Sidrah
Parashah of the week: Vayetze
“She conceived and bore a son, and said, “God has taken away my disgrace’” Genesis 30:23
November 27, 2025 15:11
“She conceived and bore a son, and said, “God has taken away my disgrace’” Genesis 30:23
November 27, 2025 15:11When Rachel finally becomes pregnant with Joseph, she refers strikingly to her cherpah, her “disgrace”. What caused her such strength of feeling?
Jacob’s first encounter with Rachel was, more than any other relationship in Tanach, a story of love at first sight. We are told that he kisses her no sooner than they have met and that he admires her beauty.
The word “love”, rarely used in Tanach, is used three times to describe his feeling, so much so that he commits to working for Rachel’s father Laban for seven years and then another seven after he is deceived into marrying her older sister Leah.
Leah begins to bear Jacob sons and the chapter lists each of her sons born in quick succession. We then learn that not only is Rachel barren, but that Leah very publicly declares each of the births and the names given to each son, causing Rachel to feel envious of her sister and exacerbating her pain.
The text suggests a lack of sensitivity on Leah’s part, caused by her preoccupation by her own desire to win her husband’s affections. Rachel’s experience is played out in full glare of her sister’s fertility and inability to comfort her.
However, the text suggests a further overriding source of Rachel’s pain. The word cherpah is used in the Torah (see for example Ezekiel 36:15) as something that diminishes a person’s honour and causes them shame at a societal level.
According to the 12th-century commentator, Ibn Ezra, Rachel was given a child when “God saw the insults which the women hurled at [her] because [she] was barren”. She perceived herself as reproached among her contemporaries. The midrashim also expand Rachel’s story, explaining her barrenness as a form of social death.
Rachel’s experiences her pain as a public stigma. Even today in Modern Hebrew, unlike the word bushah which is used to denote more personal embarrassment, cherpah, is used for a more dramatic public scandal, humiliation or disgrace. It brings a kind of moral judgement or outrage.
Today, thankfully there is increased attention to and support for those experiencing infertility in our community. But is social stigma truly in the past in this area and in others where families do not conform to traditional expectations?
So often society is led by groupthink and moral judgement and is quick to hurl insults. So often the pain caused is deep and lasting.
Let us remember Rachel in acknowledging the silent pain that others carry and so often goes unnoticed. Let us ensure we are sensitive and do not exacerbate that pain, either by bringing our own issues in the way of truly seeing and hearing others, or by making assumptions or judgements that reinforce social stigma.
Image: Detail from Dante Gabriel Rossetti's portrait of Rachel and Leah (Wikimedia Commons)
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