Parsha Corner: Vayishlach – Kiddie Sponge

The Torah in this week’s Parsha describes the terrible episode about how Dina, “the daughter of Leah,” was kidnapped and violated by Shechem. Rashi explains that the reason the Torah specifically calls her “the daughter of Leah” as opposed to “the daughter of Yakov” is to teach us that it was from Leah that Dina learned to have a super slight lack of tznius, which is what led her to go exploring on the day she was taken.

Rashi explains that Leah’s super slight lack of tznius expressed itself in last week’s Parsha when she came to greet Yakov Avinu to let him know that she had traded her “dudadim” in exchange for Rachel’s turn to have Yakov sleep in her tent.

Chazal tells us that even though her intentions were filled with kedusha, she should have nevertheless not gone out to greet him because it wasn’t “appropriate.”

Rav Hennach Leibowitz z”l saw from this small Rashi a very BIG and powerful lesson in chinuch. Because even though Dina was growing up in the home of Yakov Avinu and her mother and stepmothers were the Imahos, a home which was surely saturated with Torah, in the ocean of all that positive influence, a drop of bad seeped in. Dina picked up on it, and it came out in this very unfortunate way.

We must appreciate the lesson of this Rashi and know that we can’t hide from our kids. Our children are way more receptive than we give them credit for and soak up the good together with the bad. They see with pristine clarity what about us is genuine and what is fake.

You can try to overpower the bad with good, but it’s not batul b’rov.

Have a wonderful Shabbos!
Rabbi Anton
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