Hi Mirabel, thank you for writing such a beautiful essay and I'm so happy to hear about your Jewish journey!
I just wanted to comment on some of the Biblical sources that you quote. Firstly, according to Jewish tradition (and the Bible itself!), Rachel and Leah both loved Jacob and I would assume they would have been excited to marry him!
While we don't know a lot about Bilhah and Zilpah (the Torah was written at a time that unfortunately didn't consider a woman's voice important), I don't know why someone would assume that they were forced into marrying Jacob when the Torah doesn't make that claim.
I am so impressed with your journey of interpreting Torah through a feminist lens, we need more young women like you! However, I don't think there is a need to misapply cruelty to our foremothers and Jacob to achieve that!
I hope these comments will not be seen as discouraging as you continue learning about our beautiful (yet flawed) tradition. May I suggest that you take a look into "the original" (there are so many translations of the Torah online. Sefaria.org is a great start!) when presented with a Biblical story? (Maybe you even did that :))
Hi Mirabel, thank you for writing such a beautiful essay and I'm so happy to hear about your Jewish journey!
I just wanted to comment on some of the Biblical sources that you quote. Firstly, according to Jewish tradition (and the Bible itself!), Rachel and Leah both loved Jacob and I would assume they would have been excited to marry him!
While we don't know a lot about Bilhah and Zilpah (the Torah was written at a time that unfortunately didn't consider a woman's voice important), I don't know why someone would assume that they were forced into marrying Jacob when the Torah doesn't make that claim.
I am so impressed with your journey of interpreting Torah through a feminist lens, we need more young women like you! However, I don't think there is a need to misapply cruelty to our foremothers and Jacob to achieve that!
I hope these comments will not be seen as discouraging as you continue learning about our beautiful (yet flawed) tradition. May I suggest that you take a look into "the original" (there are so many translations of the Torah online. Sefaria.org is a great start!) when presented with a Biblical story? (Maybe you even did that :))
Good luck!!