The acquittal of Kyle Rittenhouse in Wisconsin demands of us yet again to evaluate our society’s willingness to overlook violence. Or certain kinds of violence. Certain people’s violence.
For one, obviously, but apparently not obviously, the violence of white people. If a black man had driven 30 miles to jump into the fray with an assault weapon in tow, and people had died, I don’t think we would we be looking at this verdict. But a white man in what was essentially black protest space is, in our white-centered legal world, a frightening place to be, and defending oneself with deadly force a reasonable thing to do.
So yes, we are witnessing yet again our society’s willingness to be softer on violent crime committed by white people. And also, a societal custom of accepting violence by men as a unalterable fact. Because although we don’t often articulate it, virtually every one of these horrible moments of violence that have shocked us – virtually all of these are acts of violence by men. We continue, even in this new century of this new millennium, to accept that violence is what men do. That violence is a reasonable male response to violence, or to provocation, or to insult, including insult to one’s political sensibilities and one’s entitlements.
This awareness and acceptance of an underlying male culture of violence arises in this weeks parashah, Vayishlach. The portion opens with Jacob famously sending his family across the ford in the direction of his approaching, estranged brother, Esau, and then, by night, wrestling with a being that goes unnamed, that we presume to be an angel, although the text doesn’t say so. They wrestle until Jacob extracts a blessing and a new name ––Yisrael – one who struggles with God.
Because this is such a spellbinding story – Jacob’s close encounter with the unknown, or with the Divine, or with his own deep shadow – we often occupy ourselves with this story, and don’t venture further ahead into this parashah which goes on to describe the loving reunion of Jacob and Esau, followed by increasingly tense talk between them, in the garb of generosity, until Esau goes his way and Jacob goes his. And we learn the names of all of Esau’s descendants – our cousins – including all of the kings in the land before there were any Israelite kings. Esau’s dynasty produced a King Saul even, long before we did.
There is much interesting to discuss in that, but we never get to it because we are either dwelling deep inside Jacob’s wrestling match, or quietly and carefully taking the children by the hand and giving wide berth to the terrible, terrible story of Jacob’s daughter, Dinah.
Dinah’s story is terrible from many angles and every angle. Over the course of 31 verses, we see Dinah going out from the camp to visit with the young women whose lands they were passing through and in the very next verse she is spotted by Shechem, a tribal prince, who takes her by force. And before we can absorb this, we are on to the next verse, in which he is now in love with her, speaking his heart to her. And before you know it, Shechem’s father is standing before Jacob, on his son’s behalf, asking for Dinah’s hand in marriage.
Jacob’s sons, in the meanwhile, have heard and they show up, and a cascade of toxic masculinity is released as they demand that all the men of the town be circumcised before they will agree to any marriages; and then while the men are weakened from this very symbolic act, Shimon and Levi, Dinah’s brothers, go in and put Shechem to the sword, and his father, and every male of the town. They take the women and children and livestock as booty. Jacob expresses horror at this, not because it was a terrible sin, but because now the other kingdoms of Canaan would see him, Jacob, as a dangerous enemy. The massacre is a public relations disaster. The sons defend themselves, holding up their sister’s virtue as the core value behind their actions, although they say it in a more vulgar way.
And that’s it. Torah neither condemns the brothers nor acquits them. It tells us this disturbing story, in this way, and then it moves on.
Leaving us bewildered, in silence.
Silence because we never hear a word from Dinah. Her voice is conspicuously absent, even by Torah standards. Instead we are left spinning inside the world of masculine motivation. Is what happened to their sister enough to justify a massacre? Or are the brothers being calculating – if they only killed the perpetrator, the other men would come after them? Or was it all for personal gain, for conquest, or as a way to flex their muscles and try out what this kind of violence would feel like? It is, after all, just one parashah later that they throw their gender-transgressing brother Joseph into a pit with the intention of killing him.
But even I am getting snookered into spending inordinate time wondering about the men’s motivations, the men’s story, instead of wondering about the women and children – the widows and orphans – who are marched off with our tribe and who, although we don’t think to talk about it, become our ancestors; and . . . instead of looking to Dinah, who is there, at the center of this storm, watching silently, waiting for us to look.
What is any of this like for her?
Writer Anita Diamant in her novel, The Red Tent, which many of you have read, tries to heal this story by retelling it entirely in Dinah’s voice. In this retelling, Dinah and Shechem are secret lovers. Dinah’s brothers find out and characterize it as rape, exploiting it to engineer the massacre. Dinah finds her agency again, this time fleeing her family and making a life for herself in Egypt, according to the novel.
The Red Tent feels like a relief to read. Because Dinah, through her centrality and her silence, draws our worry, and our care. We want to know if she’s okay and Torah doesn’t tell us. We want to know if there is any healing for her now or ever. Do the women gather around her protectively? And do the women gather around each other differently now that they are alert to the brothers’ penchant for violence?
A side note: in 19th Century America, the name Dinah, pronounced Dīnah, became a shorthand term for enslaved black women. Was it because of their powerlessness and their voicelessness? It was used both by whites and by blacks, including Sojourner Truth. In her usage, in a famous speech, the Dinahs were not victims but were determined strugglers for change. She says:
With something of the ardor . . . of her native Africa, [Dinah] contended for her right to vote, to hold office, to practice medicine and the law, and to wear the breeches with the best white man that walks upon God's earth.
And with Sojourner Truth’s prayer for the Dinahs in our ears, let’s ask what our story might have been if it were Dinah’s story and not the brothers’. What it would have been like if she had been asked her wants and needs. If she had spoken and said this is what I need, no less, no more, and if men had listened. How would the story have gone? What would have been the conversations, the care given, the solutions forged, the gentle holding and protection provided, the determination and resilience exhibited. What would have been the spoken and recorded blessings that Dinah would have received from her mother, Leah, and from her father who, on his deathbed, blessed his 12 sons, but no blessing of Dinah is recorded as passing his lips.
How might we, as these creatures of the future that we are – readers, listeners, God-wrestlers, and healers – project ourselves back into this story, almost as angels, as incorporeal beings, to witness and to accompany Dinah. How would that feel? How would we hold her? What strength would we offer?
It is not too late. She still lives there in the white spaces of Torah, between the letters, amid all the ink that got spent on her brothers. It is up to us to look there between and behind those letters, to crane our necks just a little to see the women of the tribe, and the loving, gentle men of the tribe, gathering around Dinah, caring for her, awaiting her words, learning at her feet, journeying alongside her. They are there whether they are written about or not, and so are we.
So tonight when we reach our healing prayer, let it be big enough to embrace not only the people we know, and the people who are suffering in our world whom we don’t know, but to reach all the way back into this story, offering healing to Dinah who is not forgotten for a moment, and offering healing to Torah itself, our Torah that wants to tell us so much more than it can in the words that were committed to posterity.
And let our healing prayer also embrace the people of Kenosha and send them healing and calm and the gentle ability to wait and collect themselves, so that no more tragedy grows out of this one.
And in our Mourners’ Kaddish tonight let us include everyone who has gotten caught in the crosshairs of violence and struggle.
Today has been a hard day; a hard day in all-too-familiar hard times.
The Slonimer Rebbe teaches that when Shabbat arrives, it might be that you are not quite ready. But it is important to be as if all your work were done. In our case, let Shabbat bring us to a vivid imagining of what it would be like if our work were done, our work of care and healing and justice. A world where differences are solved with words, where assault rifles were long ago beaten into plowshares, where everyone’s voices are heard and everyone’s safety matters. Take a moment to breathe in that world and to notice what it feels like not to have to be struggling to bring it about.
This Shabbat we plant ourselves in that world, in the world in which Dinah is unharmed and flourishing, and we say hineini. For this moment, for this Shabbat, here I am.