רבקה אמנו

Rebecca our mother was a girl by the well, and with one act of kindness she decided the fate of the nation. When Abraham's servant asked for water, she not only gave him drink but ran and watered his ten camels too, an act of enormous toil that revealed a heart without limit. There, at the well, she was chosen to be a mother.

But Rebecca was not kindness alone. She was also the mother who saw clearly what the rest of the household did not. She distinguished between Jacob and Esau while they were still in her womb, understood that the blessing must pass to Jacob, and when Isaac was about to err, she acted, even at the price of parting from her beloved son, who had to flee.

Here lies a difficulty tradition does not smooth over: a woman who seemingly deceived her blind husband. Yet the commentators teach that Rebecca bore a prophecy of her own ('and God said to her,' Genesis 25:23), and knew what Isaac did not. Her greatness was in the courage to act on the truth she saw, even when the personal price was the tearing of her own heart.

What do we learn from her? That kindness and wisdom are not two separate things, but two sides of the same greatness. Rebecca watered camels with an open heart, and with that same heart saw the future of the nation with cruel clarity. Sometimes a mother's greatest love is precisely the hard decision she takes upon herself, alone.