Major Arcana Midrash: The Marseille Deck’s The Lover and Parshah Vayeitzei, Genesis 28:10 – 32:3.

For this week’s look at a story from Scripture, I’m stepping away from the Waite-Smith deck to go back to the more traditional image found in the Marseille deck. We find a young man in between two women. One of these women has her hand on the man’s heart. The other, has a hand on the man’s shoulder. Each lays a claim to him. One possesses him physically, but the other possesses his heart and soul.

And while traditionally this card is interpreted as having to make a choice—sometimes between virtue and vice metaphorically—and sometimes between two alternatives, and very literally two women. Of course, our Bronze Age ancestors didn’t have to make that choice, since polygamy was common. But in this week’s reading from Genesis, Jacob hadn’t planned to make a choice. He asked for Rachel’s hand, but was tricked into marrying her elder sister, Leah. A week after that deception has been carried out, he got to marry Rachel too, though he had to work for Laban for another seven years. And of this triangle, the text makes very clear of Jacob:

And he loved Rachel more than Leah (Genesis 29:30)

 There are midrashim about how Rachel warned Jacob of this deception and told him that she would give him a sign so that he could be sure it was her. And then Rachel told Leah what the sign was, so that she would not be humiliated or rejected. But do you think Leah felt any less rejected?

She named her first son Reuven, explaining the meaning of that name as “Now my husband will love me.” (Genesis 29:32) Reading this how can we not ache for her. And how many marriages can we think of where a woman has a child (or for that matter the couple chooses to have a child) in the belief that it will save a failed relationship. We’ve seen how that works in our day. And for Leah it was no different. With each child she bears, each is named plaintively, as a cry for love. Until she gives birth to her fourth son, who she names Judah, with the meaning of giving thanks to G!d. It is Judah whose name becomes synonymous with the Jewish people. And Rabbi Shai Held in his commentary on this parshah in The Heart of Torah asks and answers:

“Who is a Jew? One who discovers the possibility of gratitude even amid heartbreak. That is why we are given the name that expresses Leah’s courage, and her achievement: A Jew is, ideally, a human being who, like Leah, can find her way to gratitude without having everything she wants or even needs.”

Indeed, Rachel does not have everything she wants. She longs to give Jacob children, and only after much suffering is she able to do so—eventually dying in childbirth. And certainly Jacob, who also has the name given to our people, Israel, does not have what he wants. He is deceived by his in-laws. And he is deceived by his own children, who break his heart with the loss of his son Joseph.

Jacob made his choice. He stole his brother’s birthright and blessing. And while he was blessed, his choices had consequences that were not happy.

So I haven’t talking about the cherub above the three people in the card. And I’m going to go in a bit of a different direction from the traditional reading. Because while many see this cherub as the Greek god Eros, I think of the keruvim—those fearsome angels of the Torah—who make an appearance in this week’s parshah as well. Because this is the week we read of Jacob’s dream of the ladder, with the angels going up and down, and when Jacob realizes that even in his dark night of the soul, after fleeing his home in fear of his brother’s vengeance, that G!d is always with him.

And even when he was deceived by Laban, and found himself married to two women, G!d was with him. And the children from both these marriages (and from his concubines) became the clan leaders/names of the tribes of Israel. Even when we feel deceived or forsaken, G!d is present and hears our cry.