• This Week's Torah Portion

Who was the first biblical woman to pray? One might assume it was Hannah, the mother of the prophet Samuel, since she is the first and only woman in the Bible to be the grammatical subject of the Hebrew verb “lehitpallel” (to pray). As a woman who is struggling to conceive, Hannah prays to God (vatitpallel ʿal Adonai) and pleads for a child (1 Samuel 1:10). After her son is born, she offers a prayer of thanksgiving: “And Hannah prayed (vatitpallel Hannah): “My heart exults in the Eternal; I have triumphed through the Eternal” (1 Samuel 2:1). There is reason to argue, however, that Hannah is not actually the first biblical woman to pray: that this female spiritual path maker is actually our foremother Leah, as seen in this week’s Torah portion of Vayeitzei.  In Genesis 30, after giving birth to Jacob’s first four sons (Reuben, Simeon, Levi, and Judah), Leah sells fragrant duda’im (mandrakes) to her sister and co-wife, Rachel, in exchange for a chance to share a night with their (presumably estranged from Leah) husband. Immediately thereafter, in Genesis 30:17, we’re told that “God listened (vayishma) to Leah, and she conceived and bore [Jacob] a fifth son.” While in Genesis 16:11, an angel of God appears to Sarah’s yet-to-be named escaped maidservant (later named Hagar) and announces that God has heard her suffering (shamaʿ al onyekh), this listening to Leah in Genesis 30 seems to be the first time the Bible depicts God listening to a woman directly, without an intermediary. If God is described as having listened to Leah, we can infer that she must have been talking-in other words, praying-to God. This image of Leah praying and being listened to by God is highlighted in “Leah,” a little-known poem by Hebrew poet and teacher Shulamit Kalugai (1891-1972), sister of Yitzhak Ben-Tzvi, Israel’s second president:  

Leah God of gods, God of Abraham Patient, merciful, Incomparable, even in Sin, the Strength of Egypt, You, the Ruler of Haran. Accept the offering of your maidservant, daughter of Laban Daughter of Betuel and Naḥor! Have mercy on me, listen to my voice Listen, mighty God! Reuven, Simeon, and Levi are mine, Little Judah is mine. Mine-though I am the most hated of women, The hated one, steadfast God! Forgive me, my God! I am drunk, Drunk with sorrow. Have mercy on me, God who smashes Haddad And Dagon with his right hand! Morning and evening, his glances Long not for me. Who other than you can return my man to me, God of his fathers? Who other than you? – Before my life’s day expires Before it passes and expires. Mighty King, is it beyond you, Is anything beyond you? Behold, I’ve brought you two unblemished lambs And much incense Accept the offering of your maidservant, merciful God, God of Jacob.

לֵאָה אֵל אֱלֹהִים, אֱלֹהֵי אַבְרָהָם, אֶרֶךְ אַפַּיִם, רַחֲמָן, אֵל אֲשֶׁר לֹא יַעֲרֹךְ לְךָ סִין הַמּוֹשֵׁל בְּחָרָן! שְׁעֵה לְמִנְחָת אֲמָתְךָ, בַּת בְּתוּאֵל וְנָחוֹר! חוּסָה עָלַי, הַאֲזֵן לְקוֹלִי, הַאֲזֵן, אֵל גִּיבּוֹר! לִי רְאוּבֵן, שִׁמְעוֹן וְלֵוִי, לִי יְהוּדָה הַקָּטָן. לִי וְאֲנִי הַשְׂנוּאָה בַּנָּשִׁים הַשְׂנוּאָה אֵל אֵיתָן! סְלַח לִי, אֵלִי! שִׁיכּוֹרָה אָנֹכִי שְׂכוּרָת הַיָּגוֹן חוּסָה עָלַי, אֵל רוֹעֵץ בִּיְמִינוֹ אֶת הַדָד וְדָגּוֹן! בֹּקֶר וָעֶרֶב לֹא יִעַרְגוּ, לֹא לִי מַבָּטָיו. מִי זוּלָתְךָ, מִי יָשִׁיב לִי אִישִׁי, אֱלֹהֵי אַבוֹתָיו? מִי זוּלָתְךָ?-טֶרֶם פָּג יוֹם-חָיַּי, טֶרֶם פָּג וְעָבָר. מֶלֶך גִבּוֹר, הֲמִמְּךָ יִפָּלֵא, יִפָּלֵא הַדָּבָר? שׁוּר, שְׁנֵי כְּבָשִׂים לָךְ הֵבֵאתִי תְּמִימִים, קְטֹרֶת לָרֹב. שְׁעֵה לְמִנְחַת אֲמָתְךְ, אֵל רָחוּם, אֱלֹהֵי יַעֲקֹב.­­­

  Part of a path-breaking, under-acknowledged collection of poems entitled “Nashim” (Women) published in 1941 (one of the first works of modern Hebrew poetic midrash), Kalugai’s “Leah” imagines the content of Leah’s prayer as she laments and seeks to change her status as the hated (senu’ah) wife (Genesis 29:31, 33). In the biblical Leah’s naming speeches for Reuven and Simeon, she attests that “God has seen her affliction” (Genesis 29:32) and “heard that she was unloved” (Genesis 29:33) and has sent her these children. These naming speeches reveal Leah’s hope that these sons will also bring her closer to Jacob, which doesn’t appear to happen. Kalugai’s Leah’s melancholic self-description, in the fourth stanza as “shikorah / shekhorat hayagon” (drunk / drunk with sorrow) links her directly to the praying Hannah, whom Eli the priest mistakes for someone who is drunk (1 Samuel 1:14-15). This disconsolateness also recalls the initial biblical description of Leah as having “tender eyes” (Gen. 29:17) suggesting that this eye-tenderness comes from chronic crying, as Leah continues to be unfavorably compared with her beautiful younger sister in Jacob’s eyes. The first time I read Kalugai’s “Leah” as part of my early research on the emergence of Hebrew women’s writing, I was put off by its portrayal of a weeping Leah, obsessed with gaining the love of a man who spurns her. I also took (admittedly anachronistic) issue with the way Kalugai’s Leah refers to God only in relation to Abraham and Jacob and masculine demonstrations of power. I didn’t see a way to mine this poem for feminist content. Returning to this poem some 30 years later, however, I read it differently. With the idea in mind of Leah as the first woman in the Bible who prays, I see this poem, written by a Russian Zionist immigrant to Palestine, as an attempt to connect spiritually and culturally to the lives of the foremothers and their fledgling efforts to find a place for themselves in this new monotheistic, patriarchal religion. I am both amused and touched by Leah’s naïve theological assumption that a God with the power to smash other Near Eastern gods such as Hadad and Dagon and put the deities of the Egyptian city of Sin to shame should, at the very least, be able to make her husband look her way. The poet’s repeated use in the seventh stanza of the verb yipale, (to be wondrous) recalls God’s question to Abraham in Genesis 18:4 in response to Sarah’s laughter in overhearing that she will soon have a son: “Is anything too wondrous (hayipale) for the Eternal?” But whereas in the Bible, God speaks these words to Abraham, Kalugai imagines a prayer life for Leah, in which Leah reminds God of God’s own wondrousness. The Bible intimates that God’s listening to Leah in in Genesis 30:17 marks a turning point, insofar as the naming speeches that Leah gives thereafter for her next two sons (Issachar and Zebulun) include acknowledgement of God’s rewards and gifts, but no yearning for Jacob to be brought closer to her. Is this because this closeness has finally transpired? Or because Leah has finally decided to focus on something else? Kalugai’s poem, I would suggest, provides an answer. Leah’s desire for Jacob’s love sits at the heart-in stanzas three, four, and five-of this seven-stanza poem. And the reference in the last line to the “God of Jacob” literally makes Jacob the last word of the poem, except that it is now God, rather than Jacob, who is the crux of this phrase. If, previously, her sole focus had been on getting Jacob to look her way, by the end of the poem, her plea is for God to look her way and accept her offering. The seven-part form of this poem, evocative of God’s creating the world in six days and resting on the seventh, suggests that Leah, too, has been busy creating something, that amidst all her emotional disappointment, she now rests in a genuinely prayerful relationship with the God not only of Jacob, but of Leah.