In 1995, Israel came close to handing Rachel’s Tomb to the Palestinian Authority. Under the emerging Oslo II agreement, security control of the site, at the northern edge of Bethlehem, was set to pass to the new Palestinian government. Rabbis Hanan Porat and Menachem Porush went to see Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin to ask him to take that concession off the table. Rabbi Porat later described what happened. Rabbi Porush leaned toward the Prime Minister and began to cry. “This is Mama Rochel (Mother Rachel). The Jewish people will never forgive you.”
Rabin was a former army chief of staff and not known for sentimentality. Even so, his government backed away from the original understanding and kept Israeli control over the site. Soon afterward, fortifications went up around the tomb. Those walls are the reason Jews can visit and pray there safely today. This week, on the 11th of the Hebrew month of Cheshvan, was the anniversary of Rachel’s death. All week long, huge crowds have been pouring through those walls to pray at her grave.
The Jewish people have four matriarchs: Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel and Leah. All four are mothers of the nation. Yet only one is called Mama Rochel with the tenderness a child keeps for the parent who comforts him. Why her?
Jacob and his family are traveling, only a short distance from Bethlehem, when Rachel goes into a hard labor. She gives birth to Benjamin, her second son, and dies on the road.
This should strike us as strange. Hebron, less than a day’s journey to the south, holds the family burial cave that Abraham purchased, the Cave of Machpelah. Sarah lies there. Rebecca will lie there. Leah will lie there, and Jacob himself will insist on being carried all the way from Egypt to be buried there. Rachel, the wife Jacob loved most, ends up alone on the side of a road.
Years later, on his deathbed, Jacob raises the subject with Rachel’s son Joseph, almost as if he expects Joseph to hold it against him:
The Sages explain that this was no accident of travel. Jacob buried her there on purpose, by divine instruction. Centuries later, the Babylonians would drive the Jewish people out of their land in chains, and the road into exile would pass right by Rachel’s grave. As her children walked past, Rachel would come out of her tomb and plead with God on their behalf (Rashi on Genesis 48:7, based on Genesis Rabbah 82:10).
The prophet Jeremiah heard her:
God does not tell Rachel her tears are pointless, he tells her they worked. Your children will return.
So we come back to the question, now sharper. Why Rachel? Abraham was the founder of the faith. Moses spoke to God face to face. Surely their prayers carry more weight than those of a young mother who died in childbirth?
The Sages tell a remarkable story about exactly this. When the Temple was destroyed and the people went into exile, the great figures of Jewish history came before God one by one to plead for mercy. Abraham came, then Isaac, then Jacob, then Moses. Each one made his case. God did not relent.
Then Rachel stepped forward.
She reminded God of the night of her wedding. Jacob worked seven years for her, and he knew his father-in-law Laban was a cheat. So Jacob and Rachel agreed on secret signs, private words that would let Jacob know the bride under the veil was really Rachel. When Rachel learned that her father planned to send Leah in her place, she faced a choice. If she kept the signs to herself, Leah would be exposed and humiliated in front of everyone. So Rachel gave the signs to her sister. She gave away the thing she wanted most in the world so that her sister would not be shamed.
Then Rachel made her argument. “I am only flesh and blood, and I was not jealous of my rival. I did not let her be put to shame. You are the eternal King, full of compassion. Why are You jealous of idols that are nothing, and why have You sent my children into exile because of them?”
And God answered: “For your sake, Rachel, I will bring Israel back to their place.” That is when He spoke the words of Jeremiah: Hold back your voice from weeping.
Think about what Rachel gave up. She did not only risk losing Jacob. She handed her sister the position of first wife and, as it turned out, the role of mother to most of the nation. Leah gave birth to six of the twelve tribes, including Levi, the tribe of the priests, and Judah, the tribe of the kings (Genesis 29:31-35, 30:17-20). Every priest who served in the Temple and every king descended from David traces his line back to a night when Rachel chose not to protect her own interests.
Rachel could see beyond herself. In the most painful moment of her life, she asked what was best for her sister and for the family that would one day become a people. That is why her prayer opens a door that even Abraham and Moses could not. She is not asking God to do something she never did herself. She is asking God to rise above the hurt, just as she did.
That is also why she is Mama. A mother is the one who gives up what she wants so her children can have what they need. Rachel did that before she ever had children of her own, and she has kept doing it from the side of that road for more than three thousand years.
When Rabbi Porush wept in front of Yitzhak Rabin, he was crying for his mother, and the tears worked.
But Rachel does not only want our tears. She wants us to become more like her. Each of us holds our own “signs,” things we earned, positions we deserve, credit that belongs to us. Most days, holding on to them is perfectly fair. Every so often, though, someone else’s dignity hangs on whether we will let go.
On Rachel’s anniversary, find one of those moments. Let someone else take the credit. Cover for a colleague’s mistake instead of exposing it. Give up the seat, the honor, or the last word so that someone else is not embarrassed. No one will see it. Rachel’s gift to Leah was invisible too, and it is the reason God still listens when she cries for us.
