[Avodah] Love of the Imahos [was: Your brother's a Mumar; here's the solution!]

[Yitzhak Grossman]

On Tue, 1 Jul 2008 09:35:21 EDT
T613K at aol.com wrote:

> Yes, I know that Yakov did love Leah too, but relatively, she felt  unloved.  

It is entirely unclear that Ya'akov loved Leah at all, at least
initially.  The Torah states "And God saw that Leah was hated", which
many commentators apparently understand to mean that, at least at that
point, he hated or disliked her.  Ramban and S'forno explain that his
'sinah' derived from his belief in her complicity in Lavan's fraud, and
Tur suggests that he suspected her (wrongly) of promiscuity.  Or Ha'Haim
maintains that although she believed merely that she was unloved, God
knew the truth, that she was actually hated.

Ramban cites a Medrash:

When Ya'akov saw "Ma'asim" that Leah had cheated her sister, he
determined to divorce her, but when God remembered her with children,
he said 'Shall I divorce the mother of these!'

As to the verse "Va'ye'ehav gam es Rahel mi'Leah", which seems to
indicate that he loved Leah too, just not as much as he loved Rahel,
many commentators interpret the verse, and particularly the word Gam,
so that it is not stating that Leah was loved at all.  See
Rashbam, Ramban and Kli Yakar; the latter rereads the verse expressly
in order to reconcile it with the previously cited verse, which states
unequivocally that she was hated.

All this, of course, does not imply that he did not eventually come to
love her, although the text does not say that he did, leaving it as a
matter of speculation.

Yitzhak
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