Bilhah Zilpah Project – Vayeitzei

Parashat Vayeitzei is named after it’s opening word וַיֵּצֵ֥א (Vayeitzei) He went out…

Toldot, the parashat before Vayeitzei, read this past Shabbat ends with Yaakov fleeing his brother Esav and his home to go live in Padan Aram with his uncle Lavan and instructions to find a wife.

Vayeitzei opens where the previous section ended, with Yaakov went out from Be’er Sheva toward Harran, the city in Padan Aram where Lavan lives. In this parasha, which we will read next Shabbat, Yaakov meets and falls in love with Rachel and ends up married to both Rachel and her sister Leah. We meet Zilpah and Bilhah on each sister’s wedding night.

Vayeitzei is the where the main lines which reference Bilhah and Zilpah reside, in Breishit 30:3-30:13. Amidst children being named as commodities for attention in the war waged between Rachel and Leah. Bilhah and Zilpah find ways to navigate their shifting status between slave, concubine, and wife.

We are more than our circumstances. Bilhah and Zilpah were more than enslaved people, used as a sexual commodity. Bilhah and Zilpah were multidimensional women who found ways to navigate the realities of their lives. They were women who existed within relationships and left legacies. Bilhah and Zilpah went out into the world—at least encountering the world between Padan Aram and Hakhanim in their traveling, dwelling, and working.

Bilhah and Zilpah’s experiences align with many modern women in not having autonomy over their bodies, being named and categorized by others, having their voices silenced, and feeling invisible in plain sight. They can be a lens through which to explore slavery, human hierarchies, belonging, disenfranchisement, and fucked-up family dynamics in Torah and the ways these topics continue to echo throughout history up to the present.

Choosing to read Bilhah and Zilpah with power and autonomy helps me do that for myself in my own life—still living within a racialized world, yes, but able to find ways to navigate institutionalized systems of racialized oppression with moments of power and autonomy that allow me to make choices—or at least the best choices at my disposal today, to live the best life I can while also trying to seed greater choice for those who come after me. 

How do you see the story…?

Reflection Questions:

• What was it like to be used to bear children intended for others?

• What ways were Bilhah and Zilpah’s life different and similar to Rachel and Leah?

• Are Bilhah and Zilpah seen as the parents of Dan, Naphtali, Gad, and Asher?

• How did the children feel in this situation?

• Bilhah and Zilpah and the children born through them are commodities in this story… yet, is there a way to read Bilhah and Zilpah with autonomy?

If you are joining us for Bilhah & Zilpah Enter: A Homecoming Celebration on Sunday November 19, you’ll hear more of the story as we welcome Bilhah and Zilpah enter the Torah through their first references. You can still register for this event until an hour before start time. You can also join us for the second and third events in this series: Bilhah Zilpah Dreaming: Creative Play for Reclamation on Sunday December 3 and Bilhah & Zilpah Drew Near: Listening for Torah Women’s Wisdom on Sunday December 17. We would love to study with you!

Meanwhile, look out for our next Bilhah Zilpah Project – Vayishlakh post on Sunday November 26.

Welcome Home Bilhah & Zilpah!