For years, Leah’s figure has both fascinated and unsettled me. We all grew up enchanted by Rachel – the beautiful one, the woman Jacob loved at first sight, the embodiment of the dream. She is the vision that ignites superhuman strength, the kind of love that enables Jacob to roll the heavy stone from the mouth of the well with ease, a feat that all the shepherds together could not accomplish.
But Leah?
Leah was the inner world, the intrinsic essence. In Yiddish, there is a word – tsinzach – to be la’inyan, to do what truly needs to be done. That is Leah: the quiet core of the story. She is the steady heartbeat beneath the narrative, the one who builds the foundations upon which life continues.
Human beings tend to cling to the extrinsic, to what dazzles and captivates the imagination. Rachel embodies the beauty of longing, the luminous vision that draws the heart forward and fills life with aspiration. Her presence in our tradition is the noble ideal: the hope that inspires, the tenderness that accompanies unfulfilled dreams, the love that continues to echo across generations.
Leah, by contrast, represents the grounded substance of life – birth, continuity, home, labor, and presence. She is the one who holds together the quiet spaces where meaning is crafted day by day. And in the end, it is Leah – the woman of depth and steadfastness – who lies beside Jacob in the Cave of the Patriarchs.
Rachel, whose life was marked by devotion, sacrifice, and yearning, remains on the road, the beloved mother whose tears and compassion continue to watch over her children in exile.
Leah’s story is steeped in emotional complexity. She names her sons with a heartbreaking clarity that reflects her experience – feelings of rejection, invisibility, and the silent pain of a woman unloved. Each name is a testimony to her inner world. But with her fourth son, Judah, something transformative occurs. She pauses and declares:
“This time I will praise the Lord.”
This is more than gratitude; it is a shift of consciousness. It marks the moment she stops measuring herself through Jacob’s eyes and begins to find worth and meaning within her own soul.
And from that inner turning point – from a wound transfigured into gratitude – emerges the promise of redemption: the lineage of David, the messianic future.
It is Leah – not Rachel – who becomes the mother of enduring hope.
People often gravitate toward the figure of Messiah ben Joseph – the dream that dies young, the beauty that remains unfulfilled, the ideal that slips away just before it materializes. But Messiah ben David, the true redemption, grows out of Leah’s world: the world of perseverance, depth, quiet resilience, and inner work.
For our own time, Leah invites us to step away from the fixation on illusions – on perfection, glamour, and unattainable ideals. She teaches us to value the intrinsic: the slow work of building a life, the quiet victories, the transformation of pain into meaning. She shows us that genuine growth takes place not in the spotlight but in the hidden chambers of the heart.
Leah is not merely a biblical figure.
She is a mirror – reflecting the tension between what dazzles and what endures, between image and essence, between the life we idealize and the life we live.
And ultimately, she teaches us something profound:
Redemption is born from the inner world – not from the glitter of impossible dreams.
Leah’s message for our times after Oct. 7
Illusions shattered by October 7
After October 7, when illusions shattered and the ground beneath us trembled, Leah’s quiet strength speaks to us with renewed urgency. She reminds us that survival – and eventually renewal – does not emerge from fantasies or from the heroic narratives we admire from afar. It comes from the inner reservoirs of a people who know how to endure, to rebuild, and to transform suffering into purpose.
In a moment when we found ourselves stripped of certainties, confronted with grief, fear, and moral complexity, Leah invites us to reclaim the intrinsic:
The steadfastness of community, the unseen acts of courage, the compassion that grows in the shadows, the gratitude that allows life to continue even when the heart is broken.
Leah teaches us that redemption after trauma will not come through dazzling victories or sudden miracles. It will arise – slowly, quietly, irrevocably – from the depth of our collective spirit:
From the mothers who hold their families together.
From the teachers who create islands of stability for children in chaos.
From the quiet acts of solidarity, generosity, and resilience that do not make headlines but rebuild the world from within.
Her legacy tells us that our future will be shaped not by illusion, but by inner strength – by the Leah-like courage to keep praising, to keep building, to keep believing in redemption even when the landscape is marked by loss.
In the shadow of October 7, Leah stands beside us and whispers:
Do not be captivated by what dazzles. Choose what endures.
The writer is head of Sal Van Gelder Center for Holocaust Instruction and Research, in the Faculty of Education, Bar-Ilan University.