to Question of the Week to Archives Q: Why do most commentaries ignore the rape of Dinah and the repercussions? For me this was the Torah portion that set me on my ear a year ago and put me on the road to study to try to understand. But so little is said. Perhaps it is because I am female that I can't read this Parsha without this event being the core, despite the other important events. The tragedy and the sadness and the cruelty are unbearable. Heather
		A: Dear Heather: First let me say that if ANY Torah portion puts you on the road to study, that is good...Maybe its disturbing nature is really a message to us that what lies underneath the surface of a text is equally worth digging in to. The rape of Dinah is indeed dealt with by all the traditional commentators and by the midrash at length, but none of them have a twentieth century sensibility and sensitivity when it comes to the more modern understanding of rape. We can't expect that they would. They still labored under the notion that rape is somehow sexual, and that women "ask for it" by their dress or demeanor. Thus Rashi suggests that Dinah was a bit of a gadabout who, in "going out to see the daughters of the land" may have mistakenly invited sexual advances. Yet what is comforting is that modern women have begun to dig under the text, and even under the traditional commentaries, to discover a new spin on a complex old text. Perhaps the best twist on the Dinah story can be found in a novel called The Red Tent by Anita Diamant (see this month's review). I don't want to give away the incredible plot, but trust me, you will never read the story of Dinah with the same eyes again. But your question also brings up a philosophical point: what do we do with Torah stories that may be morally questionable texts? Certainly our patriarchs and matriarchs are heroes but with very human flaws. Yet we can see these stories as being part and parcel of a "spiritual diary" bequeathed to us- but without an eraser. These are an inherited dialogue between our ancestors and the Divine, and as such we can reread them, but not rewrite them. Even morally questionable texts carry messages, but sometimes discomforting ones. Learners who take the text seriously, like you, will continue to wrestle with these texts by considering their implications for today in the light of both their historical, psychological, and sociological context and our modern sense of meaning. What is the layer beneath the layer we have received? We need to see ourselves as grand revisionists, creating new midrashim and commentaries that search for the overarching paradigms and the underlying spirituality that informs the text itself. Would the Torah have been "better" if all its stories were squeaky clean, cheerful, heartwarming, and with happy endings? If it was, I doubt it would move us in the same way it now does. Keep studying, even the hard stuff! EG
		last update: August 1999 Got a question for Reb on the Web? Visit our Archived Questions SHOOT*! ("SHOOT" is the Hebrew acronym for SHe'elot OOTeshuvot (Questions and Answers), the centuries-old dialogue between Jews and their rabbis.)

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