Dvar Torah for Parshat VaYishlach

Based on Likutey MoHaran I, 34:7

" Leah's daughter Dinah... went out to visit some of the local girls... [Shimon and Levi] took Dinah from Shekhem's home." (Genesis 34:1, 26)

Dinah, the seventh child that the Matriarch Leah bore to the Patriarch Yaakov, is referred to in this verse specifically as her mother's daughter, and not her father's. To answer the question why this departure from the norm is taken Rashi quotes the Midrash, "Like mother, like daughter."

(For those unfamiliar with the story: Some of the local young women were giving a concert and Dinah went to see them perform. When she did so she was accosted by Shekhem, whose father was king of the territory. He raped her. Because Shekhem was a prince, none of the townspeople protested and thus became accomplices to his crime. He promised Dinah that he would marry her and buy her whatever she wanted. After Shekhem and his subjects circumcised themselves, as they had agreed to do in order that Yaakov would consent to Shekhem's marrying Dinah, Shimon and Levi came and executed the people. Dinah, however, did not want to leave and her brothers had to remove her forcibly.)

This episode was a terrible blow to our patriarch and his family. Our Sages ask what Yaakov had done to suffer this indignity. They answer that when Yaakov was preparing to meet Esav he decided that it wouldn't be right for his evil brother to marry his daughter. So he hid her. God, however, disagreed. "[You] denied kindness from a friend" (Job 6:14). 'Had you allowed your brother to marry your daughter she would have brought him to repent.' This is one way in which Dinah was like Leah. Just as Leah was a suitable match for Esav (see the dvar Torah for Parshat VaYetze), so was Dinah.

Rebbe Nachman teaches us that one becomes trapped in physical lusts, orlah (literally, foreskin) when one's "vessel of kindness" breaks. That is, to the extent that one cannot open his heart to do kindness for another, the "light" the kindness that was meant to be becomes distorted and transformed into the "kindness" of hedonism. Thus, Yaakov's withholding of kindness to Esav resulted in the terribly deformed "kindness" of Shekhem.

And what of Dinah? Why did she have to be forcibly removed from Shekhem's home? Our Sages teach us the reason: A woman who has had relations with an uncircumcised man finds it very difficult to leave him (because it was so pleasurable). Rebbe Nachman explains that one whose soul has enjoyed forbidden pleasures finds it difficult to give them up. She, the soul, has to be dragged out by "Shimon and Levi."

Of all the tribes Levi was the major Torah teacher. Shimon's name comes from the word shema, to hear. Of all the brothers Shimon and Levi were the closest. These facts hint to the three points that Rebbe Nachman says we need to free our souls from the orlah. We need to listen to Levi, the tzaddik, who teaches us Torah. We have to listen to a friend, to share our Torah insights with him and to learn from him. And we ourselves have to hear what our soul is trying to whisper to us, to break free and leave Shekhem's home.

Agutn Shabbos!
Shabbat Shalom!