Bilhah and Zilpah

Mina Cohen

For a long time Margaret has been including Bilha and Zilpa in the Amidah along with our foremothers Sarah Rebecca Rachel and Leah.  Sarah was the mother of Isaac, Rebecca was the mother of Jacob and Esau, and Rachel, Leah, Bilha and Zilpa were the mothers of the twelve sons of Jacob, the progenitors of the twelve tribes of Israel and one daughter, Deena.  I’ve always wondered why traditionally we only consider Rachel and Leah the mothers of the twelve sons and one daughter.  Rachel and Leah are some of the most popular names for girls.  Haven’t met a Bilha or a Zilpa.  So what’s the story?  I’ve always wondered about this.  This week’s parsha identifies Bilha and Zilpa as the mothers of the four sons Dan, Naphtali, Gad and Asher.  

So who were Bilha and Zilpa?  They were originally Rachel and Leah’s handmaids but when Rachel and Leah struggled to conceive, they proposed that Jacob marry the maidservants and have children with them.  This wasn’t a new idea.  Men often had multiple wives and from different social castes.  Their status would remain the same after marriage and usually the children born to the secondary wife were not afforded the same status.  Ishmael is depicted as Hagar’s son while Bilha and Zilpa’s sons are depicted as Jacob’s sons. The children born to the primary wives (Leah and Rachel) were raised by the primary wives and were afforded equal status.   Midrash tells us that all the wives Leah Rachel Zilpa and Bilha united their prayers with Jacob to ask G-d to remove the curse of barrenness from Rachel.  On Rosh Hashana, the day when G-d sits in judgment, G-d remembered Rachel and granted her a son.  Rachel said, “G-d has taken away my reproach” for all the people had said that she was barren because she was not a pious woman.  That idle talk no longer had any basis once her son was born.

If you research Bilha and Zilpa there is very little information and very few mentions of them in the Talmud or other texts.  Some say the reason there is so little information about them  is because those tribes are lost.  That is probably true but should out of sight be out of mind?  So I did find a few references regarding Bilha and Zilpa.  In Numbers 7:3 six matriarchs are mentioned including Zilpa and Bilha. In the Song of Songs six days of creation (before Shabbat), six for the matriarchs.   The tomb of the Matriarchs in Tiberias traditionally claims Bilha, Zilpa, Yocheved (mother of Moses), Zipporah (wife of Moses), Avigail (one of King David’s wives), and Elisheva (Aaron’s wife) are buried there. So they are obviously in good company.   Religious women visit the tomb to bless their fertility and pray for husbands who are away.  It also affords an excellent view of the lake.

Laban, Jacob’s father in law is said to have had two wives, one a concubine or maidservant.  Leah and Rachel were born to Laban’s primary wife, and Bilha and Zilpa, were daughters of the second wife.  That would make them half sisters of Leah and Rachel.  Before Leah and Rachel were married, Laban gifted Bilha and Zilpa to them as handmaidens.

In this week’s parsha we have a picture of a very complicated family.  I’ve always taken comfort in the fallible characters we are supposed to revere as it makes them more like us.  So picture this family has one father, four mothers, with twelve half or full biological brothers and a sister.  As you might imagine there was a lot of what we call co-parenting that might today be called “alternative”.  

At the beginning of her marriage, Rachel could not conceive despite her desire to have Jacob’s children and be part of the future he was trying to build. The pain of her childlessness was increased when she watched her sister, Leah, birth not one but four children one after the other. Rachel became jealous of her sister. Besides envying the children she had begotten, Rachel attributed Leah’s fertility to her righteousness, and envied the good deeds Leah must have done to merit offspring. “Give me children, Jacob!” she cried to her husband. “If not, I am as good as dead!” Rachel was so stricken that she thought she would die from grief. So by giving Bilha to Jacob she hoped to raise the children as her own, and in fact Bilha bore two sons; Dan (meaning judgement) and Naphtali (meaning contest or prayer).  So then Leah saw that Rachel was successful in this effort so she gave Zilpa to Jacob who bore another two sons; Gad (meaning good luck) and Asher (meaning fortune).  Rachel as we know eventually had two sons, Joseph and Benjamin though she died prematurely, and BIlha raised the two boys. Since Rachel died at Benjamin’s birth miraculously Bilha was able to nurse him even though she had stopped giving birth several years before.  

According to Midrash Joseph treated Bilha’s sons Dan and Naphtali as brothers, and not as sons of a handmaiden.  She moved into Jacob’s tent when Rachel died and was close to him until his dying day and took care of him when he was ill.  Bilhah was the one to inform Joseph that his father was ill.  The other brothers knew of this special relationship and after Jacob’s death they asked Bilha to go and speak to Joseph on their behalf, since they feared Joseph’s anger for their poor treatment of him.  

We can see this group was not the best at managing family dynamics.  We see jealously, deceit, and one-upsmanship for starters.  Rachel and Leah look at child bearing as a race to the finish.  Jacob’s playing favorites did not help at all.  

So back to this week’s parsha.  Jacob is expecting to meet his long lost brother Esau.  Jacob is afraid that Esau might do him and his family harm.  So he moves around the pieces or in this case the members of the family.  The reasoning is, if Esau does attack, at least half will survive.

No surprise Jacob puts Bilha and Zilpa and their children in the front, Leah and her kids second, and Rachel (the favored one) and her kids in the back.

But even without this ordering, the dynamics are complex.  The women, of course, are concerned with whose descendants will come out on top. Even among the brothers Bilha and Rachel were favored more than Leah and Zilpa. After all they were building a nation, and that is messy.  So here is just one example of how messy it got.  

It’s the midrash regarding Reuben, the oldest son and Bilhah. The verse simply states, “And it came to pass when Israel sojourned in that land, that Reuben went and lay with Bilhah, his father's concubine, and Israel (Yakov) heard [of it], and so, the sons of Jacob were twelve.”

While one Talmudic tradition interprets the verse literally, the majority do not, prompting the Talmudic dictum, “Anyone who says that Reuben sinned with Bilhah is nothing other than mistaken, as it is stated: ‘Now the sons of Jacob were twelve.’ This teaches that all of the brothers were equal [in righteousness].”

So what does the verse mean? The Talmud (quoted in Rashi) explains that Reuben moved Jacob’s bed from Bilhah’s tent to the tent of his mother, Leah. Reuben knew that Jacob loved Rachel more than his mother, and that it was she who Jacob desired to marry at the outset. Indeed, Jacob kept his marriage bed in Rachel’s tent for the duration of her life. After Rachel’s passing, Reuben assumed that Jacob would move into Leah’s tent. In his mind, Bilhah and Zilpah were inferior to Rachel and Leah, their former masters. When Jacob chose to move into Bilhah’s tent instead, he felt righteous indignation. “If my mother’s sister was my mother’s rival, should my mother’s sister’s handmaid be her rival as well?” He took Jacob’s bed and moved it to Leah’s tent.

Jacob punished Reuben for his disrespectful act by declining to give him the usual firstborn rights. The Book of Chronicles records, “For he [Reuben] was the firstborn, but when he defiled his father's bed, his birthright was given to the sons of Joseph the son of Israel.” Joseph’s two sons, Manasseh and Ephraim, became two separate tribes, mirroring the double inheritance given to firstborn children. That is why when parents give their sons a blessing on Friday night they say, May God make you like Ephraim and Menashe, not Joseph or Abraham, Isaac, or Jacob.  The girls get the blessing, May God make you like Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel, and Leah (and we could add Bilha and Zilpa).

The favoritism that Jacob showed to Joseph is well known and we know the results of the brothers trying to do away with him.  Being a parent is quite a challenge even when there are two parents, not 5 parents in the mix and no one gives one a guidebook on exactly how it’s supposed to be accomplished.  We certainly do our best and hope for the best, though we bring our own “mishigas” with us.  

On a final note, while little has been recorded about these two great women, Bilhah and Zilpah, that which we do have paints a portrait of devotion, piety and goodness, traits they undoubtedly passed on to their children. That’s the most we can expect. By honoring Bilha and Zilpa we are saying that all mothers and all women are important, that their voices and legacies should be honored.  We say that there are no primary and secondary family members.  It’s easier said than done but should be a goal. Honoring parents is one of the ten commandments and both the patriarchs and matriarchs are identified in the opening paragraph of the Amidah, to emphasize that we are descendants of these forefathers and foremothers.  Of course the text says G-d’s promises in the Torah were given to the men, but would not have been achieved without the women.

I am chanting the Aliyah today which includes the birth of Benjamin and the death of Rachel.  It also includes that story about Reuven.  In terms of family dynamics it also includes the death of Isaac and his burial in the Cave of the Machpela in Hebron.  Both Yakov and Esau, siblings who become sworn enemies attend the funeral.  We all have family drama and this reminds me how important it is to resolve differences, not only for Shalom Bayit, peace in the house, but so that the next time we see our siblings won’t be at a parent’s funeral.