Parsha for the Song Folk: Vayetzei

All who know me know my biggest weakness: Israeli folk music. But 'tis not a weakness, gentle reader! Last year, I wrote an editorial about my spiritual-intellectual connection to the genre. Israeli folk music, at its most dazzlingly haunting, captures a peculiarly Jewish, Zionist spirit of resilience, spirituality, nostalgia and love. Song lyrics are often laced--sometimes saturated--with biblical references, as becomes quite evident to the lucky listener making even the briefest foray into this alternate, better world.

It struck me that I could put this blog to good use by posting a new, parsha-themed Israeli folk song each week.

Two years ago, I was having a conversation with one of my favorite people about tragic Tanakh figures, and all the obvious characters came up: Iyov, Yirmiyahu, Shimshon. Then, I suggested an individual that took my companion aback: Leah.

Leah. Yaakov's first wife; the older sister of Jacob's second--and favorite--wife, Rachel. Leah. The one who is fertile, who bears six of the twelve tribes, the only wife of four who is buried next to Yaakov in Ma'arat HaMakhpelah in Hevron.

Yet Leah is also the despised wife, the one who is never quite able to capture a share of Yaakov's love equal to that he harbors for Rachel. In this week's parsha, Leah gives each of her newborn children names that symbolize her anguish: "G-d has seen I am unloved"; "Now my husband will surely love me"; "Now my husband will praise me, for I have given him six sons". The names of the Tribes of Israel are charged with unrequited love.

Apparently, I'm not the only one haunted by Leah's story. "Ani Ohev Otakh Leah," written by Ehud Manor, one of Israel's greatest lyricists, is the love song that never was--the love song from Yaakov to Leah. Our sages tell us that Leah and Rachel were identical in every way but one: Rachel's eyes were prettier than Leah's because Leah used to spend so much time crying over her expected marriage to Yaakov's older, evil twin, Esav. By a stroke of luck (and deception), however, Leah too ended up married to the righteous Yaakov. This interpretation finds expression in the chorus of Manor's wistful masterpiece:

הנה ימים רבים חלפו
ושתי ידי עייפו
ועינייך מה יפו
כעיני רחל.
אני אוהב אותך לאה
אוהב אותך גאה
אם אשכח אותך לאה
שמי לא ישראל

"Many years have passed
And my two hands have grown tired;
And oh! how your eyes have become beautiful,
Like the eyes of Rachel.
I love you Leah,
Love you, proud.
If I forget you, Leah,
My name is not Israel."

Below is a clip of the whole song. Enjoy, and Shabbat shalom!

Love Potion Number Nine

If you had the power to create a love potion, would you use it? Who would you use it on? Would you share the recipe?

...Come to think of it, have you ever done any of these things?

Proper Use of Teddy-Bear Stickers

There's no way to sugar-coat it; I was a hoarder child. I collected everything: Beauty and the Beast pogs, beanie babies, plastic animal-shaped beads, and, most passionately of all, stickers. And oh, what a sticker collection it was! Sparkly puppy dogs and butterflies, dozens of world flags, rainbow-colored happy faces, even a fuzzy sticker of Klondike Mike, the mascot of Edmonton's summer Klondike Days festival (from long before Klondike Days was renamed "Capital X").

I was so good at saving my sticker collection for when I would need it most that it outlasted my childhood, my high school years, and, yes, my bachelor's degree. In a purple tin, my papery treasures became relics of a slipped-away reality.

Then, a wonderful thing happened. I became a first grade teacher. And not just any teacher, but a Hebrew School morah, responsible for nine very beautiful, very different neshamot for five whole hours a week. One boy, when he sees "Israeli dance" written at the bottom of the day's schedule tells me with a decisively pitiful pout, "I don't want to dance, I want you to read a Torah story" (very frum!); one little girl can concentrate only if she knows that art is in the first half of the lesson, while a different girl brilliantly answers every question I ask about morality in Genesis and asks me more questions of her own; still another little boy, who wears glasses just like mine, refuses to do art projects like the other children and instead writes out the whole aleph-bet on a blank sheet of paper. This three-foot linguist is always the last to relinquish his marker for snack-time.

But though my charges have unique strengths and preferences, there remains one common motivating force behind their actions: the sticker. Stars are a big thing; with every ten stars by each of their names on the Star Chart they get a big sticker--a googly-eyed monkey, a sea animal, a 3-D fish. (After four rounds of this star collecting, voila! a bigger prize.)

I also have a rather popular sheet of teddy-bear stickers not part of the Star Chart system, which I award the children at various intervals for positive performance. These teddy bears are as different as my students. Some hold balloons, others roses or tulips. A few of them cradle other, baby teddy-bears. Every time I look at them it crosses my mind to save a few for my purple sticker tin, stashed in the top drawer of my white childhood dresser in my parents' basement. Instead, I give them away freely, not only to my students, but to their little brothers and sisters, if they happen to be nearby, or to other boys and girls who happen to stare at them hopefully during dismissal time as they wait for their mommies and daddies to take them home. I realize when I let go of my stickers--strange that it's so easy, after all these years--that I don't need them anymore for myself. And yet I've never needed or loved them more.