As two sisters whose fate was to marry the same man, the story of Rachel and Leah is rife with deception and betrayal, unbearable jealousy but also selfless acts of sisterly love.

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We read this story again each year in the month of Cheshvan — and it’s remarkable how the wisdom they embody can still teach us so much about our own struggles with friendship and rivalry, even three thousand years later.

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Their story begins at a well. Fittingly, since the month of Cheshvan is associated with the element of water! Rachel, the younger daughter of Laban, comes to water her father’s flocks just as Jacob arrives in town — he’s been running from home ever since winning his birthright through trickery from his brother Esau. When he learns that Rachel is his cousin (Laban is the brother of Jacob’s mother Rebecca), he kisses her and collapses into tears, so grateful to have found family in a strange land.

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But Cheshvan is also the month of the Akrav in the Jewish Zodiac — the scorpion, whose bitter bite brings the sting of jealousy. And though Jacob falls in love with Rachel, their romance is star-crossed almost at once.

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The issue is, Laban has another daughter, Leah. And because Leah is older, Laban plans to have her marry first. He tells Jacob that he can work for him for seven years in exchange for Rachel’s hand, but he secretly plans to switch his daughters’ places on the night of the wedding. According to the Rabbis of the Talmud, Rachel is wise to her father’s ways and warns Jacob that Laban will try to deceive him. They come up with a system of “secret signs” to prove that Rachel will be the one under the bridal veil (Bava Batra 123a:19).

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Yet after the wedding night, we read, “When morning came, there was Leah!” (Genesis 29:25). So why didn’t the signs work? The Talmud explains that when the girls were switched, Rachel was so pained at the thought of her sister’s humiliation that she told her the secret signs out of love for her (Bava Batra 123a:20). Rachel didn’t want her sister to lose face, even though it meant watching her sister embark on the life she herself had dreamed of.

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It’s not long before jealousy creeps in for both Rachel and Leah, even after Rachel’s act of selflessness. Jacob immediately calls Laban a deceiver and demands to be allowed to marry Rachel, too. According to one Rabbinic tradition, he accuses Leah of being party to the deception: “He said to her, ‘You are a deceiver, daughter of a deceiver! Did I not call you Rachel at night and you answered me?’” Leah, not one to take this lying down, claps back, “Did your father not call you Esau and you answered him?” (Bereshit Rabbah 70:19). Leah (and the Rabbis) point out Jacob’s own hypocrisy — in some ways, the swapping of Leah for Rachel is Jacob’s comeuppance for pretending to be Esau.

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But Rachel and Leah aren’t just pawns to teach Jacob a lesson — they’re real women, with real feelings. And Leah’s feelings are hurt when she sees that Jacob still loves Rachel, and not her. Genesis contrasts Rachel’s “beauty” with Leah’s “weak eyes” (29:17), which we often take to mean that Rachel was prettier, and therefore Jacob’s favorite. But the Rabbis complicate this reading; they teach us that Leah knew all along that Rachel was destined to marry Jacob and that she was supposed to have married Esau (Bava Batra 123a:15–16). Leah ruined her eyes weeping for divine mercy when she learned that her match was “evil and robbed people,” while her sister’s intended was “quiet” and gentle (Bereshit Rabbah 70:16).

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We can find a deep sympathy for Leah in this story — she’s not deceiving Jacob just to steal what her sister has, but because she wants a chance at being loved by a kind and gentle man.

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Unluckily for Leah, Laban agrees to let Jacob marry Rachel, too (in exchange for another seven years of work). This is where the jealousy really reaches a fever pitch. The Torah doesn’t shy away from telling us that Jacob “loved Rachel more than Leah” (Genesis 29:30). The Divine sees that Leah is “unloved,” and so opens her womb and gives her sons, while Rachel struggles with years of infertility (Genesis 29:31). Now both women are unhappy — Leah is jealous of Jacob’s love for Rachel, and Rachel is jealous of Leah’s children. What follows is many years of grueling, painful competition to see who can bear the most children, and, by extension, win their husband’s favor.

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We could read this as a cautionary tale. Interpersonally, the women’s envy destroyed them both. It almost destroyed their family too — their children internalized their mothers’ jealousy and turned against each other. Joseph (Rachel’s firstborn) was eventually sold into servitude in Egypt by his brothers — which would never have happened if the brothers had all seen one another as equals. 

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But there’s a glimmer of hope in this story, an act of sisterly love that Leah repaid to Rachel, even if it might have come too late to change the course of their sons’ futures.

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This episode takes place when Leah had already had six sons, and Rachel had none. The Rabbis of the Talmud believed that Leah had a prophetic vision and knew that Jacob was destined to have twelve sons which would become the twelve tribes. The maidservants Bilhah and Zilpah had borne another four sons between them, leaving only two more boys yet to be born. Rav Yosef teaches that when Leah became pregnant for a seventh time, she said, “If my child is male, my sister Rachel will not even be the equivalent of one of the maidservants.” By a miracle, the child was transformed in her womb into a girl — and Leah named her Dinah (דינה) because she had passed judgment, din (דין), on herself (Berakhot 60a:12).

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The Rabbis don’t say whether Rachel ever learned of her sister’s choice to help her become a matriarch of the Twelve Tribes. Their competition certainly didn’t end there. But this story teaches us that even amid their bitterest jealousy, they still shared an unconditional love.

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All of us struggle with jealousy at some point. On one hand, jealousy can tell us something powerful about our own heart’s true desires. It can also stifle our capacity to practice selfless love. From a jealous place, we can inflict pain on others. 

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The truth is, jealousy is never about the other person; it is about ourselves. The aim is to remember our sacred worth, to feel secure in ourselves, without comparison.

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In the end, both Rachel and Leah had everything they wanted: the man of their dreams and thirteen healthy children. Perhaps all they were missing was an honest conversation about jealousy: what it is, why it shows up, and how to let it go. 

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At The Well uplifts many approaches to Jewish practice. Our community draws on ancient Jewish wisdom, sometimes adapting longstanding practices to more deeply support the well-being of women and nonbinary people. See this article’s sources below. We believe Torah (sacred teachings) are always unfolding to help answer the needs of the present moment.

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Sources

Rachel and Leah, Aish.com

Rachel and Leah: Two Destinies, Two Worlds, Chabad.org

Leah: Midrash and Aggadah, Jewish Women’s Archive

Rachel: Midrash and Aggadah, Jewish Women’s Archive

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