Sometimes received religious traditions fail to hear the voice of suffering. Even worse, received traditions can suppress the voice of suffering.
It happens because every religion, by definition, titrates high principle through inherently limited and flawed human capacity.
What is our duty in response?
| By Rabbi David Evan Markus Vayishlah 5786 (2025) | Past Divrei Torah on this portion: • On Mideast Peace: Is ‘Yes’ Possible? • Becoming Israel, Again and Again |
Trigger Warning: This post touches on rape. Please exercise wise and gentle self-care.
Jacob had twelve sons. Many Jews never heard of Jacob’s daughter, and there’s a darned good – and damning – reason why.
Dinah, daughter of Leah, was the seventh of Jacob’s 13 children, with six older brothers and six younger. Why don’t many Jews know of her? Here’s why (Genesis 34:1-3):
| וַתֵּצֵ֤א דִינָה֙ בַּת־לֵאָ֔ה אֲשֶׁ֥ר יָלְדָ֖ה לְיַעֲקֹ֑ב לִרְא֖וֹת בִּבְנ֥וֹת הָאָֽרֶץ׃ וַיַּ֨רְא אֹתָ֜הּ שְׁכֶ֧ם בֶּן־חֲמ֛וֹר הַֽחִוִּ֖י נְשִׂ֣יא הָאָ֑רֶץ וַיִּקַּ֥ח אֹתָ֛הּ וַיִּשְׁכַּ֥ב אֹתָ֖הּ וַיְעַנֶּֽהָ׃ וַתִּדְבַּ֣ק נַפְשׁ֔וֹ בְּדִינָ֖ה בַּֽת־יַעֲקֹ֑ב וַיֶּֽאֱהַב֙ אֶת־הַֽנַּעֲרָ֔ וַיְדַבֵּ֖ר עַל־לֵ֥ב הַֽנַּעֲרָֽ׃ | Dinah, daughter whom Leah bore to Jacob, went out to visit the daughters of the land. Shekhem son of Hamor the Hivite, chief of the country, saw her, took her, lay with her and disgraced her. His soul attached to Dinah daughter of Jacob: he loved the maiden and then spoke tenderly to the maiden. |
Tradition holds that Shekhem raped Dinah. After that, it takes little imagination to put in Shekhem’s post-rape mouth all kinds of sweet-talking words to cover it up. Shekhem then went to his chieftain father to “get” her for him (Genesis 34:4) – as if he were entitled.
Some 3,500 years later, “Dinah” became a generic name for an enslaved African-American woman. It takes no imagination at all to reason why.
Torah’s rendition does not get better. Shekhem’s chieftain dad tried to turn the moment into a power move by proposing to merge his people with the Children of Jacob by intermarriage (greased by a bribe to Jacob). Dinah’s elder brothers refused unless Shekhem and his male kin entered into the Covenant by circumcision. They agreed, and as they lay defenseless in pain, the elder brothers slew them all. Jacob lamented that his sons answered lust with bloodlust, he took the whole family and they fled.
So much is heartbreakingly wrong here – rape, abuse of power, bribery, weaponization of spiritual tradition, revenge killings and more. Maybe Torah tells this story to galvanize our outrage in response. (As for revenge killing, it took the U.S. Supreme Court until 2008 to ban capital punishment for rape and other non-homicides, in a case called Kennedy v. Louisiana.)
Especially to us moderns, high on the list of heartbreaking wrongs is that Torah does not tell us Dinah’s response. Every other named woman in Torah speaks – Eve, Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel, Leah, Miriam, Tzipporah (Moses’ wife), the Daughters of Tzelofchad – but not Dinah. Torah silences Dinah. Torah silences the victim. Insult after injury.
I am not a woman, and I have never been raped. I can only begin to imagine what it must feel like to be sexually violated and then silenced about it – whether literally by threat or shame, or practically by denial, diminishment, gaslighting or blame. In secular life, one of my first Judiciary “beats” was helping New York Chief Judge Judith Kaye (my hero) expand Domestic Violence Courts to halt the justice system’s own cycle of unhearing the victims of intimate abuse lost in the judicial maze. I saw firsthand the justice system’s tragic routines, and dedicated my life to doing my part to change them.
What I did not yet know (perhaps due to my male privilege) – what I learned in rabbinical school – is how much the silencing of Dinah continues to reverberate through Jewish life. It echoes every time a woman incorrectly believes that Jewish life excludes, diminishes or disempowers her in full equality and belonging. So much of my rabbinate is about healing what millennia of patriarchy broke.
Fast forward to the #MeToo Movement, in which every woman courageous enough to speak up helps others break their silence. After a prominent TV personality was creditably accused of rape, my own mom told me that #SheToo was raped 50 years earlier. (Mom gave me permission to tell her truth for this purpose.)
Fifty years. Mom kept her secret for 50 years – because she felt she should. We sobbed.
Why, oh why, does Torah silence Dinah? I don’t know, though I suspect precisely to galvanize us to act. What I do know is that Jewish tradition does not hold the written Torah to be complete. As R. Rachel Barenblat and I have been teaching Saturday mornings in SoulSpa (join us!), each generation helps complete the Torah by adding its corrective midrash – giving voice to the voiceless, uplifting morality, chasing justice, filling in gaps that history left behind.
Sometimes received religious traditions fail to hear the voice of suffering. Even worse, sometimes received religious traditions can suppress the voice of suffering. Every religion, by definition, titrates high principle through inherently limited and flawed human capacity. So it is our duty to keep correcting, keep perfecting, keep bending the moral arc of the universe toward justice.
As it happens, the Hebrew name “Dinah” means judgment or justice. Dinah is teaching us, even now, that it is on each of us to hear the unheard and raise up the voices of justice – if only we will listen.
And thank you, Mom.
David Evan Markus 