The Love-Death of Leah

At first sight, Jacob by the well

removed a stone to give her water;

labored seven years until

he earned his uncle’s younger daughter,

love-blinded, having asked her father

for her marriage hand. The load

of work weighed lighter than a feather–

pillow on a wedding bed.

When the nuptial feast was over

his face shone, though the moon was dark,

because he thought she was his lover,

bought for seven years of work.

In his bed her older sister

lay with weak eyes, far less pretty;

Jacob, who could not resist,

was fooled as if he really kissed

her sister on that day they’d met,

unusual privilege that Jacob

would never is his life forget,

since it brought their love a wake up.

Delighted by the touch of Leah —

molded in the hands of Esau —

blindly he made love, the liar

on the liar’s daughter’s seesaw.

But as soon as he awoke

he exclaimed: “My God, you’re Leah!”

he’d fallen for a father’s fake,

deceiver, blinded by betrayer.

Another seven years he labored

for the one more loved and cherished;

only she he thought he favored,

yet a double hunger nourished.

Though he’d loved the younger first,

nighttime passion with the older

brought unwittingly a thirst

for a long drink that was colder.

In life, they say, he loved her less,

yet she bore six sons, half-clan,

and lies with him still, with noblesse

in love-death, buried with her man.

The Jewish Bible has no verse

about her burial, as opposed

to one about Rebekkah’s nurse,

that Genesis for her composed;

more silent about Leah’s grave

since she duped Jacob as her sister,

whose secret signs helped Leah behave

like Rachel after Jacob kissed her.

The last verse alludes to the aggadata that is reported in Bava Batra 123a and to Gen. 2:11.

Through the signs that Jacob gave to Rachel and that she gave to Leah, he did not know it was she until that moment. This is the modesty of Rachel to which Rabbi Yonatan was referring.

According to Gen. 29:11, Jacob kissed Rachel when they first met, while he was preparing to provide for her father’s flock with water from a well whose heavy cover he had heroically removed.

Rachel’s self-sacrifice on the first wedding night is comparable to that of Isaac in the aqedah, as Rabbi Tali Adler of Hadar has pointed out.