Rabbi Marc D. Rudolph

In our Torah reading for tomorrow, (Genesis 31:7-32:3) Jacob flees from Laban with his family and all of the wealth he has managed to accumulate in his years of service/servitude to his father-in-law. We learn that Rachel, Jacob’s wife (and Laban’s daughter), steals the household idols and brings them with her. The commentators wonder why she steals the idols. Rashi tells us that it was out of a good motivation, that she wanted to distance her father from idolatry. But, others ask, if she was worried about her father’s spiritual life, why didn’t she just break the idols before leaving? Others maintain that these “household gods” represented clan leadership and the right to inheritance. Like the “keys to the house” they were symbols that entitled her and her husband to a fair share of Laban’s estate. But what good would these do them in the Land of Canaan, where they were headed? It would only be legally recognized in Padan Aram, from where they were fleeing!

Still others maintain that this is Rachel’s only way of getting justice. As a woman in a patriarchal society, she has no voice, no way of raising her grievance over her rightful inheritance with her father. No way of protesting how he deceived Jacob into marrying her older sister, Leah, in her stead. No way of confronting him about how he has mistreated her husband and exploited her family over twenty years. In stealing the household idols, she turns the table on her father. It is now he who is afraid of her, he who is powerless to recover what is rightfully his.

The contemporary poet Alicia Suskin Ostriker adds her voice to those who speculate about Rachel’s motives for stealing her father’s household idols:

Rachel Solo

Not getting mad, just getting even,
Papa, I'll say goodbye to you.
I'll load my camel with my goods
And take your household idols too.
And should you come in search of them
With indignation red and blue,
I'll sit upon your statuettes
And make good use of a bad taboo.
Papa, I'll say forgive me but 
My monthly's here, don't misconstrue
This failure to get up....
And you'll
Back off in dread.
That's what you'll do.