This past week was Rachel, as in, the Matriarch, Rachel’s yahrzeit. The anniversary of her death. To be honest, I am not usually up to date on the various yartzheits of our Biblical ancestors. While there is no commandment requiring us to mark these dates, it can be very meaningful for people who do. All of that is to say, I personally never really paid much attention to Rachel’s yahrzeit, that is, until this year.
Perhaps it was that my social media feeds were flooded with events in her honor. From mass women’s challah bakes to soulful prayer concerts, to thousands of women traveling to Rachel’s Tomb just outside Efrat to pray. For their lives, their families, their futures. Women shedding tears, like Rachel was known to do.
So who was Rachel, and why does her memory still move us so deeply?
The Bible introduces Rachel as beloved, beautiful, and fiercely loved in return. Jacob meets her at the well, falls in love, and works seven years to marry her. But the night she is meant to stand under the wedding canopy, life turns, and her father gives her sister Leah to Jacob instead.
Rachel’s story is filled with both longing and light. She yearns for children, waits, hopes, prays, and eventually brings her firstborn son, Joseph into the world. And then, immediately after giving birth to her second son, Benjamin, she dies on the road, not in comfort or in her home, and not to be buried with the rest of her family. Yet, her story in particular does not fade. Jeremiah the prophet gives her voice eternal life. She cries for her children, and God promises her that one day they will return.
Of everything we know about her, Scripture chooses this quote, from Jeremiah as her defining verse.
Why?
Why does the Bible immortalize Rachel not in joy, but in her sorrow? Not only in motherhood, but in her refusal to be comforted over her children?
To understand what Rachel’s legacy truly means, we examine a moment that reveals her character most clearly.
Mrs. Sepha Kirschblum, an extraordinary Bible scholar, teaches an eight part video series now on Bible Plus. It is a deep character study of Rachel and Leah and their relationship with each other. And it is here that Rachel’s greatness comes into focus.
Sepha shares a teaching from the sages, a Midrashic tradition recorded by Rashi, that Jacob and Rachel created secret signs, anticipating that Lavan might try to deceive them. But when Rachel realized her father was sending Leah in her place, she faced an impossible moment.
Here is the moment, described in Sepha’s course:
“Rachel could have protected herself. She could have insisted on her place. Instead, according to the sages, she gave her sister the signs so Leah would not be humiliated publicly. She was willing to lose everything rather than allow her sister to suffer shame.”
It is one of the most devastating yet dignified acts in the Torah.
Rachel’s greatness is not found in victory, but in restraint.
Not in being chosen, but in choosing kindness.
Not in triumph, but in protecting someone else’s dignity at the cost of her own joy.
Her tears began long before Jeremiah heard them. They began the night she stepped aside with love and mercy.
No wonder the prophets tell us that when God gathers the exiles, He turns first to Rachel. Only someone who cried for another can become the one whose tears redeem everyone. Rachel refuses to accept permanent loss. She refuses to stop believing in return and redemption.
Rachel’s memory belongs not only to mothers, but to all who have waited, who have hoped, who have held love in complicated forms, who have carried grief. Her story honors those whose prayers are still unfolding, whose lives include chapters they did not choose, and who keep walking forward with tenderness instead of bitterness.
Her tears are not despair. They are protest. They are a deep faith in God. And God answers her refusal with a promise.
“There is reward for your work. Your children will come home.”
Rachel reminds us that hope is holy work. That surrender can be strength. And that compassion can move history. She teaches us that greatness is refusing to harden your heart, even when life hurts. Sometimes it is crying, not because you have lost faith, but because you refuse to stop believing.
This insight, and many others like it, comes from the course:
Rachel and Leah: Sisterhood, Struggle, and Spiritual Strength
By Mrs. Sepha Kirschblum, now streaming on Bible Plus.
Bible Plus currently offers hundreds of videos on topics through the Hebrew Bible. From reviews of the Five Books of Moses, Prophets, and Writings, to in depth character studies, with new content added monthly. Subscriptions are available at $14 per month or $119 annually at bible-plus.com.
