And [Leah] conceived again, and bore a son; and she said, This time will I give thanks to the Lord; therefore she called his name Judah: and she left off bearing (Gen. 29:35). This week’s Torah portion has no shortage of birth stories – eleven of Jacob’s twelve sons are born in the course of the twenty-one year span of this parshah – but Leah’s pronouncement upon the birth of her fourth son stands out: what does she mean by give thanks to the LORD? Why only now, with her fourth and final son?
For Rashi (France, 1040-1105), Leah knew through prophecy that Jacob was destined to have twelve sons. Since he had two wives and two concubines, if the sons were evenly distributed the women would give birth to three apiece. Leah’s first three sons, then, were merely what she “deserved;” with the birth of her fourth son, she recognizes that she has received something to which she was not strictly entitled, and therefore offers thanks to God.
Leah sees that, in comparison to her sister and their maidservants, she has drawn a larger share of the sons (and, therefore, social standing – if not necessarily their husband’s love), and she is grateful for her ascendance over her rivals. I have sympathy for Leah: it’s no secret that her husband loves her sister more (29:30); the Torah twice describes her as hated by her husband (29:31, 29:33) and she explicitly states her hope that bearing sons will win Jacob’s love (29:32). The Torah’s compression of this information into four consecutive verses only heightens the pain Leah must have felt. In the context of such a poisonous family atmosphere, it’s not hard to imagine Leah incessantly comparing herself to the other women in the household, fiercely competing for Jacob’s affection.
Understandable, perhaps, but not exactly uplifting. Biblical heroes are far from perfect, but we still look to them as paradigms through which we can understand the world we live in – and I am troubled by Rashi’s vision of a zero-sum, dog-eat-dog competition within the family. I take comfort, then, in the words Rabbi Abraham Ibn Ezra (Spain, 1089-1164) imagines Leah saying at Judah’s birth: “I will give thanks to God, because I desire no more; I thank God for giving me all of this, and it is enough for me.”
The subtle but crucial difference between how Rashi and Ibn Ezra read the verse lies not in the fact of Leah’s gratitude or satisfaction, but in the means by which she develops that sense of gratitude. For Rashi, Leah thanks God for giving her more than the other women; in Ibn Ezra’s imagination, she expresses gratitude for having more than she expected for herself.
In this way, Leah anticipates the words of our Sages of Blessed Memory: “Who is wealthy? One who is satisfied with his portion” (Pirkei Avot 4.1). In Ezra’s Leah finds her gratitude, and ultimately her happiness, in herself, without comparison to others. As we join the rest of America in celebrating Thanksgiving, our parshah offers us the chance to reflect on the foundations of our own gratitude. True happiness, our tradition suggests, arises out of a sense of “enough,” knowing that our needs are met and, perhaps, we have even been graced with a little bit extra.
Shabbat Shalom and Happy Thanksgiving,
Rabbi Abe Friedman
