Rachel Imeinu

A shepherdess in Charan

Rachel was the younger daughter of Lavan, Rivka's brother, in Charan of Aram. The Midrash describes her and her sister Leah as twins, and Sefer HaYashar names their mother Adinah. The Torah introduces Rachel at the well, tending her father's flock, when Yaakov arrives as a fugitive from Esav. He rolls the heavy stone from the mouth of the well alone, waters her sheep, kisses her and weeps. The Torah describes her as beautiful in form and appearance, and Yaakov loved her from that first meeting.

Having nothing to offer as a bride-price, Yaakov agreed to work seven years for Lavan in exchange for Rachel's hand. The verse says those years seemed to him like only a few days, so great was his love for her.

The night of the simanim

Yaakov knew Lavan's trickery well, and Chazal relate that he and Rachel agreed on secret signs (simanim) so that he would recognize her under the wedding veil. When Rachel realized that her father intended to bring Leah to the chupah instead, she understood what would happen to her sister if Leah were exposed. Rather than allow Leah to be shamed, Rachel taught her the signs, and according to the Midrash she even hid nearby to answer Yaakov in Leah's place.

This act of silent self-sacrifice, giving away the husband she had waited seven years for, so that her sister would not be humiliated, is the heart of Rachel's greatness in Jewish memory. The Gemara (Megillah 13b) teaches that in reward for her modesty she merited that Shaul HaMelech would descend from her, and Rashi explains that this kindness was what Hashem 'remembered' when He finally opened her womb. A week later Yaakov married Rachel as well, and worked another seven years for her.

Longing for children

Leah bore son after son while Rachel remained childless. In her pain she said to Yaakov, "Give me children, for otherwise I am as dead." She gave her maidservant Bilhah to Yaakov, and Bilhah bore Dan and Naftali, whom Rachel named as expressions of her prayer and her struggle. Rashi notes her deep fear that, being childless, she might be divorced and fall to the lot of Esav.

At last "Hashem remembered Rachel" and she bore Yosef, praying as she named him that Hashem would add another son. Yosef would become the tzaddik of the family and the one through whom the whole house of Yaakov was sustained in Egypt.

Leaving Lavan's house

After twenty years in Charan, Yaakov resolved to return to Eretz Canaan, and Rachel and Leah agreed together that their place was with him. Before leaving, Rachel took her father's terafim. Rashi explains her intention was to wean her father from idol worship. When Lavan pursued them and searched the tents, Rachel concealed the terafim in the camel's saddle and sat on them. Yaakov, not knowing what she had done, declared that whoever had the idols would not live, words that the Midrash connects to her early passing.

Passing on the road to Efras

Some time after the family returned to the land, as they travelled from Beis El toward Efras, Rachel went into difficult labor with her second son. The midwife comforted her that this too was a son. As her soul was leaving her, Rachel named him Ben-Oni, "son of my sorrow"; Yaakov called him Binyamin. According to Seder Olam she was thirty-six years old.

Yaakov buried her right there by the roadside and set a monument over her grave, which the Torah says stands "until this day." Rachel is the only one of the Imahos not buried in the Me'aras HaMachpeilah. Years later Yaakov explained to Yosef that he buried her on the road by Divine instruction: when her children would be driven into exile along that very road, she would come out and plead for them. Rashi on Bereishis 48:7 records this tradition from the Midrash.

The mother who weeps

The prophet Yirmiyahu describes the voice of Rachel weeping for her children, refusing to be comforted, and Hashem answering her: hold back your voice from crying, for your work will be rewarded and your children will return to their borders. The Midrash in Eicha Rabbah tells that when the Avos and Moshe Rabbeinu could not win mercy for exiled Israel, Rachel stood up and recalled how she had overcome her own jealousy for her sister's sake. If she, flesh and blood, could do that, she argued, how much more should the King of Kings forgive His children. At once Hashem's mercy was aroused.

For this reason Kever Rachel has been a place of tefillah for Jews throughout the generations, especially for women praying for children, for shidduchim and for the safe return of loved ones. In 1841 Sir Moses Montefiore restored and expanded the building, and today it stands within a fortified compound at the entrance to Beis Lechem.

Every year on 11 Cheshvan, tens of thousands of Jews of every background stream to her kever, many of them through the night, with Tehillim in hand. Mothers bring their children, kallahs come before their weddings, and people carry lists of names of those in need of a yeshua. Many describe the visit not as going to a grave but as coming home to a mother who is still waiting for her children, and who, as the navi promised, will see them return.