When Jacob began to give over to his sons his final blessings and thoughts before his death he started with Reuven: “Reuven, you are my first born, my strength and my first vigor, foremost in rank and foremost in power. Unstable like water – you can not excel, because you went up on your fathers bed and defiled it…” In this statement Jacob informs Reuven that although he is the first born, his rash action of changing his fathers bed from the tent of Bilhah to the tent of his mother Leah, has caused him to lose the privileges of being the first born.
Although Reuven’s actions were impetuous, he believed he was defending the honor of his mother. After Rachel died Jacob moved his bed into the tent of Bilhah, the handmaiden of Rachel. Reuven felt it was more proper for Jacob to have moved his bed into the tent of his mother Leah. Although he sincerely repented, it was deemed by Jacob not to be the right action of a future leader, as the first born is meant to be.
In fact, we see two other incidents where Reuven also acts with a lack of determination and touch of instability – when Joseph is sold and when Jacob refuses to allow Benjamin to descend to Egypt with the rest of the brothers out of fear for his safety. In the first case he initially convinced the brothers not to kill Joseph, and rather to throw him in a pit. Yet he is unable to follow through and actually save him from being sold. In the second case he pledges to protect Benjamin and if anything happened to him Jacob could kill his sons, a somewhat of an extreme promise.
The question becomes – what is the source of Reuvan’s instability and inability to translate his great potential.
We have discussed a number of times in previous Torah portions the Talmudic statement – “the actions of the fathers are a sign to the children” and how not only are their actions held up as examples to be emulated, but that their deeds actually carved their characteristics into the Jewish psyche and paved the way for all Jewish history to follow. In the case of Reuven we actually see an even deeper manifestation of this idea in that even the thoughts of the fathers created the reality of their children.
Reuven was conceived on Jacob’s wedding night and according to tradition it was literally his first seed, as hinted to in the beginning of his words to Reuven: “you are my first born, my strength and my first vigor.” His potential then was very great. Yet, we know that Laban switched his daughters that night and although Jacob thought he was having relations with Rachel, in fact he was having relations with Leah.
We are taught that it is forbidden to be thinking of someone else during intimate relations. In addition, we are taught that the thoughts we have during relations has a major impact on the soul that is conceived from that union. We can now understand the source of Reuven’s instability being the real confusion surrounding his actual conception! This also helps us understand how Reuven changing his fathers bed was a deeply unconscious act tied to the very source of his being conceived in the confusion of whose bed Jacob was actually in on his wedding night.
There is in this understanding a crucial lesson for each and every person regarding the impact and consequences of his or her actions, speech and even thought. We simply have no idea the far reaching consequences our deeds can really have. The greater the person the greater the responsibility he or she has to realize the power of their actions.
This is especially true regarding our own children. We see so many times how children are deeply affected by their parent’s personality traits, habits and attitudes. Children either replicate, compensate, reject or rectify their parents history, but in all cases are intimately tied to their parents thoughts, speech and actions.
Knowing this should give us all reason to pause and think twice before speaking, acting and even thinking.
