“And Laban had gone to shear his sheep, and Rachel stole her father’s idols.”
STEALING LABAN’S IDOLS—SAVING LABAN FROM HIS IMAGINATION
Leah and Rachel were the daughters of Laban, who was a swindler. One of the most obvious symbols in the Torah for the power of imagination (and the worship that surrounds it) are Laban’s idols. The Hebrew word for idols in this case is terafim (יםִפָרְּת), which is related to the word for “chemical medicine” (הָפּרוּּת)—suggesting that the rectification of the imagination is necessary in order to properly deal with false systems and false doctrines in psychology and beyond. Just as Jacob had to “steal” Laban’s heart—essentially, Laban’s trust in Jacob—in order to escape from his grip without his knowing about Jacob’s plans, so too Rachel stole Laban’s idols in order to release her father from the iron-grip idolatry had on his mind and heart; and yet, there are opinions that she was punished for this act, since in the end it disrespected her father.
When Laban caught up with Jacob and his family he searched everywhere for his idols. Finally, he came to Rachel who had indeed stolen the terafim. Why would Rachel be the one involved in rectifying her father’s power of imagination? The background story is that on her planned wedding night, when Laban cheated Jacob and switched her with Leah, Rachel in an act of emotional self-sacrifice passed the secret bodily gestures that Jacob had revealed to her to Leah so that Leah would not be ashamed if Jacob would suspect it was her and not Rachel whom he was wed to. On that very first night, Leah conceived Reuben. Now, legally, if Jacob was expecting Rachel, but ended up with Leah, having relations with a woman other than the one he meant to would put the conceived child, Reuben, in the category of a ben temurah—meaning, the son of another. There are 9 different types of blemishes that can relate to a child who was born from an irregular conception, a topic we have discussed elsewhere.
So how is it that Reuben is not considered to be blemished in this manner? According to Kabbalah, by handing the bodily gestures over to Leah, Rachel is considered to have “impregnated” herself in Leah. It is as if Jacob was with Rachel that first night—following his pure intent. In return for her sacrifice, Leah gave Rachel the power to rectify their father’s imagination by stealing his idols. It is easy to surmise that just as Rachel gave Leah the gestures Jacob taught her—gestures that are considered to purify the mind of husband and wife during marital relations—so Leah gave Rachel the “gestures” taught to her by their father Laban—gestures, or techniques that would have prevented Jacob from realizing that he was having relations not with Rachel, but with someone else. These “gestures” are based on tricking the mind using Laban’s impure mastery of the powers of imagination and suggestion. So, though it was Leah who was meant to rectify Laban’s imagination, Rachel received the power to rectify Laban from Leah when she divulged the gestures Jacob had taught her. There is a beautiful allusion to this in the Torah, as the initials of the words, “She [Rachel] took the idols” (יםִפָרְּתַהתֶאהָחְקָל) spell Leah (הָאֵל)!
That Laban’s consciousness is drowning in his imagination we see when he confronts Jacob and says, “the daughters [your wives] are my daughters, your children are my children, the cattle is my cattle, and all that you see belongs to me.” As far as Laban is concerned, Jacob does not exist. He is nothing more than an imaginary placeholder connecting Laban with his extended holdings and property. Rachel wants to sever the hold that Laban’s imagination has on his mind, but in the process, she herself is affected by the impurity and reality-bending effect of her father’s idols. This is somewhat like what we have seen in our school here, that sometimes students come with knowledge of various methods they have learnt elsewhere and believe that they have already succeeded in “converting” these methods making them kosher. But in reality, it is only their imagination that convinces them of this. How do we know that Rachel was made impure by the idols she stole from her father in her attempt to break their hold on him? Because she excuses herself for not standing up in his presence by saying, “I cannot stand before you, because I have the way of women.” In other words, she herself is likening her state to one of the impurity of Niddah, whose essence is also related to the power of imagination, which leads to defilement.
(from a lecture given on the 13th of Av 5769)
