Category: Bilhah Zilpah Project

Bilhah Zilpah Project – Vayeshev

Posted on by jocsantuary in Bilhah Zilpah Project, Event

One of the unique qualities in the source sheets for the Bilhah Zilpah Project is that they only include the Torah lines that reference Bilhah, Zilpah, or their children. As characters that have always been there, but whom often have to be introduced when brought into Torah study, this choice was an attempt to keep the focus on Bilhah and Zilpah.

Next Shabbat, we read Vayeshev, which contains a single line invoking Bilhah and Zilpah. Breishit 37:2 finishes the long accounting of the descendants of Yaakov that ends Vayishlakh. The line returns Bilhah and Zilpah to the status of wives.

The parasha is named for the opening line he dwelled. Bilhah and Zilpah dwelled as well. We learn that Yosef is seventeen. This can help us guess minimum ages for Bilhah and Zilpah. By now, these women have now dwelled through multiple stags of their lives and enslavement to reside as concubine matriarchs of one third of the twelve tribe namesakes.

The feud between Rachel and Leah lives on through Yaakov’s children even after Rachel’s death. Yosef is identified as being the favored son (of the favored wife). However, the line also suggests that Yosef worked alongside Bilhah and Zilpah’s children in specific tasks of tending the sheep. The negative reports could be of all of the brothers, but why mention Bilhah and Zilpah if not to indicate that the report defames Dan, Naphtali, Gad, and Asher? The children were named after all, not for hopes of their futures, but for how Rachel and Leah hoped their births would affect their relationship with Yaakov, even the children of Bilhah and Zilpah.

Despite the Torah laying out the intention that Bilhah and Zilpah’s children would belong to Rachel and Leah, Bilhah and Zilpah appear to have retained their status as mother. However, this line invites consideration for if their children were seen differently and for the legacy of how these children were named.

Reflection Questions:

• What do you notice in the begetting accounting, especially relative to Bilhah and Zilpah?

• How have the status of Bilhah and Zilpah changed over time?

• What clues do we have about the relationships Dan, Naphtali, Gad, and Asher had with their brothers?

Our homecoming continues with: Bilhah Zilpah Dreaming: Creative Play for Reclamation on Sunday December 3. You can also join us for the third and final event in this series: Bilhah & Zilpah Drew Near: Listening for Torah Women’s Wisdom on Sunday December 17.

Meanwhile, look out for our next Bilhah Zilpah Project email on Sunday December 10. And, if you missed it, check out the Vayishlakh and Vayeitzei reflections…

We see you Bilhah & Zilpah!

Bilhah Zilpah Project – vayishlakh

Posted on by jocsantuary in Bilhah Zilpah Project, Event

Parashat Vayishlakh is named for the opening Hebrew indicating that Yaakov sent messengers with gifts to help ease the reunion with his brother Esav with whom he is unsure how he will be received. There is so much focus on the different types of cattle that it can be easy to miss that a male and female slave were included in the goods sent. By now, we are accustomed to cattle and slaves being an indication of wealth. I find myself wondering how customary it may have been to give slaves in this manner? After all, Bilhah and Zilpah were given as gifts by Lavan to his daughters. Why not between brothers? Would this have been different in a context that was not among close relatives? What was it like for the two enslaved people who were sent to Esav? Did they have family that remained with Yaakov? How did Bilhah and Zilpah and other enslaved people feel at seeing this exchange?

Like Vayeitzei’s going out was also significant for Bilhah and Zilpah, Vayishlakh can be read in their eyes too. In his lingering unease, Yaakov splits his camp and sends Bilhah, Zilpah, and their children out front. With Leah and her children in the middle, and Rachel and her child last. The Hebrew is not the same shoresh for send, using instead שׂוּם (shoom) to put. However, it is very much a choice that, in the event of Yaakov’s worst fear happening when he hears that Esav is heading toward him with 400 men, would send Bilhah, Zilpah, and their children to face a potentially tragic fate that would give Rachel and her child more chance to avoid, especially with the added buffer of Leah and her children.

This choice happens immediately after Yaakov has focused on his family, even if framed as his belongings, and wrestles with God. This line has inspired kashrut and much focus given its coinciding with the name God gives Yaakov, never mind that we rarely use it. I think there is room to see the wrestling as that of a father and a husband who is afraid, who does have different relationships with his wives… and his children because of their different relationships with those wives, and makes a revealing choice.

We know that Esav is delighted to see his brother Yaakov. Despite the warmth of this reunion, Yaakov chooses not to stay with his brother, but go off on his own. This brings us to the story of Dinah which can also be very interesting through the eyes of Bilhah and Zilpah. Seeing Dinah’s body being controlled by Shechem, and her fate determined by her brothers. Hearing of the dowry promised for Dinah, having received no dowry themselves. Potentially, serving as the dowry of Rachel and Leah. Whatever Bilhah and Zilpah’s relationship may have been with Dinah, I wonder how these moments were experienced by them? There is an invitation to consider how these three women may have supported each other through the absence of their voices during fates.

Reflection Questions:

• How do you read Yaakov’s choice to put Bilhah and Zilpah out front when the family meets Esav?

• How does putting Bilhah and Zilpah “out front” play out in modern situations?

• In what ways do we use different categorizations of people/community to create “buffers” between situations we are unsure of or perhaps even actively avoiding?

• We like to think of enslavement as structurally different than that of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade… what differences are there… what similarities?

• Where do you see possibilities for female solidarity that merit deeper reflection?

I hope you will join our continuing connection with Bilhah and Zilpah in our next event honoring their homecoming: Bilhah Zilpah Dreaming: Creative Play for Reclamation on Sunday December 3. We have some interactive embodiment play planned. You can still register for this event!

You can also join us for the third and final event in this series: 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 email on Sunday December 3. And, if you missed it, check out the Vayeitzei reflections…

We see you Bilhah & Zilpah!

Bilhah Zilpah Project – Vayeitzei

Posted on by jocsantuary in Bilhah Zilpah Project, Event

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!