Philia is the Greek word for a type of fraternal love....they named a while after the Jews may have perfected it.
I love VaYishlach. It's really the
most pro-brother passage of anything ever. It starts with a great
reconciliation of the two brothers Jacob [Israel] and Esau. And we
get to see how worried and scared Jacob is going into it and I can
only imagine that Esau was also feeling a cascade of emotions as he
crossed the desert. I wonder if Esau was going into it still enraged
for having been cheated time and again as a younger man, and maybe
the strata of petitioning that Jacob [Israel] sent before him
assuaged his anger. Maybe he was over his anger by the time he left.
Maybe in a very Karma sort of way, Jacob was paying Esau back what he
would have gained had he had his birthright and blessing. Regardless,
the meeting is so powerful that the men weep. Then they get back to
being manly and separate again to meet later in a more orderly
fashion.
On the way we hear of the one daughter
in a sea of brothers from a sea of mothers. Dinah seeks female
friends in the city and gets raped by the local prince. It's not
great, but the prince proclaims his love for her and seeks her father
for her hand in marriage. Historically that is the just act in the
face of rape. It's the worst rule ever to marry your rapist, but
that's what the proper next step would be, Dinah has no say. I'm also
going to keep using Dinah's name, ad nauseum, because so few women
get named in the bible and it's crap because there are plenty of
ladies.
And here is why I truly connect with
this passage. Because Dinah's brothers remind me greatly of my own.
The brothers hear about his and storm in on the meeting. And proclaim
that they'd love to unite families and tribes and regions, if only
the locals will adhere to the practice of circumcision. And in the
rapist's defense, he apparently loves his victim so much that he
agrees and convinces his entire kingdom to take the cut. Two of the
11 brothers find even this insufficient and decide, while the town is
recovering from their new commitment, to slaughter all the menfolk.
Then the other brothers pillage, because if everyone is dead, we
might as well snag their swag. Jacob, who was satisfied with the
'just' arrangement, chastises the brothers.
Their response?
“Should our sister be treated like a
whore?”
I get chills at this line every time.
Firstly, because word-for-word, it could issue from the mouths of my
brothers. And also because in a book and society that was
contextually so groundbreaking in it's treatment of women, they
challenge this practice, which I'm sure at the time seemed very
pro-lady. They said that rape was wrong and women, at least their
sister, cannot be sold as a body. Cannot be violated because she
is our sister who is literally worth more than a city of penises.
Vengence isn't the best thing to get
behind but maybe sometimes the love and emotions fueling it are.
