In my last post, I suggested that Rebecca’s veiling after first seeing Isaac, her future husband, set in motion a chain of deceptions: Jacob dons goatskins as he steals his brother’s blessing and his own sons dupe him with a cloak dipped in goat’s blood. It is the veiling of women, though, that strikes the deepest inter-generational resonance – between Rebecca before the conception of her son, Jacob, and Tamar, in her encounter with Judah, Jacob’s son. The midrash teases out the parallel threads, but remains mysteriously terse: “There were two women who covered themselves with veils and bore twins: Rebecca and Tamar: Rebecca – ‘so she took her veil and covered herself’ (Gen. 24:65) and Tamar – ‘[So she took off her widow’s garb] and covered her face with a veil…’ (Gen. 38:24)” (Genesis Rabbah 60:15). How are veiling and the conception of twins connected?
Jews are known for answering a question with another question. Following this tradition, I’d like to address this midrash with another midrash: “While the brothers were occupied with the sale of Joseph, Jacob with his sackcloth and fasting, and Judah with taking a wife, the Holy One, blessed be He, was creating the light of the Messiah… “Before she was in labor, she gave birth” (Isaiah 66:7)…“It happened at that time” (Gen. 38:1)” (Genesis Rabbah 85:1).
The midrash addresses the connection between the two chapters (37 and 38) of Genesis. Judah’s descent immediately follows the sale of Joseph into slavery and the presentation of the cloak dipped in goat’s blood, with the telling words to his father, “This we found, discern [haker na] whether this is your son’s cloak or not” (Gen. 37:32). Jacob’s diagnosis, “A wild animal has devoured him; Joseph is torn, torn apart,” rends a deep tear in the fabric of the family. The brothers disband – Judah the first to initiate the rupture; their presence for each other would stir pangs of conscience they could not bear. Jacob withdraws into his sackcloth and fasting, the brothers greedily divvy up the profits of the sale, and Judah turns towards assimilation, through marriage to a Canaanite woman.
The midrash concludes with a peculiar metaphor of a child born even before the mother is seized with pangs of labor. Conceived in the Great Mind, God lays out a plot to undermine Judah’s plan to assimilate, by thwarting his marriage and continuity through his wayward sons. As Robert Burns penned: “the best laid schemes o’ mice an’ men gone aft agley” [go often askew]. God’s meta-plot trumps them. Who is the agent of Judah’s return? The veiled daughter-in-law, Tamar. She re-aligns Judah on his path, diverts him from his “descent from the presence of his brothers” (Gen. 38:1).
After years of waiting to be married to Judah’s third son, Tamar sets herself up at the entrance to Enaim (Petah ‘Enayim, lit. “opening of the eyes”), dressed as a harlot. She has heard that Judah’s wife passed away and he is on his way to Timnah for the sheep-shearing festivities. She, like Rebecca, covers her face with a veil. The woman sees, seduces, conceives knowingly, and the man, not seeing, unknowing, concedes to her demand for a pledge, promising to pay for services rendered with a goat from his flock. He hands over his signet ring, cord, and staff (tantamount to his car keys, driver’s license, and credit card, all marked indelibly with his identity). The promised payment – a goat from the flock – evokes the goat slaughtered to stain Joseph’s cloak. The goat serves as the “cover story” in the case of Joseph’s sale into slavery; here the promised goat is the catalyst for the “uncover story”. Because the supposed harlot is never found and the goat never paid, Tamar can use the pledge as the ultimate source of revelation, the real “opening of the eyes” that will occur three months later.
Judah and Tamar, from “the School of Rembrandt” – attributed to a number of painters, including Gerbrand van den Eeckhout and Aert van der Gelder (circa 1650-1660)
Unveiled, back in her widow’s garb, Tamar is accused of being pregnant through “whoredom”, and Judah orders her to be burned. The apocalypse, the “unveiling”, happens when Tamar presents the pledge and utters the words: “It was the owner of these who made me pregnant…discern, please [haker na], whose these are, the signet and the cord and staff” (Gen. 38:25). The words “haker na” resonate with the words the brothers used in presenting the bloodied cloak before their father. Judah experiences a double entendre, which awakens him not only to his transgression with regard to Tamar – “She is more righteous than me, insofar as I did not give her to my son, Shelah” (v. 26) – but also to his responsibility towards his father. Tamar serves as the catalyst for Judah’s teshuvah (repentance), and he finds a new inner strength, an integrity which enables him to stand as guarantor on behalf of Benjamin (cf. Gen.43:8-10 and 44:32-34). His heroism before the supposed Egyptian viceroy in offering himself up as a pledge for his brother, Benjamin, ultimately mends the traumatic seam that rent the family apart. Tamar facilitates this transformation.
Let us return to the image of veiling, the conception of twins, the discrepancy between vision of women and men in the Book of Genesis. Tamar also gives birth to twins, as Rebecca did, both sets of twins born from a womb of double-sowing. In both stories, the inner consciousness of the woman, what the midrash calls the creation of the Messianic light, must penetrate the obtuse sight of man. It is a process not of jarring confrontation but, rather, of subtle shifts of cloth and skin, of donning and doffing. And sometimes it is precisely through that stubborn darkness, stumbling down the wrong path, absent of insight, that God will redirect a man (with a little help from the better half).
