Parshat Toldot: Rivka’s Journey to Claiming Her Own Relationship With God

by Rabba Claudia Marbach class of '18

As the mother of a mother who is expecting twins, I am curious about my daughter’s reaction to the oncoming tsunami of emotion and change. Any shaking up of a family, whether anticipated or not, brings a reordering of relations, reallocation of labor, and questions about work-life balance. Rivka, the Torah’s ultimate twin mom, teaches us that for an expectant mother, the change is not only about relationships. It is also about fundamentally figuring out how to preserve one’s own identity—and perhaps a moment to claim a personal bond with God. 

After years of infertility, Rivka did not feel that she could directly ask God for a baby; she had no direct relationship. So she asked her husband Yitzchak to pray for her. The Torah tells us that he pleaded to God and she conceived. Her pregnancy was difficult, worse than the “normal” stresses of a double pregnancy, according to Ibn Ezra. The Torah says that in her belly the fetuses “vayitrotzetzu,” a word that can mean that they either “oppressed” or “crushed” each other. Overwhelmed and probably in pain, an exasperated Rivka asked, “Im ken, lama zeh anochi,” “If so, why do I exist?” (Bereishit 25:22). 

The text does not tell us whether she said this quietly or out loud, or whether anyone else was there to hear it. Most simply, it seems, she was asking herself. Our commentators search far and wide to pin down the circumstances of this odd question. Many assume that her question was just about physical distress. Rashi understands it as a complaint, that she regretted even wanting to become pregnant. 

But the question was the start of something new. It seems to have prompted Rivka to act in a way that, for her, was unprecedented. The continuation of the pasuk says “vatelech lidrosh et Hashem,” that she went out to seek God. Rivka could have prayed at home. But the commentators explain that she was instead compelled to wander. If the twins had not made her so uncomfortable, Rav Saadia Gaon explains, she would have continued on without searching. Bereishit Rabba 63 says that she went around to local women’s houses asking if her state was normal. It was not. When she passed the temples of Avoda Zara (idol worship) on her walk, one fetus clamored to get out, the midrash says, and when she passed the Yeshiva of Shem v’Ever, the other one did. Perhaps her unborn children reflected Rivka’s state of mind: just on the cusp of bringing new life into the world, she was attempting to sort through her own theology. 

The Talmud (Avodah Zara 11b) says that during her wanderings, Rivka approached Shem, the founder of the yeshiva and a prophet, for advice. He reassured her that her children would be great leaders. In contrast, Gur Aryeh imagines Rivka taking time to sit alone on a hill in private contemplation. Only then, he says, does Rivka finally approach God directly—and intentionally. The word ‘anochi,’ that Rivka used early on (Bereishit 25:22), seems to have foreshadowed her evolution, from being afraid to talk to God herself to boldly addressing God directly. That same word ‘anochi’ is used by Adam after eating of the tree of knowledge and by Kayin after killing his brother, suggesting that it is the language of self-awareness. Or perhaps it signifies accepting a mission, in the way that it was used by Avraham and later Moshe. Having asked the local women and yeshiva leader, ultimately Rivka decided to forge a relationship with God independent of others. This, to her, is what it meant to rise to the challenge of motherhood. 

Radically—and perhaps, to Rivka, miraculously—God responds. The mother-to-be had just come to a new land, joined a new family, and taken on the leadership mantle of her mother-in-law Sarah. Even Sarah, whose legacy she surely admired, was not recorded to have had a conversation directly with God. Here, God tells Rivka that the twins she is carrying will be the progenitors of two great leaders, and that the older will be subservient to the younger (Bereishit 25:23). The Bechor Shor explains that to Rivka this was a reprieve: she was supposed to be the mother of all 12 tribes but because her pregnancy was so bad God was sparing her that pain. Instead of ten more, God tells Rivka that only two nations will come from her directly, reassuring her that she and her twins would survive this ordeal.

Contemporary commentator Anat Yisraeli, in Dirshuni, suggests  that when Rivka entered Sarah’s tent, when she first came from Haran, she understood that Avraham’s God was also the God of Sarah as well. Perhaps Rivka’s quiet hilltop supplication was the moment when she too became part of that legacy and claimed her place as a matriarch of her family and of the Jewish people. 

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Rabba Claudia Marbach, Maharat class of 2018, is the director of Teen Beit Midrash of Hebrew College. She is a coach for the Pedagogy of Partnership, teaches a weekly Daf Yomi class for women on Zoom and writes a parsha blog at ​​https://rabbaclaudia.substack.com/.