[Avodah] Yaakov kissing Rachel

Marty Bluke marty.bluke at gmail.com
Thu Nov 30 02:28:49 PST 2006


I looked a bit more in the mefarshim and found the following:

The Medrash Rabba writes that Yaakov cried because the people around
suspected him of pritzus for kissing Rachel. The seforno quotes this medrash
and adds that this is the reason why Yaakov right away told Rachel that he
was related to her so that she too wouldn't be choshed him of pritzus. The
Netziv says a similar pshat on his own, he says that Yaakov cried to show
Rachel that the kiss was because she was his relative and was not for
lustful purposes.

Rabbenu B'Chaye offers 2 explanations, either Rachel was under 3 or that he
kissed her hand or forehead and not her lips. This is clearly against the
medrash which states that his action was misinterpreted as one of pritzus.

Of course, in today's Charedi society this could never happen, men and women
mingling and talking at the well??? There would be a mehadrin well with
different times for men and women or 2 separate mehadrin wells 1 for men and
1 for women so that they chas v'shalom shouldn't mingle.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.aishdas.org/pipermail/avodah-aishdas.org/attachments/20061130/db0b0878/attachment-0002.htm>


More information about the Avodah mailing list