Bilhah, Zilpah, and the Dangerous Allure of "Girl Boss" Feminism

Parshat Vayetzei

I remember, as a kid, feeling disturbed by one part of Parshat Vayetzei, the marriages of Rachel and Leah.

Lavan tells Ya'akov that he must work for seven years in order to marry Rachel. However, under the chuppah, Lavan deceives Ya'akov and tricks him into marrying Leah instead.

This troubled me. How could Yaakov not have recognized that he was marrying the wrong woman? My cheder teachers explained that Rachel and Leah wore thick veils so that nobody could see their faces.

The French commentator, Hizkuni, attempts to explain how Yaakov could wake up in the morning and only then realize he was with Leah, not Rachel. He writes:

Leah's father marries her off to a man who is in love with her sister because it's good for business. Ya'akov goes along with it, not uttering a word to Leah or asking how she's doing their entire wedding night. It's humiliating and dehumanizing. 

While Leah and Rachel's marriages are frequently discussed in Jewish tradition, there are two other women in this week's parsha who are often overlooked.

Earlier this week, I joined a Torah study led by my friend Erica Riddick, who is the director of Jews of Color Sanctuary. For the past few years, she's been working on a Black feminist approach of the stories of Bilhah and Zilpah, the enslaved women who are "given" by Lavan to Rachel and Leah.

The standard interpretation of this pasuk is that Lavan had a slave, Zilpah, whom he gave to Leah when she got married. However, Chizuni offers a different reading, understanding the phrase בִתּוֹ שִׁפְחָה as describing Zilpah, "his daughter, the maidservant." In other words, Lavan had children with one of the women he enslaved. He then gave those daughters, Bilhah and Zilpah, as slaves to his higher-status daughters, Rachel and Leah.  Either way, Bilhah and Zilpah are treated as chattel. We never hear their voices, only stories of their roles as slaves who are bred at the whim of their masters.

There' is a clear pattern in the story of Bilhah and Zilpa. Every time Rachel and Leah lose their control over their own lives, the very next pasuk, Bilhah or Zilpah are given new, dehumanizing orders. When Leah is married off to Ya'akov, Zilpah is sent to a new master. When Rachel struggles to conceive, Bilhah is handed over to Ya'akov as a surrogate, mirroring the story of Sara and Hagar.  Not once during these stories to we hear Bilhah or Zilpah speak.

Sara, Rachel, and Leah all share a pattern. They are dehumanized, mistreated, and reduced to their roles as potential mothers. The way they claw back a tiny amount of power is by controlling the only people they have power over-- the slave women in their households.

In our own lives, we may sometimes feel trapped by circumstances beyond our control. We work tirelessly while others seem to effortlessly succeed due to nepotism or wealth. In these moments, it may be tempting to regain some power at the expense of underpaid service workers or the immigrant women who carry the burden of care work in our country. As countless Black feminist writers have pointed out, that is the essence of white, "girl-boss" feminism: the drive to get to the top, even if it means stepping on working-class women to get there.

The traditional reception of this week's parsha serves as a reminder of how easy it is to disregard the struggles of women like Bilhah and Zilpah. They're rarely mentioned in commentaries, midrash, or the Talmud. However, there is one text that recognizes them in an unexpected way:

According to the authors of this midrash, there are six matriarchs, not just four. We, the Jewish people, are descended from Bilhah and Zilpah just as much as we are descended from Rachel and Leah. 

It is our responsibility to uplift their stories, as Erica is doing in the Bilhah and Zilpah project, and to create a world where everyone has safety, resources, and agency to shape their own lives. This could mean acknowledging and supporting the invisibilized workers sewing t-shirts in slavery-like conditions. It could mean fighting for fair wages so that carers can sustain their families without working double shifts. It could mean pushing for better parental and family leave policies or doing mutual aid to support unhoused families.

As Maya Angelou and Emma Lazarus remind us, none of us can be free until everybody is free.