Making sense of the sedra: Vayishlach

Dinah was a young woman minding business of her own and that of her newly-found friends, when, as we read in this week’s parshah Vayishlach, she went to see what life was like for them in a promised land. Dinah was kidnapped by the son of the chieftain of Shechem, renamed much later Neapolis by the Romans, and Nablus by the Arab rulers of the Ottoman Empire.

Jacob had only just recently emerged from the double trauma of leaving their home in the fertile crescent of Mesopotamia to return to Canaan and face up to an angry Uncle Esau. The family was nervous of the new reality and for the first time in three generations, the family of Abraham had a girl of marriageable age with twelve brothers!

Dinah was a loner looking for friendship and solace. She was desperate to live normally, to settle down into a peace-loving civilisation, put behind her nomadic wandering and mobile identity. She wanted to be part of the accepted, landed, rooted local society. She wanted peace but was brutalised and violated. Dinah was kidnapped, raped and held for ransom.

Dinah’s captor, Shechem, then took to sweet-talking her family. Rashi reveals: “Shechem was telling her – look, your father spent a fortune buying a single piece of land from my father. You marry me and you will have the entire city and its fields for yourself!”

This is reminiscent of a mind games scenario. The enemy attacks and then uses rationale to make the victim look unreasonable if they don’t agree to their logic.

How frighteningly close this is to the predicament of Israeli families whose relatives are held captive in Gaza. The talk is about hostages, rape and violence against women as a weapon of war and subsequent negotiations, political and regional interests, territory, responsibility for land and the local economy.

The phrase “Dinah daughter of Leah, who gave birth to her to Jacob” – in this awkward, indirect way – indicates a distance in the father-daughter relationship. The Biblical story tells of Shechem, a prince who embarked on a campaign of wooing Dinah. He loved her, and spoke to her, soothing her anxious heart with calming words. What was he saying to her? Essentially, all the prince’s soothing speech was covert warmongering.

In the current situation, Hamas has sweet-talked its way into occupying the place of aggressor and arbiter of hostage negotiation. Ironically, negotiations are taking place and being facilitated by Qatar, the home base of Hamas׳ senior leadership. Many Israeli families are still in agony, awaiting the return of loved ones. They are, right now, the priority – the focus of our prayers at this time. May all the remaining hostages be returned safely to Israel.