In Parashas Vayetzeh, Yaakov goes to Lavan’s house, but prior to his arrival he meets up with Rachel. Shockingly, the Pasuk says that he kissed her and cried (29:11).
How exactly are we to understand this episode? Do we not say that the Avos kept the whole Torah before it was given, and can we not assume that the righteous Yaakov would not do something so immodest as to kiss a girl he isn’t married to yet – in public?
Answer:
This question is raised by commentaries to the Torah. Some suggest that Rachel was a minor, and others suggest that the kiss was a “polite kiss” on the hand (or something similar), and not an “intimate” kiss.
However, there are other questions that can be raised about the way in which the Torah presents Yaakov’s behavior.
After seven years of work, which was the agreed ‘payment’ for the hand of Rachel, Yaakov addressed Lavan with the words: “Give me my wife, for my days are filled, that I may come to her.”
Chazal, as cited by Rashi, are disturbed by the wording of this request; surely, even the most light-headed of people do not use such terms. How could Yaakov, the most perfect of the Forefathers, use such a coarse expression? Although Chazal give a reply to this (that Yaakov knew, by the word of Hashem, that he was destined to beget twelve tribes, and was eager to establish his family dynasty), commentaries continue to find the wording of the Pasuk disturbing.
A further point of difficulty is found in the episode of the duda’im, through which Yissachar was ultimately born. Rachel, coveting the Duda’im found by her sister’s son, offered an exchange: “Therefore he shall lie with you tonight for your son’s Duda’im.” Leah, finding Yaakov returning from the field, addressed him in similar terms: “You must come to me, for I have surely hired you with my son’s Duda’im”. This terminology is once more quite disturbing.
It is possible that the answer to these questions is latent in the elevated stature of Yaakov Avinu. Chazal state that Yaakov embodied something of a return to the stature of Adam Ha-Rishon before his sin: “The beauty of Yaakov was akin to the beauty of Adam.”
We find that Adam Ha-Rishon, before his sin, was not ashamed of his nakedness:“They were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed.” This lack of shame was a consequence of the initial stature of man, which spanned from the earth unto the heavens. The familiar shame associated with nakedness stems from the detachment of the worldly from its elevated spiritual source. The original stature of man, which embodied the spiritual source and the physical expression as one, precluded any possibility of baseness or vulgarity in his naked person. There was, quite simply, nothing to be ashamed about.
Only after the sin, through which man was diminished to worldly dimensions, was the concept of shame in nakedness introduced: “The eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig-leaves together, and made themselves girdles.” After partaking of the forbidden fruit, Adam and his wife sensed their nakedness; they felt the shame of base physicality, detached in their persons from its pure spiritual source.
In the person of Yaakov, who re-enacted the great human stature of pre-sin man, the initial state of innocence returned to the world. While for ordinary people, the open discussion of marital relations is a matter of shame, for Yaakov there was no such issue. His physical person was connected, in his own person, to an elevated spiritual existence; even as he lived, his form was etched on the Throne of Glory. Whatever the meaning behind the kiss he gave Rachel, the Torah could describe it in the simplest, most straightforward terms. Concerning natural phenomena, the concept of shame was entirely foreign to Yaakov, as it is to an innocent young child.
This is perhaps the explanation for the surprising descriptions of the Torah with regard to Yaakov and his relationships with Rachel and Leah.
Best wishes.
