over here. And as you read it, ask yourself, is the Torah slyly making a reference to Lavan here? 

Imu: Okay, so the context in 20 is, this is the list of forbidden relationships, and in verse 10, it says: וְאִישׁ אֲשֶׁר יִנְאַף אֶת־אֵשֶׁת אִישׁ — And a man who does niyuf, which we understand is adultery, with the wife of another man, אֲשֶׁר יִנְאַף אֶת־אֵשֶׁת רֵעֵהוּ — they are committing adultery with the wife of not just a man but of his neighbor, of his friend, מוֹת־יוּמַת הַנֹּאֵף וְהַנֹּאָפֶת — the נֹּאֵף and the נֹּאָפֶת, the two parties to adultery, shall be put to death.

Rabbi Fohrman: Okay, great. So the context makes clear that it's talking about adultery. We see that it's someone messing with someone else's wife; not just someone else's wife, with his friend's wife. And you say, okay, well that's kind of interesting. But that language, אֲשֶׁר יִנְאַף אֶת־אֵשֶׁת רֵעֵהוּ. Ask yourself, where in the Torah do I have אִישׁ and רֵעֵהוּ together? And the answer is…?

Imu: Shalach Manos.

Rabbi Fohrman: Well that's true, but it's not in the Torah. מִשְׁלֹחַ מָנוֹת אִישׁ לְרֵעֵהוּ, we've got that in Esther, right (Esther 9:19)? But back in the Torah, do we have that? Earlier than Vayikra, where else do we have אִישׁ and רֵעֵהוּ? The answer is, we have it in the story of Yaakov and Lavan.

When Yaakov eventually leaves Lavan's household, when Lavan catches up with him, they have this showdown, and then Lavan decides it would be a great idea for them to have this pile of stones that's going to be a witness, גַּלְעֵד.

Imu, come with me to Genesis 31, verse 49, and read that for me.

Imu: Okay. וְהַמִּצְפָּה אֲשֶׁר אָמַר יִצֶף יְקוָה בֵּינִי וּבֵינֶךָ — Where he says, God should watch between us, כִּי נִסָּתֵר אִישׁ מֵרֵעֵהוּ, oh, there you go — Because each one of us will be hidden from one another. So basically they create this monument where they say, “The witness for our covenant is going to be God. God's going to watch over both of us because each of us will be hidden from one another.”

Rabbi Fohrman: And what is Lavan worried about at this point? He says, “You know, I'm really worried because I'm not going to be able to see you, אִישׁ and רֵעֵהוּ are going to part. I'm אִישׁ, you're the רֵעֵהוּ. We're going to part from each other, and who knows what you're going to do when I am not around. That's why we have to have this stone witness. You might even do the following. Read the next verse.

Imu: Oh, that's interesting. Verse 50 says: אִם־תְּעַנֶּה אֶת־בְּנֹתַי — If you oppress my daughters, וְאִם־תִּקַּח נָשִׁים עַל־בְּנֹתַי — you might take some additional wives, אֵין אִישׁ עִמָּנוּ — It'll be like there's no man between us. רְאֵה אֱלֹקים עֵד בֵּינִי וּבֵינֶךָ.

Rabbi Fohrman: אֵין אִישׁ עִמָּנוּ — There won't be anyone to tell you not to do it, right? There is no man there, so how am I supposed to know you aren't going to do that? רְאֵה אֱלֹקים עֵד — God's going to be your witness, בֵּינִי וּבֵינֶךָ — between you and me. Because I'm not going to be around to stop you, and this would be the cardinal sin.

I am so concerned with my daughter's welfare. God forbid, the worst thing that could happen to a girl is she thinks she's in a marriage with her beloved and all of a sudden he marries somebody else. That would be awful if he did such a thing, that terrible crime. 

Well, of course, who's guilty of that crime? Who's guilty of already doing that?

Imu: Lavan  

Rabbi Fohrman: It's exactly what Lavan did to Rachel. So Lavan is being hypocritical. You know, he is the one who is guilty of this. But listen to this language now, אִישׁ and רֵעֵהוּ. Lavan is the אִישׁ, Yaakov is the רֵעֵהוּ. And now, with that in mind, read Vayikra 20:10 one more time.

Imu: Yeah. So it says וְאִישׁ, like, if you take the same אִישׁ from back in Genesis…

Rabbi Fohrman: That be who?

Imu: It would be Lavan. וְאִישׁ אֲשֶׁר יִנְאַף אֶת־אֵשֶׁת אִישׁ — A person who “adulterifies” the wife of another man. This man would be Yaakov. How do we know? Because the text actually gives you a definition: אֲשֶׁר יִנְאַף אֶת־אֵשֶׁת רֵעֵהוּ — Who “adulterifies” the wife of his neighbor.

Rabbi Fohrman: It's almost as if Vayikra is using Yaakov and Lavan language to describe our classical case of adultery.

Now Imu, the evidence here is not any confluence of three things together. The word אִישׁ, it appears all over the place in the Torah. The word רֵעֵהוּ, it appears all over the place in the Torah. Even אִישׁ and רֵעֵהוּ appear all over the place in the Torah. But there's only two places that אִישׁ and רֵעֵהוּ appear together in a particular context, in the context of interposing yourself in someone else's marriage. That is the context in which it appears in Genesis.

The only other time you have that language is the Torah's description of what niyuf is. אִישׁ אֲשֶׁר יִנְאַף אֶת־אֵשֶׁת רֵעֵהוּ — A man that performs adultery, that gets involved in someone else's marriage, messing with his intimate relationships.

And just in case you weren't sure, who is the woman who would be the victim in the Yaakov and Lavan adultery? The main victim?

Imu: Rachel.

Rabbi Fohrman: And go back to Vayikra 20:10 again, אִישׁ אֲשֶׁר יִנְאַף אֶת־אֵשֶׁת אִישׁ. That language, אֵשֶׁת, is specifically the language the Torah uses, strangely enough, to characterize Yaakov's relationship with Rachel.

But Rachel only, not Leah.

For example, remember that poignant moment where Yehudah is finally telling that Egyptian official who's really Yosef, “You know, my father said to us: אַתֶּם יְדַעְתֶּם — You know, כִּי שְׁנַיִם יָלְדָה־לִּי אִשְׁתִּי — That my wife only gave birth to two, and one of them is gone and never seen from again, and what if I lose Binyamin (Genesis 44:27)?” I mean, if you're a Yehudah, how painful is it to hear “My wife only gave birth to two children?”

Imu: Terribly painful because it's not true. Your wife didn't have two kids. You have a few wives and you have 12. But if you only think that one of those women is your wife and the rest are not, then that's true. Then שְׁנַיִם יָלְדָה־לִּי אִשְׁתִּי. So Yaakov is saying it and the Torah is saying it.

So in the formula here, yeah, if there's a man that is interfering with the wife of your friend, then that gives you all the variables we were looking for. We were looking for who is the…

Rabbi Fohrman: Who's the wife, אֵשֶׁת ?אֵשֶׁת is Rachel. The usurper is Leah and the grand usurper is Lavan who put you up to it.

You see it again, by the way, at the very end of his life. Yaakov on his deathbed is talking about how he desperately wants to be buried in Me’arat Ha’Machpeilah. שָׁמָּה קָבְרוּ אֶת־אַבְרָהָם, he says in Genesis 49:31 — That's where Avraham buried Sarah אִשְׁתּוֹ, that's where he buried Sarah his wife. There's that word, אֵשֶׁת.

שָׁמָּה קָבְרוּ אֶת־יִצְחָק וְאֵת רִבְקָה אִשְׁתּוֹ — That's where they buried Yitzchak and Rivka אִשְׁתּוֹ, his wife. וְשָׁמָּה — And there, קָבַרְתִּי — I buried Leah. What word is missing?   

Imu: Oh, wow. It doesn't say it's his wife.

Rabbi Fohrman: Yeah.

Imu: Tragic, but great for us in our evidence, right? Pretty clear.

Rabbi Fohrman: In other words, the way Yaakov is perceiving it is that Leah was an interposition. He was always supposed to marry Rachel. Rachel was the woman of his dreams. And you know, you can argue with Yaakov and you could say it shouldn't be that way and he should have made peace with it, or something like that. But it's Yaakov's perception that Leah came and interfered in this relationship between him and Rachel, and it's not Leah's fault. But if you would say who is the actual agent who interfered, it's very clearly Lavan, and that's what Vayikra 20:10 is telling you. אִישׁ אֲשֶׁר יִנְאַף אֶת־אֵשֶׁת אִישׁ — When a man comes along and interposes in a relationship with someone else's אֵשֶׁת, with someone else's Rachel, someone interposes between the wife of his רֵעֵהוּ…

Well, here is Lavan with his self righteousness, saying: כִּי נִסָּתֵר אִישׁ מֵרֵעֵהוּ — God should be our witness when אִישׁ, when one of us goes and is no longer seen by רֵעֵהוּ. And it would be terrible because what then if you would take any other woman and make my daughters feel unloved?

Well, of course, he's the one who did that, and the proof that he's the one who did that is Vayikra 20:10, אִישׁ אֲשֶׁר יִנְאַף אֶת־אֵשֶׁת אִישׁ. The Torah specifically uses Lavan's language, and he calls upon God to be witness. It's almost like God is saying, “Well, I'm your witness now. The witness is going to testify in Vayikra 20:10. I, God, am going to set this straight. Lavan, you are the guy who did this. You are the guy who interposed and who used Leah as a tool to interfere between Yaakov and Rachel. You are the one who's guilty of the spirit of niyuf, the spirit of adultery.”

Imu: Okay, so taking stock of everything we've explored so far in terms of connections between the command against adultery and the Yaakov and Lavan story, I still think that the strongest piece of evidence is just the context. The marriage between Yaakov, Rachel, and Leah is clearly the only marriage in this story, and it certainly appears that all of them suffered in the same way as one would suffer in a traditional case of adultery.

What's surprising is that Lavan is in the role of the quote-unquote “adulterer,” and I think that the textual connections of אִישׁ, רֵעֵהוּ, and אֵשֶׁת to לֹא תִּנְאָ͏ף, they really support this claim. It definitely made me feel more confident in this connection and in identifying Lavan as the perpetrator of the adultery.

You showing me this additional piece, it defines who are the bad actors, right? Because if we have to look in the story and we're looking for who cheated on whom, well, Yaakov slept with the wrong woman, right? So then that would tell you that Yaakov is the adulterer. But if you read the variables that are defined in Leviticus 20, it tells you who is the perpetrator and who is the victim. And something really surprising emerges, which is that the Torah's paradigmatic case for adultery isn't even a guy who cheats on his wife with someone else or a gal who cheats on her husband with someone else. The paradigmatic case is a father-in-law interfering with his daughter's marriage. 

And that goes back to, I think, something we were saying earlier, which is if you hunt for the crime, it's harder to find, but if you hunt for the outcome, the Torah is telling you almost like the paradigmatic outcome case, like feeling betrayed and feeling excluded. It heightens the betrayal if you get cheated on with your own sister. That is terrible, way worse.

Rabbi Fohrman: And your father puts them up to that, unknowingly.

Imu: Right, exactly. And so it's all your most intimate relationships are dissolving at the same time, not just with husband but with sister and with father. That is the ultimate betrayal. It totally changes the nature of this crime, so much more than if you just see it as adultery. Actually, it's the dissolution, it's the betrayal of the most intimate relationships.

Rabbi Fohrman: Yeah. It's someone else getting involved when they completely shouldn't be involved.

You kind of see it with a couple other hat tips with Lavan, right in the very beginning of Yaakov's relationship with Lavan. Yaakov says, “I want to marry Rachel, I want to work for her for seven years.” Lavan's language slyly is, “Well, אַךְ עַצְמִי וּבְשָׂרִי אָתָּה — You are, after all, my own flesh and blood. Hang out for a while, let's see how it goes (Genesis 29:14).” And that language, עַצְמִי וּבְשָׂרִי אָתָּה, that's very, very redolent. That language evokes something very, very intimate. Who is the one who is עַצְמִי וּבְשָׂרִי אָתָּה, Imu, in the Torah's language?

Imu: Yeah, this is when Adam wakes up from God's sleep where He makes Eve. He wakes up and says, “Oh, this woman. This should be my marriage partner, because, after all, she is עֶצֶם מֵעֲצָמַי וּבָשָׂר מִבְּשָׂרִי. Bone and flesh. (Genesis 2:23)”

Rabbi Fohrman: And so when Lavan says, “Well, just stay here for a while. You want Rachel, but אַךְ עַצְמִי וּבְשָׂרִי אָתָּה. You are, after all, my own flesh and blood,” it's almost as if this is terrible foreshadowing, which is that you might want my daughter, but I'm going to deal with you as if I could have you for myself. And when he uses Leah as a tool to ruin that first relationship between Yaakov and Rachel, it's almost as if Lavan is saying, “See? I was always the one who was going to be the owner of that relationship, not you and Rachel. It's going to be me.”

Imu: It's doubly damning because it seems really creepy for someone outside of a marital relationship to use “bone and flesh” language, which is reserved for marital relationships. So Lavan saying it about Yaakov feels really weird, but what's doubly weird is that in the original context, it says: עַל־כֵּן יַעֲזׇב־אִישׁ אֶת־אָבִיו וְאֶת־אִמּוֹ וְדָבַק בְּאִשְׁתּוֹ — It says, this is the reason why a man should leave behind his parents and cling to his wife, because they are, you know, flesh and bone, they're of one with each other.

So you're going to leave behind one singularity, the singularity with your family, with your parents, to create a new singularity with your spouse. So what's shocking here is that the parent isn't letting their child go to create the new singularity. He's not letting his child break off and start a new relationship. He's holding them close.

And Beth made this argument, I believe, in the Meaningful Judaism: Niddah piece. She argued that the reason why Lavan says to Yaakov: טוֹב תִּתִּי אֹתָהּ לָךְ מִתִּתִּי אֹתָהּ לְאִישׁ אַחֵר — Better I give her to you than to another man (Genesis 29:19), is possibly because if he were to give her to another man who had the money to take her away and to leave, then he'd be losing his daughter right away. Better to give her to Yaakov, who is family, and therefore will hang out, and penniless so that he doesn't have to lose his daughter even though she's getting married, right? Basically, he can still hold on to daughter and not do the first thing the father-in-law needs to do, which is, let them go so they can start this new life.

Rabbi Fohrman: And what better way to get in the way of someone starting a new life with your daughter than to kind of rain on that relationship in the deepest, most pernicious way in the beginning; to kind of say, “Ah, you know, Dad is the only one you really want in your life. What do you really see in this husband anyway? All there is is betrayal all around.”

And if you destroy the strength of that relationship from the beginning, then maybe dad feels like, “Huh, nobody ever left me anyway. All my kids are right here with each other because they're unhappy with each other.” And what kind of relationship is there even really between man and wife?

It's a very dark read of Lavan, but very believable too, especially in light of the fact that… you know, Imu, if you keep on reading that verse: עַל־כֵּן יַעֲזׇב־אִישׁ אֶת־אָבִיו וְאֶת־אִמּוֹ — That a man leaves behind his mother and his father when he says, זֹאת הַפַּעַם עֶצֶם מֵעֲצָמַי וּבָשָׂר מִבְּשָׂרִי — when he intuits that his wife is bone from my bone, flesh from my flesh, that's why he leaves behind his mother and his father. What's the very next words?

Imu: וְדָבַק.

Rabbi Fohrman: וְדָבַק בְּאִשְׁתּוֹ — He'll cling to his wife. And lo and behold, that word also appears with Lavan, when Lavan finally catches up with Yaakov running away.

Finally, Yaakov has left behind mother and father. It took him 20 years, but he's finally left Lavan, and he's going to build his own life, and he says: מָתַי אֶעֱשֶׂה גַם־אָנֹכִי לְבֵיתִי — When am I going to finally build my own life (Genesis 30:30)? And he finally builds his own life. 

Lavan is back in the language: וַיַּדְבֵּק אֹתוֹ בְּהַר הַגִּלְעָד — And he caught up with him (Genesis 31:23). How would you translate וַיַּדְבֵּק? “He clings to him,” with that language that the Torah uses to describe how a man clings to his wife and is one with her when he leaves behind his parents. Lavan is like, “No, you're not leaving behind anyone.”

Imu: It's super elegant that when son-in-law and daughter are trying to leave behind father, father is now going to use that language again and cling. You know, it's really interesting. Wouldn't it be so much more elegant if, just from a scholarship perspective, if the evidence of עֶצֶם מֵעֲצָמַי וּבָשָׂר מִבְּשָׂרִי and דָבַק were all together in the same chapter? They weren't split apart by a bunch of chapters. But it is actually kind of interesting because you get the vibe that Lavan brings in Yaakov in עֶצֶם מֵעֲצָמַי וּבָשָׂר מִבְּשָׂרִי and doesn't let him go with דָבַק, right? 

Rabbi Fohrman: 20 years later, but this is the moment that he's finally going, and Lavan says, “No, you're not going. You think you're clinging to her? You're clinging to me.”

Imu: Right, right when he tries to leave. So what's interesting also that I'm seeing from all of this is, if I had to ask you what was the act of adultery, you might think that it was the switching of the daughters. And that is part of the adultery. But the vibe I'm getting from all the evidence is, it's the entire 20-year period; the entire 20-year period of interference of never letting them go, of never giving them the space.

And that's what Yaakov actually says to Lavan in their fight later on, at that moment of confrontation. He says, “For 20 years I performed for you,” and I believe he says the words וַתִּדַּד שְׁנָתִי מֵעֵינָי, right (Genesis 31:40)?

Rabbi Fohrman: “I never slept.”

Imu: “I never slept,” and I wonder if there's a double entendre there, right? Like, “I was working so hard for you, but I also never got to sleep with my wife.” And obviously he did, but you were so in my marriage that I never was able to be with my wife. 

And, I don't know, there is another וַתִּדַּד שְׁנָתִי מֵעֵינָי kind of connection in Tanach, which is in Esther, of all places, where the king can't sleep, בַּלַּיְלָה הַהוּא נָדְדָה שְׁנַת הַמֶּלֶךְ (Esther 6:1). And according to you in your Queen You Thought You Knew book, there's a reason why the king can't sleep that night. You know what he's thinking about? 

Rabbi Fohrman: Adultery.

Imu: He's thinking about adultery. He thinks that his wife is involved with Haman. So these two cases would be cases where someone else is interfering in a marriage. But what's interesting to me is that it's not just describing the switch, it's describing the 20-year period. 

Rabbi Fohrman: In other words, there's a lasting legacy for Lavan's interference in that relationship by inserting Leah where she doesn't belong. Lavan has made his mark on that relationship, and inasmuch as he continues to have them under his foot, that mark continues to persist, continues to sort of leach love and connection from the relationship between Yaakov and his wives.

And, you know, not for now, Imu, because this isn't really a treatment of the Yaakov, Rachel, and Leah stories in and of itself, it's really a more global treatment of the Ten Commandments, but for those of you who want to follow this thread further, I'd really encourage you to take a look at our video, Rachel's Tears. It's one of our most popular videos on Aleph Beta. If you haven't seen it yet, the sort of climax of that video is that there's this moment of renaissance in the marriage of Yaakov and his wives, when it's almost like they replay that first marital night. And somehow there's a reconciliation between Rachel and Leah on the one hand, and between Yaakov and his wives on the other hand. It all has to do with this almost ceremonial replaying of that first night without Lavan's treachery.

It's almost a way of getting the adulterer out of the relationship, and it's like we can do this again, but we can do it without him. And once that happens, there's kind of a renewal of love between all involved in a way that just wasn't possible in the aftermath of that kind of deception without it somehow being addressed. And Rachel and Leah, to their credit, seemed to find a way to address it.

Imu: That was a beautiful, beautiful course, and teaches you something about almost like the inverse of the crime, right? If the crime is about exclusion, about betrayal, about the shattering of intimate relationships, that course is all about the repairing of all of those things, about inclusion, about empathy. 

Rabbi Fohrman: Yep.

Imu, you know, adultery halachically might just be this case of a man being intimate with someone else's wife, but in the Torah’s using of a paradigmatic example of that, as a father using someone else to interfere in his own daughter's marriage, it's like, boy, you know, what is actually problematic in marriages short of adultery? Parental interference in ways where the parent is like, “Well, I'm just sort of doing my job. I'm just trying to keep my kids close.”

And that's what Lavan would have told you if you interviewed Lavan. It's like, “Well, what do you want? Of course, טוֹב תִּתִּי אֹתָהּ לָךְ מִתִּתִּי אֹתָהּ לְאִישׁ אַחֵר. Of course I'd rather give it to you than someone else. I want someone to take away my daughter?”

But it's almost this mussar haskeil, this sort of searching question that every parent has to ask, which is why is it so important that your kids live so close to you? Where exactly is that coming from? And can you overstep that bound into illegitimate interfering in your kid's relationship?

You know, it's this dance. It's almost like when a man and woman come into a new relationship. It's like there's this cocoon effect, where you go into this cocoon. You leave behind the past and you create this new unity, and then this new unified being can reestablish their relationships with all of those who are important around them. And who's more important than with parents, right?

But if parents get in the way of the formation of that bond, if parents don't give them that space, in a way, isn't it fascinating that an egregious example of that becomes a version of adultery, of the energy of adultery in the Torah? It's very mind-boggling, but that seems to be the case.

Imu: Yeah, I think what's also kind of interesting is the motivation then of the adulterer in this case, because, you know, Lavan and fathers-in-law in general can all make the case that they're just doing what's best for their daughters, right? They love their daughters. So the fact that you can hurt them by loving them too much is really fascinating.

Rabbi Fohrman: By the way, and think of Lavan, when Lavan basically says to Yaakov in anguish at the end of all this, when he finally catches up with him with that illegitimate word וַיַּדְבֵּק. He says, “You ran away and you didn't even give me a chance to kiss my daughters goodbye, to kiss my grandchildren. I would've sent you away with a brass band if only you had given me the chance.” And you know, there is some truth to that.There is love at the heart of Lavan.

But the Torah's cautionary tale is what a non-self-aware person can do, how destructive that love can be when it's applied too much and in times when it's not the time for it. You can literally be guilty of interfering in someone else's love.

Imu: So what's fascinating about that to me is, carry that back over to classic adultery, it too, if you look at the motivation of the adulterer, you can also, you know, defend it as a crime of love.

Rabbi Fohrman: Yeah, that's interesting.

Imu: Like, what do you want from me? I'm not killing anybody.

Rabbi Fohrman: I saw this girl. She was so distressed. She had such problems in her marriage. All I was doing was listening. What was I supposed to do? Just let her feel so alone, right? And you can create a compelling rationale in the world of kindness and compassion that, you know, the one thing led to another, but I was just really trying to give her some love when she didn't feel love in her marriage. How many stories of adulterers would that tell you?

And in a way, a father can be guilty of that, too. And the boundary of adultery is like, look, there's a sacred relationship here, and people have got to work out that sacred relationship on their own terms, and the boundaries keeping you out are very serious.

Imu: Right, that's what's sort of shocking to me; is that from good and from love, like, you can commit a crime in love. You can hurt people that way and you can corrupt your most intimate relationships.

Rabbi Fohrman: Fascinating. 

Imu: As we were finishing up for the day, I was really struck by what we had uncovered. Not just the continuation of the parallels between the Ten Commandments and the fallout of the Deception story, but the way this was transforming how we read the commandments.

I find this extremely poignant. There's a temptation to read this commentary of Genesis 27…

Rabbi Fohrman: The extended Yaakov story.

Imu: The extended Yaakov story onto the Ten Commandments. It's tempting to read that as, like, morality lessons, right? Eisav didn't murder, so taka you shouldn't murder. And then continues like, you see this business with the niyuf? You shouldn't do that. Like, it's funny cause the Ten Commandments themselves can read very dry and moralistic. 

What's fascinating is that each one of these we're seeing is a story of people thinking that they're going to get what they want, and they won't. Like, look at the “not killing” of Eisav. 

Rabbi Fohrman: Yeah, that's fascinating.

Imu: It wasn't about Yaakov, it's about Dad. So if he kills Yaakov, he’s not going to get what he actually wanted anyways, right?

Rabbi Fohrman: And niyuf, right, you think that maybe if you have this affair, you're going to find the love that's missing in your life.

Imu: You’ve just corrupted love itself.

Rabbi Forhman: What you're really going to do is cause all three relationships to completely break apart, and whatever love you had is going to melt away, right? So you think you're going to have it? No, you're going to destroy it.

Imu: That's pretty interesting.

Rabbi Fohrman: Yeah, it is. And you see it from the commentary of the Yaakov story.

Imu: So it's not just about morality, right? This is not about “shoulds” and “shouldn'ts” and, like, hold yourself back from doing the wrong thing. This isn't scolding. This is actually, in some sense, the Torah’s unfolding as a guide book.

Rabbi Fohrman: You can't get what you want this way.

Imu: It's actually teaching you some profound wisdom.

Rabbi Fohrman: I understand what you want, I understand why you want it. I really understand why you might want to murder that guy who did you in and destroyed your relationship with Father. I get how, from your perspective, you would want to murder him. You can't get what you want that way, and it's a disaster.

Imu: To me, this is more nourishing than mere morality, because it's not about do's and don'ts. It's about actually healing something within you. When you read these two stories together, and you say, okay, when do I covet, or when do I want to steal, or when do I…right? Just understand you'll never get what you want that way.

Rabbi Forhman: Yeah.

That brings us to the end of commandment seven, but we've still got three more left, and we'll get into the next two of those, “Don't steal” and “Don't bear false witness,” next time. See you then.

Credits:

This season of A Book Like No Other was recorded by Rabbi David Fohrman and me, Imu Shalev.

It was produced by Robbie Charnoff.

Our audio engineer is Hillary Guttman.

A Book Like No Other’s managing producer is Adina Blaustein and our senior producer is Tikva Hecht. 

A Book Like No Other is a product of Aleph Beta and made possible through the very generous support of Shari and Nathan Lindenbaum. Thank you, Shari and Nathan. And thank you all for listening.