Pity or Empathy?

Vayetzei, 5785

There is a story in this week’s parsha that strains credulity. And I’m not talking about Ya’akov’s mystical vision of angels ascending and departing from heaven, or breeding spotted sheep by having them mate in front of peeled streaked poles. No, I am talking about Lavan’s first trick, of Ya’akov believing he was marrying Rachel when instead he was saying his vows to Leah. Now, maybe, we can buy that Ya’akov didn’t recognize one sister under the veil during the ceremony (which is why, today, we have the custom of bedecken, where the groom makes sure his bride is in fact his intended). But we are told that Ya’akov took his new bride to bed after the ceremony, as is the custom of many couples, and that וַיְהִי בַבֹּקֶר וְהִנֵּה־הִוא לֵאָה, and the morning came and behold! It was Leah! How could Ya’akov, celebrating his wedding night with his new bride, not have realized that she was not the right person?

Now, the scholar in me is compelled to tell you that the “bed-trick,” where one person involved in sex is swapped out for someone else, is an old plot device. Shakespeare famously uses it in several of his plays. But the rabbis weren’t looking for explanations from comparative literature. They were looking to understand how Ya’akov could have been tricked in such an obvious manner. So the rabbis of the Talmud explain: Ya’akov and Rachel talked throughout his seven years of working for her hand, and from almost the moment she met him, Rachel told Ya’akov that her father would try to trick him and marry him off to Leah first. The pair even devised special signs and codewords so they would know each other in the dark of their first wedding night. But when the day came, and Lavan was determined to go through with his plan, Rachel thought to herself הַשְׁתָּא מִיכַּסְפָא אֲחָתַאי “now my sister will be embarrassed.” And wanting to spare Leah from the embarrassment of being revealed as the unwanted bride, she taught her the special signs she shared with Ya’akov. Leah repeated those signs in the dark of the night, so it was only when Ya’akov woke up that he realized he had married the wrong sister.

We could say there is something beautiful in Rachel worrying about her sister in this way, about giving up something special to her sister that puts herself at a disadvantage. If the Torah ended the story here, I could give a drash about the importance of putting other people ahead of yourself. But the story doesn’t end here. Ya’akov works for another seven years and marries Rachel, as Lavan had always planned and as Rachel hoped he would. Finally, they are together. The text is clear: Ya’akov began regularly sleeping with Rachel, and he loved her more than Leah. But Leah begins having children, and Rachel remains barren. And what is Rachel’s response? וַתֵּרֶא רָחֵל כִּי לֹא יָלְדָה לְיַעֲקֹב וַתְּקַנֵּא רָחֵל בַּאֲחֹתָהּ And Rachel saw that she had not born children for Ya’akov, and Rachel became envious of her sister. The relationship between the two sisters sours. Rachel sees herself as entering into a contest with Leah and gives the children born to her maidservant competitive names: Dan, for God has vindicated me, and Naftali, a contest of God I have raised with my sister. When Leah’s son Reuven picks mandrakes for his mother, Rachel demands them, and Leah responds bitterly הַמְעַט קַחְתֵּךְ אֶת־אִישִׁי וְלָקַחַת גַּם אֶת־דּוּדָאֵי בְּנִי It was not enough for you to take my husband, you must also take my son’s mandrakes?” Any warm relation between the two sisters is gone.

How did Rachel and Leah get to this point, from sharing Ya’akov’s secret signs to prevent Leah from being embarrassed to Rachel waging a contest against her sister? What we should look at, perhaps, is not what has changed, but what has not changed. At the end of the narrative, Rachel sees herself as the superior sister: more beautiful than Leah, more in love with Ya’akov than Leah, more deserving of children than Leah. The same is also true at the beginning of the narrative, when Rachel is initially promised to Ya’akov. The big difference is that before Leah was married to Ya’akov, Rachel was not threatened by her. In fact, she felt pity for her. Her poor sister, not beautiful, with weak eyes, going to be married off against her will to a man who didn’t love. At the very least, Rachel could prevent her from being embarrassed. All the while Rachel knows that eventually she will marry Ya’akov. She will be the favorite wife. This is the least she could do for her poor sister.

But then Leah starts to get the life that Rachel wanted, or at least parts of it. Leah gets children, and Rachel is barren. And that pity turns to envy. Now that Leah is doing better off, she doesn’t deserve it. Rachel deserves more. It doesn’t matter that Rachel is still the most loved wife. It doesn’t matter that Ya’akov blatantly favors one sister over the other, that Rachel has everything she wants except for children. As long as Leah can exceed her in that one aspect, she no longer has Rachel’s pity. She now has Rachel’s anger.

Pity can be a dangerous emotion. Pity is born out of seeing someone worse off than us, and feeling sad or guilty at their plight. That, by definition, makes pity an emotion based entirely on how we perceive the condition of others. Have you ever felt pity for someone who you think is better off than you? Probably not. But its not just those who are better off than us who lose our pity. You might have pity on someone who is homeless. Maybe then, two weeks later, you hear that he has found some housing, and your pity evaporates a little. You didn’t consider that he still doesn’t have a job, or can’t pay his medical bills. It could be worse. He could be homeless. Or maybe you are feeling pity for a co-worker for having a bad day. You try to say something to comfort her, but she snaps at you. Instantly that pity is fine. Clearly she’s feeling well enough to yell at you. She doesn’t deserve your pity. And so on.

Pity is an emotion that centers ourselves. We congratulate ourselves for feeling pity for others, and decide who to pity based on our own understanding of who we are in relation to others. Rather than pity others, we should move to looking at others with empathy. In contrast to pity, empathy requires that we center the other party, that we try to see things from their point of view. If Rachel was able to look at Leah with empathy, she might have seen a sister who was struggling with feeling unloved and adrift, whose only comfort was her children. If she tried to center Leah, rather than herself, Rachel’s relationship with her sister may have turned out much more positively. Instead, the two sisters fight and grow distant until Rachel’s tragic death.

So my challenge for you today is this: to see if we can turn our pity into empathy. Rather than centering ourselves when we consider how others are struggling, let us center others. Let us think about how they are feeling, how they see themselves, what their personal hopes are. When we want to help others, we should put others first. That is the path to selflessness, and building healthier relationships with those we try to help. We should strive to remember: helping others is not just about making ourselves feel better, and our sense of pity. It is about seeing the world through other’s eyes, and trying to make other’s worlds a better place.