Mothers

Leah names her sons to express her longing for Jacob’s love, but eventually abandons that hope. When her daughter is born, Leah names her Dinah—from the noun דין (din), a silent cry for “justice” after being trapped in a marriage to Jacob, who did not love her. Growing up in the shadow of her mother’s marital agony, Dinah seeks a different life for herself. In the Bible’s only story to foreground a mother–daughter connection, she ventures beyond the safety of home to explore her non-Israelite neighbors.

So why aren’t we told which mother actually stole the baby?

Early rabbinic interpretation connected the curse of child eating (Leviticus 26:29; Deuteronomy 28:53-57) with the description of the Babylonian destruction of Jerusalem in Lamentations (2:20 and 4:10) and the Roman destruction of the Second Temple. In the Middle Ages, however, Jewish commentators de-emphasize this connection. The reason for this lies in the 12th c. development of Christian Bible commentary.

A struggling ex-slave and single mother labors against all odds to raise her son and shield him from the prejudices of the surrounding community.

Using the martial idiom “taking a mother on her young,” Deuteronomy forbids taking eggs and chicks without first shooing the mother bird. Is the concern cruelty to animals?

Biblical tradition often depicts difficult father and son relationships. Accordingly, the concluding verses of Malachi—the final book of the Prophets—imagines ultimate redemption through a metaphor of father-son reconciliation, in which the fire and brimstone prophet Elijah is its unlikely harbinger. Leave it to the poet Yehuda Amichai to step in and offer a counter-model to rescue the metaphor.