This Shabbat is Parasha Vayishlach, which is the eighth parashat of the week of Genesis. The parasha deals with Jacob’s meeting with his brother Esau. The episode begins with Jacob’s preparations for his family’s move, the Yabok river crossing. In the description of the night meeting that followed, Jacob receives a new name – Israel. After their meeting Jacob moves to the city of Nablus and buys a field there, sets up his tents and builds an altar to the God of Israel.
At the center of the Parasha is the story of Dina, Jacob’s only daughter who is raped by Shechem ben Hamor.
Shechem is supported by Nablus citizens, but the sons of Ya’akov deceive the people of Nablus, make them undergo a circumcision, and during their recovery, Shimon and Levi go out and brutally avenge the rape.
Jacob is angry at the actions, but his sons explain to him that Jewish “blood is not lawlessness”, and their sister’s dignity requires appropriate revenge. To reinforce things, the Torah describes that when Jacob decided to move out from Nablus, all the neighbors around them were afraid of Jacob’s sons and none of the neighboring nations that surrounded them dared to mess with them or persecute them.
Much has been written about Dina’s rape and the revenge, but what resonates in this story most of all, is what is not written, what is not heard, and that is Dina’s silence. In the whole story, you don’t hear her voice, nor her scream when she is taken away, nor the resistance. Just silence.
We experienced a similar silence after the horrors of October 7, where elderly women, mothers, young women, children, and even men were raped with indescribable cruelty and abuse, their genitals were mutilated, and most of them were murdered after the rape.
Not only the silence of the victims of the crime screams from the ground, but also the silencing and blurring of the horrific reality by “enlightened and sensitive” women who founded women’s organizations and who for many years carried the flag of feminism. Those who turned every shadow of suspicion of sexual assault into absolute truth and made huge headlines in the newspapers, denouncing the suspects and putting them on trial. These are the women, who after the horrors of October 7, with incredible hypocrisy and evil cynicism, demanded “proof of rape.” Dismissive of Jewish women rapes that were planned by Gaza Arabs and Hamas terrorists.
Why were the women’s organizations silent? Why didn’t they demonstrate for their sisters? The only, and shocking answer is: because the raped women are Jewish and Israeli.
From the time of Dina, daughter of Jacob, until today in the horrors of October 7, the children of Israel learned that without striking fear into the nations around us we cannot live in security and peace.
And here it is precisely in this week that we are reading the rape of Dina case, we were informed of the collapse of the Assad regime. One of the cruelest and Israel-hating regimes.
Poetic justice? Perhaps…
Am Israel Hai!!
Shabbat Shalom
Rabbi Refael Cohen