According to this midrash, the tribe of Issachar were Torah scholars, financially supported by the trade generated by the tribe of Issachar’s brother, Zevulun. Ephraim and Hannah Hareuveni, who arrived in Palestine in the early years of the 20th century, during the Second Aliyah, were the parents of the founder of Neot Kedumim, Noga Hareuveni.Įphraim Hareuveni’s choice of his new name was based on a midrash (Talmudic homily) regarding the birth of Leah’s two sons, Issachar and Zevulun, born after the bargain for Reuben’s mandrakes. It was during this period that Rubinovich changed his name to Hareuveni. ![]() Rubinovich went into hiding under an assumed name in Jerusalem, and later, at the invitation of the early Zionist thinker and leader Berl Katznelson, moved with his wife, Hannah, to Kibbutz Kineret, one of the first kibbutzim in Israel, where they stayed more or less in hiding. It is reminiscent of the old adage “man proposes and God disposes”, reflected in the popular Hebrew poem by Itzik Mangar, “Abraham and Sarah,” in which the matriarch Sarah asks Abraham when she will finally bear children, and Abraham answers his beloved wife “Rest assured, my love, if Gods wills it, then even a broom can shoot (like a rifle).”Ī 20th century postscript to the Biblical story of the mandrakes took place in 1916, when a young teacher of nature studies, Ephraim Rubinovich, teaching in Tel Aviv in the first Hebrew high school in the country, the Herzliya Hebrew Gymnasium, ran into serious trouble with the Ottoman authorities. One of the morals of this story is that the Lord determines what will be. Ironically, Rachel’s barter for the fertility-inducing mandrakes did not produce the immediate results she had hoped for because the birth of her beloved first son, Joseph, came only when “the Lord remembered Rachel and opened her womb” (Genesis 30:22), which was only after Leah bore not only Issachar but also two more children – a son, Zevulun, and a daughter, Dina. Leah is thrilled with the exchange and greets her husband when he returns from herding his flocks that evening telling him that “I have paid the payment for you (sachor-s’charticha) with my son’s mandrakes” (Genesis 30:16), and when a son, her fifth, is born of that night’s union, Leah names him Issachar because “the Lord has given me my payment (s’chari)” (Genesis 30:18). Rachel, knowing what her sister would accept in exchange for the mandrakes offers “tonight he (Jacob) will sleep with you in exchange for your son’s mandrakes” (Genesis 30:15). Leah’s response is furious: “Is it not enough that you have taken my husband, now you would take the mandrakes from my son as well?” (Genesis 30:14). Rachel, whose jealousy of her sister is so deep that she gives Jacob an ultimatum, “Give me children, or else I will die,” recognizes the opportunity and begs her sister for the mandrakes that Reuben found. So when Reuben finds the mandrakes in the field, he brings them to his mother as a charm to renew her fertility. Reuben understands that his mother’s greatest attribute in her husband’s eyes is no longer there, because at this point in the story she has ceased to bear children (Genesis 29:35). Leah’s eldest son is Reu-ben his name attests to his mother’s most heartfelt desire to be loved by Jacob, as Leah says, “the Lord has seen – “ra’ah” – my suffering and now my husband will love me” (Genesis 29:32). Rachel is cherished yet barren and Leah “despised” yet fertile, bearing Jacob many children. The relationship between the Patriarch Jacob’s two wives was extremely complex – two sisters sharing a husband. Our story begins during the summer wheat harvest: “And Reuben went out during the harvest and found mandrakes in the field, and he brought them to his mother Leah…” (Genesis 30:14). ![]() This low-growing plant is at the heart of a dramatic story that demonstrates the deep connection our biblical ancestors had with the flora of the Land of Israel. The quick blossoming and relatively early flowering of the mandrake is due to its thick root that stores minerals from previous seasons. This is the Autumn Mandrake (Mandragora autumnalis) a member of the Solanaceae, or Nightshade, family (which includes other, more familiar, plants such as eggplant, potato and tobacco). As the Hebrew month of Tevet begins, the hills and valleys of Israel are covered with an abundance of green, and here and there between the rocks one stumbles upon a circlet of large, dark green leaves, surrounding a cluster of small, bell-shaped, purple flowers.
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