Israel’s leaders must learn from our Matriarch, Rachel

Before there were political parties, coalition negotiations, or prime ministers, there was an argument over a crown.

The Talmud finds it hidden in the account of creation. Genesis first describes the sun and moon as “the two great luminaries,” then calls one great and the other small. What happened between the beginning of the verse and its end?

Rabbi Shimon ben Pazi answers with a startling conversation. The moon asks God: “Is it possible for two kings to wear one crown?” God replies: “Go and diminish yourself” (Chullin 60b).

Read as a moral drama, this is a primordial failure of leadership. Before humanity enters the story, creation encounters the insistence that greatness must be exclusive. The moon cannot accept a world in which another light possesses equal standing. The consequence is cosmic diminishment. The refusal to share greatness leaves the world with less of it.

Benjamin Netanyahu and Gadi Eisenkot should sit with that story before their next round of negotiations. Both invoke the need for a broad government. Yet the question of who will lead threatens to swallow the purpose of coming together.

Our tradition offers an answer through a woman who faced a far more intimate struggle over her place in the world. Rachel loved Jacob. He had worked for years to marry her. According to the Talmud, anticipating Laban’s deception, Jacob gave Rachel identifying signs so that her father could not substitute Leah on their wedding night. Then the moment arrived. Rachel understood what would happen if Leah could not give those signs. Her sister would be exposed and humiliated. Rachel could have protected her own position simply by keeping silent. Instead, she gave Leah the signs (Megillah 13b).

We should pause before turning this into a comfortable story about being kind. Rachel risked the future she had waited for. Her compassion demanded an immediate surrender of something precious. The biblical family that followed was complicated, but Rachel’s greatness lay in her ability, at the decisive moment, to place her sister’s dignity above her own exclusive claim.

Here lies Rachel’s tikkun—her repair—of the moon’s primordial failure. The moon could not bear another sovereign beside it. Rachel made room for another woman beside her. Where the moon saw shared standing as an intolerable loss, Rachel accepted the cost of sharing the crown.

There is a remarkable connection between Rachel and the moon in the sources themselves. Rabbi Chaim Yosef David Azulai, the Hida, records in Midbar Kedemot a tradition that Israel received Rosh Chodesh, the celebration of the new moon, in Rachel’s merit. He also attributes its Musaf prayer to her, finding her name in the opening letters of Roshei Chodashim Le’amcha: “New moons for Your people.” The prayer immediately describes Rosh Chodesh as “a time of atonement.”

Read alongside the two Talmudic stories, this association acquires profound meaning. Rachel stands at the renewal of the diminished moon because her conduct offers an answer to the impulse that diminished it. Renewal becomes possible when we learn to make room.

Israel needs a unity government with a defined program, clear responsibilities, enforceable commitments, and room for both leaders to contribute. Whether that requires rotation or another arrangement is a matter for negotiation. What matters morally is that neither approaches the table assuming that partnership means the other man’s surrender. Citizens who carry the burdens of defending and sustaining this country deserve leaders prepared to carry the burden of compromise.

Israel cannot afford another diminishment of its collective light. It is time for its leaders to learn from Rachel.