לבן הארמי

Laban the Aramean is the deceiver whom every generation mentions at the Seder night, and against whose deceit Jacob was forged. The brother of Rebecca and the father of Rachel and Leah, he received Jacob into his home and soon revealed his true face: he substituted Leah for Rachel under the wedding canopy, changed Jacob's wages 'ten times,' and pursued him when he fled.

In the Passover Haggadah we say 'go and learn what Laban the Aramean sought to do to Jacob our father, for Pharaoh decreed only against the males, but Laban sought to uproot everything.' The Sages saw in Laban an enemy more subtle than Pharaoh: not an open murderer but one who smiles and deceives, and seeks to destroy through cunning.

And yet, out of the hard years of labor in Laban's house, Jacob built his family, the twelve tribes. Laban's deceit became, by providence, the crucible in which the people of Israel was built. Though he sought to uproot, from his house came forth all the offspring of Jacob.

What do we learn from him, from the negative? That there is open evil and there is smiling, deceiving evil, and the second is more dangerous because it is hard to identify. Laban teaches that one must be alert to those who 'seek to uproot everything' through cunning, and that even out of years of deceit and hardship, by providence, a person can build what will endure for generations.