Vayishlach 5770: Dinah's Rape and the Missing Halakah

I lied a few weeks ago. I had mentioned that I was not going to write about myself nor write over 1000 words, yet this week requires me to break both of those. We read many stories this week, starting with Jacob wrestling with an angel, and then the meeting with Esau, and a genealogy of Esau. Yet, in the middle is a story which had both fascinated and plagued me for all eight years I've been writing

1. And Dinah the daughter of Leah, whom she bore to Jacob, went out to see the daughters of the land.
2. And when Shechem the son of Hamor the Hivite, prince of the country, saw her, he took her, and lay with her, and defiled her.[Genesis 34]

My story isn't Dinah's but it is close. I was sexually assaulted by five of my fellow seventh graders when I was 13 as some kind of prank. Thirty years later, I'm still trying to make sense of what happened. As I've written before, it was only a kiss, but being pinned down against your will and being kissed on the cheek is not your normal kiss. As I've learned since then, trauma is trauma, violation is violation. It is not just the physical act as much as the emotional and mental component. Some thing, anything done against one's will is wrong, is rape.

In talking to many who either have had my experience and even a few in law enforcement who have had to deal with the victims, I've learned something. the reaction of Jacob to the rape of her daughter is rather common.

5. And Jacob heard that he had defiled Dinah his daughter; and his sons were with his cattle in the field; and Jacob held his peace until they came.[Genesis 34]

He does nothing, he is described as holding his peace. He did not even show he was upset by this. After Simeon and Levi do take things into their own hands and slaughter all the males of the rapist's town, including the rapist Jacob still cant talk about Dinah:

30. And Jacob said to Simeon and Levi, You have brought trouble on me to make me odious among the inhabitants of the land, among the Canaanites and thePerizzites ; and I being few in number, they shall gather together against me, and slay me; and I shall be destroyed, I and my house.[Genesis 34]

Recently, I've had a chance to think about this again. I began to think about Jacob's silence, remembering a rather disturbing discussion a few years ago where I heard many people appalled at a former policeman's comment that getting a testimony from a parent or relative of a rape victim is near impossible. All too often they do as Jacob did and say it was noting, or don't even acknowledge that the victim actually did anything. If they do it is often in the same way as the rapist himself will rationalize the act: Dinah asked for it. Even theMidrash says she asked for it.

R. Berekiah said in R. Levi's name: This may be compared to one who was holding a pound of meat in his hand, and as soon as he exposed it a bird swooped down and snatched it away. Similarly, AND DINAH THE DAUGHTER OF LEAH WENT OUT, and forthwith, ANDSHECHEM THE SON OF HAMOR SAW HER.[Genesis Rabbah LXXX:6]

In some cases, family believe she asked for it so much she is likened to a prostitute. Indeed one Midrash even says "Like mother like daughter". Leah sold the mandrakes in order to have sex with Jacob, and thus her daughter acted like a harlot. [Gen Rabbah LXXX:1] But Her brothers Simeon and Levi's response, while violent and arguably barbaric, was in refutation of this. They respond to their father "Should he deal with our sister as with a harlot?" rejecting that she was. She was family and needed protection ans much as any other family member. Their slaughter ofShechem brought their father's ire against them at the end if Jacob's life, referring to them as "instruments of cruelty" [Gen 49:5] when they did not buythier father's position in protecting a sibling.
There is too many silent voices in the narrative. There is the voice of Dinah, who never speaks. There is a rabbinic interpretation that she married Job, and thus in her own bitterness she told Job to curse God and get it over with. [Job 2:9] There is also the relatively silent voice of Jacob, who only complains about international relations and not his daughter. For many years I've wondered something else. There is an abundance of words by the rabbis, yet besides the financial support issues of a rape victim, the victim is ignored. Talmud attributes a rape as the same thing as minor civil damages in the courts, needing only a court of three. [Sanhedrin 2a] Where is there a guide to heal? The text is strangely silent.
Why it was silent has bothered me. From my own experience I think I know part of the answer. I've been healing for thirty years now, along the way making some very bad steps and mistakes in the healing. In college I dated someone who was raped by a family member. Apparently she kept taking out her pain out on her lovers and abusing them to get even. Yet when I finally realized what she was doing, and broke off the relationship, I found out something else. I was suddenly and totally alone. No one believed me that she abused people, or more specifically me. I was the one in the wrong in my friends opinion, and I was squeezed out of their lives. The last semester of college is one of the most distasteful time in my life. Without my friends of four years, I felt totally alone, and blaming myself for this disaster.
There a silence I've only noted in the past few hours, though it has been there for weeks -- my own. With Sweetie in my life, I'm having a healthier, happier life than I have ever known. Writing today, I realized something about myself. I want to protect her from this part of me, from the damaged part of me. I've never told Sweetie this, because somewhere deep inside I didn't want her to think it's something she did wrong. Instead I instinctively hide inside of me my terror, and panic. I'm sure I'm not the only one who hides their pain from a trusted loved one in silence.
Over and over again there is this nagging silence. There is of course another silence. Most of the current research estimates one six boys will be sexually assaulted in some way before their 18th birthday. Yet until very recently, this was the biggest silence of all, so much so this may be an underestimate. Women can be thought of victims, but men are not allowed in any form to be a victim, particularly around sexuality. To do so is a sense of weakness that family friends and one's individual identity cannot handle, The weak excuses thrown at Dinah, do not work with men the same way they work with women. In men to be sexually assaulted by a woman is almost a fantasy initiation. To be sexually assaulted by a man is to question the survivor's sexual orientation. To bring any of this to the surface is so counter to what society expects of a man, gay or straight there is a horrible silence.
Even the rabbis are caught by this silence, and my 8-year search for Dinah's Halakah, the Halakah of the survivor is a fruitless search. They too did not want to admit such things, and bought the old lines, as shown by Midrash that rapists, and families of rape and abuse victims have used for thousands of years to silence the issue. They go further and intellectualize it, and make it more about commodities than healing the soul. The silence is understandable from them, though not forgivable.
I have found a large component of the Halakah of the survivor by the way. Knowing that the Rabbis were incapable of doing something about it, I moved from the classical sources to my own experience. I've felt the bitterness of the wife of Job, whether she was Dinah or not. She, became so bitter because she could not express what she needed to. There is only one way out of this, and it is mind bogglingly hard to do: find some people you can trust, people who can empathize, and tell them. This is not easy as trust is one of the most shattered things of all in such cases. Walking that path to healing is the only one that works: the silence must be broken, the grief must spill out. It is a difficult path. There will be many who will fail in such trust, many friendships destroyed, as I know too personally. Every time I write about this, I have that fear myself, How many people will now shun me for not being strong enough to subdue four boys who each outweighed me, and one girl's peck on my cheek. How many, in not knowing what to say to me about my experience, in their own discomfort will never talk to me again? How many will say something crass and demeaning? I cannot know, but I have learned it is not good to be silent, it is not good for man to be alone.