The Need to Support Survivors of Abuse

(1) Now Dinah, the daughter whom Leah had borne to Jacob, went out to visit the daughters of the land. (2) Shechem son of Hamor the Hivite, chief of the country, saw her, and took her and lay with her by force. (3) Being strongly drawn to Dinah daughter of Jacob, and in love with the maiden, he spoke to the maiden tenderly.

וישכב אותה ויענה, “he slept with her and subsequently abused her.” According to Rashi the word וישכב describes normal intercourse, whereas the word ויענהdescribes a more perverted method of sexual intercourse. Ibn Ezra understands the word ויענה as describing the pain involved in her having intercourse as she had been a virgin. Nachmanides writes that there is no need for all these explanations, seeing that any intercourse in which the woman is being raped is described in the Bible as עינוי, i.e. that is the meaning of the word ויעניה. In this instance, intercourse by mutual consent appears to have preceded the rape. The opposite was the case in the rape of Tamar by her half-brother Amnon. (Samuel II 13). There the rape is mentioned before the sexual intercourse. Some commentators suggest that Dinah had first been seduced, whereas Amnon never bothered to seduce Tamar.

(31) But they answered, “Should our sister be treated like a whore?”

(1) הכזונה implies as one unprotected. (2) אחותנו The Targum renders it as an accusative — ית אחתנא “our sister”,) so that the meaning is: Should one (be permitted to) make our sister become as a woman who has no-one to protect her (Genesis Rabbah 80:12).

Notwithstanding that the blowing of the ram's horn trumpet on Rosh ha-Shanah is a Scriptural statute, its blast is symbolic, as if saying: "Ye that sleep, bestir yourselves from your sleep, and ye slumbering, emerge from your slumber, examine your conduct, turn in repentance, and remember your Creator! They that forget the truth because of the vanities of the times, who err all of their years by pursuing vanity and idleness, which are of neither benefit nor of salvation, care for your souls, improve your ways and your tendencies, let each one of you abandon his evil path and his thought which is not pure! It is, therefore, necessary for every man to behold himself throughout the whole year in a light of being evenly balanced between innocence and guilt, and look upon the entire world as if evenly balanced between innocence and guilt; thus, if he commit one sin, he will overbalance himself and the whole world to the side of guilt, and be a cause of its destruction; but if he perform one duty, behold, he will overbalance himself and the whole world to the side of virtue, and bring about his own and their salvation and escape, even as it is said: "But the righteous is an everlasting foundation" (Prov. 10. 25), it is he, by whose righteousness he overbalanced the whole world to virtue and saved it. And, because of this matter, it became the custom of the whole house of Israel to excel in alms-giving, in good conduct and in the performance of duties during the intervening days of Rosh ha-Shanah and Yom ha-Kippurim above what they do during the whole year. It also became a universal custom to rise early during those ten days, to deliver in the synagogues prayers of supplication and ardor till the dawn of the day.