This time

SOMETIMES, what seems like the simplest thing to do can be the hardest. For me, at least. Like saying thank you. I don’t mean the girl behind the bakery counter handing you a warm butter croissant and you receiving it with an easy smile and thank you. Or the gracious “thanks so much” for the beautiful birthday gift. Not even the more deeply appreciative or humbling gesture for a favor done, acknowledging our need for help.

Next week is Thanksgiving. It is an American holiday when we are mindful of the blessings in our lives. A day literally to give thanks to this country and great land of America for her kindness and opportunity.

What seems like second nature to us, expressing thanks, was originally taught in a complicated and painful way. Leah, our Biblical matriarch, is our teacher in giving thanks. It is a difficult story and lesson to read.

We know that Jacob’s true destined one and true love was Rachel. Leah was the older sister, who was technically married to Jacob but lived in the shadow of Jacob’s grand love for Rachel. The Torah acutely contrasts Jacob’s feelings for the two sisters as his love for Rachel surpasses his feelings for Leah.

Leah’s wound of feeling unloved by Jacob seeps out. The naming of her first three sons is a symbolic record of her raw and heartbreaking pain.

REUBEN, the eldest, as Leah herself expresses, is named for the emotional hope and prayer of “G-d has seen my pain” — Reuben, from the root ra’ah, to see. She adds on her wish that “now my husband will love me.”

Holding her first born child in her arms, all she can think about is her rejection, humiliation and affliction, to the point of naming her baby for her painful emotional state. The joy of birth and motherhood is eclipsed by her own pain of feeling invisible to Jacob.

Then comes her second son. This time Leah names her baby Simeon, from the root sh’ma, meaning listen! Leah tells us why she chooses this name, “because G-d heard that I was unloved.”

Leah’s third son is given the name Levi, from the word livui, meaning to accompany — thereby implying desire for attachment. In Leah’s words: “Now my husband will attach himself to me.”

How truly heartbreaking. The naming of Leah’s three eldest children is a coded cry of communication from her to Jacob! With Reuben, Leah is pleading and crying out, “I feel invisible! Please look at me!” With Simeon again she cries out in silence, “Please listen to me, pay attention to me!” Finally, with Levi, “Please, please, attach yourself to me.”

Then comes Leah’s fourth son. Judah. The wording is different. Even before we know the name she will bestow upon this child, Leah begins the baby naming with a prelude, “this time, ha-pa’am.”

Something has shifted, has changed. This time, “Ha-pa’am odeh et Hashem” — “this time I shall thank G-d.”

I will never know if anything changed in the relationship between Leah  and Jacob. What I do know, because the Torah is explicit about it, is that until this point in time Leah’s heart is bleeding. She is desperate for Jacob’s love. And her pain of feeling and being unloved reaches a feverish pitch in the naming of her third son, Simeon.

But somehow, despite her heartbreak, Leah manages to break through it. She shifts her relationship and core of emotion from Jacob to G-d.

IT didn’t come right away. Leah was honest about her pain. It may have taken three agonizing, lonely and painful births, but she shifted.

“Ha-pa’am.” This time, Leah turns to G-d, not Jacob. And with the birth of her fourth son, Judah, Leah says, quite simply: G-d, thank you. “Ha-pa’am odeh et Hashem.” Thank you, G-d.

Not when everything worked out, not when she saw the light of Jacob’s love at the end of her dark tunnel, did Leah shift. Leah says thank you when it is really hard. She chooses to be grateful instead of bitter.

Despite her disappointment and wish for things to be different, Leah, somehow, focuses on the blessing of the birth of Judah. She is no longer focused on Jacob in the namings. Now she turns to G-d.

“Tov lehodot la-Shem,” “it is good to have someone (Hashem) to say thank you to.”

WITH Leah’s thank you, with Leah’s Judah, Yehudah, she brought you and me and every Jew into existence. A Jew, a yehudi, a “Yid,” is who and what we are.

As Thanksgiving approaches, indeed we see that its concept resonates very much with Jewish teaching and essence.

In fact, the midrash teaches that Leah was the first on this earth who ever said thank you. What seems like matter-of-fact, obvious graciousness to us was novel at the time of Judah’s birth. Until Leah came along, no one had thanked G-d before.

So, whether you celebrate it on Thursday itself, or on the following Friday night together with Shabbos, enjoy the feast of Thanksgiving.

I must say, while Leah taught us how meaningful gratitude is, America has most certainly given us the cherished teaching of how tasty gratitude can be!

Bete’avon and Shabbat Shalom.

Copyright © 2010 by the Intermountain Jewish News