A.
After Yitzchaq and Rivqa had spent a long period in intense, anguished prayer, she finally became pregnant. In short order, however, her joyous expectation turned to alarm: ויתרצצו הבנים בקרבה ותאמר אם כן למה זה אנכי ותלך לדרש את ד' (“And the children struggled to and fro within her, and she said, 'If so, why am I? And she went to seek Ha-Shem;'” XXV, 22).
Rivqa’s words are ambiguous and puzzling, and our classic commentators have striven to elucidate them. Rashi, for instance, says that her words were directed to G-d, beseeching Him: Why am I having such a strange pregnancy? The Even Êzra suggests that she went to seek the counsel of other, more experienced women: Had they ever heard of such a thing? The Sforno, for his part, offers the idea that the disturbance was so intense that she thought one of the twins might die within her, and her own life would then be endangered by carrying a dead fetus to term.
But the starkest suggestion of all comes from Ramban: והנכון בעיני כי אמרה אם כן למה לי, למה זה אנכי בעולם, הלואי אינני, שאמות וגו' (“And what seem correct in my eyes is that she said, 'If so, why do I have this? Why am I in the world? Better that I should die...'”).
The mind reels at the thought of the suffering that would have brought the holy, righteous prophetess, our mother Rivqa, to utter such despairing words! What could have motivated her to say such a thing?
B.
The Talmud discusses the legal status of a new-born baby, telling us, amongst other things, that he is נוחל ומנחיל, capable of inheriting and bqueathing. The gmara proceeds to examine the ramifications of this, and begins with the assertion that he can inherit his father’s property, and bequeath it to his paternal brothers. The gmara goes on to note that this is hardly exceptional: It is the normal case of inheritance; why, then, bother to state it here?
אמר רב ששת, נוחל בנכסי האם להנחיל לאחיו מן האב; Rav Shesheth suggests that the passage tells us that the new-born can inherit his mother’s property, and pass it on to his paternal brothers; as Rashi ad loc. explains: אם מתה אמו ביום שנולד הרי הוא יורשה, וכשמת הוא באין אחיו מאביו ויורשין הימנו וגו' (“If his mother dies on the day he is born, he inherits her; and if he dies, his paternal brothers come to inherit from him....”).
The gmara then elaborates on Rav Shesheth’s statement: ודוקא בן יום אחד, אבל עובר לא, מ"ט? דהוא מיית ברישא, ואין הבן יורש את אמו בקבר (“And [this is] specifically [in the case] of a day-old child, and not a fetus; why? For the fetus would have died first, and a son does not inherit from his mother in the grave;” נדה מ"ד.).
The Ba’âlei Tosafoth delve into the possible ramifications of the gmara’s statement, and in the course of their discussion note another Talmudic statement (ערכין ז. במשנה) that should a woman die in labor before any part of the infant’s body has been exposed to the air, מחטכין אותה בשבת ומוציאין הולד (“one may cut her open [even] on the Sabbath and extract the fetus”), in other words, the fetus is considered viable and has a דין פיקוח נפש, a life which can be saved at the expense of Shabbath, משום דכמונח בקופסא דמי (“because it is like [a child] trapped in a box;” שם, דה"מ איהו מיית ברישא).
Thus, we can deduce from the Tosafoth that a fetus rescued in this manner from the womb of his mother becomes a בן יום אחד, equivalent to a day-old infant born in the normal fashion.
C.
We now turn elsewhere in the Talmud, where we learn: רחל שלא ביכרה וילדה שני זכרים, ויצאו שני ראשיהן כאחד, רבי יוסי הגלילי אומר, שניהן לכהן, שנאמר "הזכרים לד'", וחכ"א אי אפשר לצמצם, אלא אחד לו ואחד לכהן (“A ewe who has not yet given birth to a lamb, which now gives birth to two males, and both their heads came out simultaneously, Rabbi Yossi ha-Galili says, 'Both belong to the kohén, as it is said, "the males are Ha-Shem’s'" [Exodus XIII,12]; and the Chachamim say, 'It is impossible to contract them; rather, one is [the owner’s] and one is the kohén’s;'” בכורות י"ז. במשנה).
As Rashi elucidates, Rabbi Yossi ha-Galili sees in the plural form of the word ha-zcharim (“the males”) an indication that both twins in this highly unusual situation are to be considered bechorim, “first-born,” and hence dedicated to holy, sacrificial purpose, whilst his colleagues take the view that such an occurrence is impossible -- that in any natural birth, one of the twins must have poked its head out a fraction of a second before the other, just that no-one noticed which it was; hence, they hold that one of the lambs should be designated the bechor, and the other, “second-born,” belongs to the owner of the ewe.
The halacha in this case follows the opinion of the Chachamim (עיי' רמב"ם הל' בכורות פ"ה ה"א ושו"ע יו"ד סי' שי"ח סעיף א'), and therein lies a possible explanation of the noble motivation underlying Rivqa’s words.
Rashi tells us that the twins in Rivqa’s womb were מתרוצצים זה בזה ומריבים בנחלת שני עולמות (“struggling and fighting one against the other over the inheritance of two worlds”), this world and the next one. In other words, they were jockeying for position, each one trying to secure primogeniture, as our parasha clearly suggests (cf. e.g. XXV, 26). Doubtless the prophetess realised this, and was sorely distressed: If things were already like this before they were born, what would be the case afterwards?
As the war in her womb dragged on, Rivqa cast about desperately for some way to make peace between them: Was there not some way that both could be bechorim, and share equally in “the inheritance of two worlds?”
She could not pray that both would exit her birth canal simultaneously, as the assumption would be that one or the other had actually come out first, and primogeniture would be assigned arbitrarily to one or the other, leaving the state of hostilites in place. But if she were to die in childbirth, before either of them had made an appearance, and by means of a radical Caesarian both could be exposed at once...
She was prepared to sacrifice herslf for peace; and so she went to seek Ha-Shem’s counsel.
D.
מעשה אבות סימן לבנים, Ramban famously tells us: an act of the patriarchs is a sign for their descendants. This, surely, applies equally to the matriarchs.
The overriding, fundamentally inestimable value of shalom, of peace and well-being, in Torah thought is well known. The Michlol Pithgamim u-Ma’amarim, the encyclopædic catalogue of aphorisms in the Oral Torah, lists no less than thirty-one entries which begin with the words גדול השלום, “Great is peace,” many of which occur multiple times in the sources.
Perhaps the most striking of these occurs in two widely separated places in the Midrash Tanchuma: גדול השלום שאפילו ישראל עובדים עבודה זרה ועושין חבורה אחת אין מדת הדין נוגעת בהם (Great is peace, such that even if Israel are serving idols but make a single harmonious society, the measure of Divine judgment cannot touch them;” צו ז' ושופטים י"ח). The Al-Mighty is prepared to efface Himself for the sake of shalom.
As was our matriarch Rivqa.
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