Far and away the best prize that life offers is the chance to work hard at work worth doing.
Thomas Jefferson
The birth of Issachar marked a fundamental shift for Leah. His name reflected Leah’s newfound confidence with her role in the family, and his personality strongly exhibited all the promise contained in his name: the obedience and the diligence of a hired hand, contentedness with his work, and ample reward. We find scholarship and wisdom in Issachar, and also a deep connection to the simple joys of farming. After “bending his shoulder to the burden,” Issachar “rejoiced in his tents,” basking in the synthesis of darkei ha-aretz with talmud Torah.
Since much of his personality was forged by his very conception, we must begin with Leah.
Leah’s Reward
After the birth of Judah, Leah’s fourth son, “Leah ceased from giving birth.” Upon realizing that she was suffering from secondary infertility, Leah followed her sister’s initiative, and gave Jacob her maidservant Zilpah, as Rachel had given him Bilhah (see chapter 8 on Dan). She was determined to produce more children for Jacob, even if her body was not cooperating. The text is explicit that this was her initiative, not a suggestion of Jacob: “When Leah saw that she had stopped bearing, she took her maid Zilpah and gave her to Jacob as concubine” (Genesis 30:9).
Why, after bearing a respectable number of children herself, was Leah driven in the emotionally wrenching1“אין אשה מתקנאה אלא בירך חבירתה.” Megillah 13a. direction of pressing her husband to sleep with yet another woman? It is a testament to her steely determination to move forward, a hint of her insistence that all was not yet right with her role as a matriarch – that she must be the matriarch, the head wife who produced children regularly for her husband, in stark contrast to her beautiful, tragic sister Rachel who remained barren. This was Leah’s self-definition: my husband is bound to me because I mother most of his children.
The matriarchs knew that each was to produce three. When Leah bore a fourth son [Judah], she exclaimed: This time I will praise the Lord.
Genesis Rabbah 71:4
This midrash taught that each of the intended partners of Jacob somehow realized that she was meant to bear equal shares of his intended twelve sons. The midrash here used this device to afford us a glimpse into Leah’s inner world. When Leah realized, upon the birth of Judah, that her claim to matriarchy within the family was secured – that she was granted beyond her expected share of Jacob’s offspring – she shifted her energies away from the wistful longings of what was always to remain an unrequited passion for Jacob and toward her newfound goal of energetically building up his family herself. The midrash did not much care about how the wives of Jacob knew what God had intended for their husband’s house; it is asking us to examine the fundamental shift in Leah’s thinking, and to explain her newfound confidence from the birth of Judah onwards.
Yet despite the entrance of Bilhah and Zilpah as surrogates, both Rachel and Leah continued to long for children of their own – even though four children had already been born to Leah. This dual longing came to a head when Reuben found duda’im (mandrakes) – a fertility medicine – in the fields.2See “Loyalty to Leah” in chapter 1, on Reuben.
Once, at the time of the wheat harvest, Reuben came upon some mandrakes in the field and brought them to his mother Leah. Rachel said to Leah, “Please give me some of your son’s duda’im.” But she replied, “Was it not enough for you to take away my husband, that you would also take my son’s duda’im?” Rachel responded, “I promise, he shall lie with you tonight, in return for your son’s duda’im.”
Genesis 30:14–15
Leah knew she would never have Jacob’s complete love. Her place in the family depended on her children. This explains her defensive, angry response to Rachel’s request: “It isn’t enough that you’ve taken my husband – now you want my son’s mandrakes as well?!” Leah recognized that Rachel was always to own Jacob’s heart. The only claim that Leah had to her husband was their children – and the claim grew stronger with each child. Then she felt Rachel was threatening that as well.3Otherwise, the charge that “you’ve taken my husband” is inexplicable. It was, after all, Rachel who was slated to be Jacob’s wife.
Let us consider Rachel for a moment. Her obsession with becoming a mother was getting in the way of her actually becoming pregnant. Rachel gave up her night with Jacob in exchange for the duda’im – that’s how tormented she’d become! We see that Leah could not help but rub in the fact that she had children, pained and jealous as she was of her younger sister, who owned the natural love of their shared husband – my son’s duda’im. I have a son – four, in fact – and you’re still waiting to conceive. From this position of power, she struck a bargain: the duda’im for Jacob. Is it so difficult to imagine how smugly – almost pityingly – she handed the duda’im over to her desperate sister and, with no pretenses, went to claim her reward: more children? By then, she did not pretend that she could win Jacob’s heart. There was a tone of hard commerce – but also power – as she went out to meet her husband.
“Come to me,” she ordered Jacob, “for I have hired you [ki sakhar sekhartikha]…And he lay with her that night” (Genesis 30:16). Rashi explained that Leah hired Jacob by exchanging the duda’im for her night with him, and that God Himself intervened so that Issachar was conceived from that union. Leah was then willing to forget and forego any hope that her love for Jacob would be requited. She was practical, ambitious, building an enduring bond throughout the years and the children borne, to which Jacob, at this juncture, conceded. He went with Leah, and did not put up a fight.
Her confidence was rewarded, as the barren, older Leah conceived again. The baby’s name reflected her new position as matriarch, her devotion to having children: “And Leah said, ‘God has given me my reward [sekhari] for having given my maid to my husband.’ So she named him Issachar” (Genesis 30:18).
Issachar, the product of that night, symbolized Leah’s maturing power. He represented the payoff of a lifetime’s toil, the reward due to someone who kept her head to the ground and steadily worked toward her goal. As time marched on, she refined her mission, perfected her ambition, and then reaped her reward. Many years after that first night, when Leah desperately sought entry into Jacob’s inner life, she tired of waiting futilely for Jacob to return her passion. Now I have hired you – sakhar sekhartikha – Leah said to Jacob, redefining their relationship as one where she asserted her matriarchy and power. When their new baby was born, he was the reward for that hire – the sekhar.4Rabbi Fishel Mael reframed Leah’s aggressiveness and strong-willed determinism as the “יציאה” of Genesis 30:16. שבטי ישראל, 207–208.
The nature of a matured Leah-Jacob relationship was analyzed beautifully by Dr. Avivah Zornberg:
The marriage of Leah and Jacob…represents one type of possible marriage, the type that is characterized by children, by the multiple consequences of a complex self-knowledge. This is Rashi’s concept of “one flesh”: the child, the fruit of two people struggling to understand who they may be, singly and together. Even in his anger, even in the “hate” that the narrative ascribes to him, Jacob looks at his children and says, “The mother of these – can I divorce her?”5BR 71:2. The children represent possible “makings and matchings” of self and other: possible integrations of parts of himself that Leah has mirrored back to him. There is no divorcing the source of such intimations.
Dr. Avivah Zornberg, Genesis: The Beginning of Desire, 2126Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1995.
Issachar, the reward, both alluded to Leah’s hire of her husband and her earning of him. It was this matured power that also was to express itself in what would become Issachar’s trademark: his excellence in and devotion to Torah.
Issachar, the Ben Torah
Ask any young yeshiva student about his association with Issachar son of Jacob, and he will undoubtedly tell you how Issachar was a talmid hakham, a Torah scholar. This midrashic motif is a well-entrenched one:
He was named “there is reward” (yesh sakhar), since he was to devote himself singleheartedly to Torah study and be rewarded with intuitive wisdom.7Zohar, VaYeĥi 687.
He was identified as the brother who advised the others to tear up Joseph’s coat of many colors and dip it in the blood of a goat (since that animal’s blood most resembled human blood). That way, they had something then to present to Jacob as “evidence” that Joseph had been killed by a wild animal. Why did the midrash detail Issachar? Because he was known to give wise counsel.8Sefer Ha-Yashar, VaYeshev 70a.
Jacob’s testament to Issachar, according to the midrash, included a blessing that his descendants be members of the Sanhedrin and have the advanced wisdom to establish the Jewish calendar.
Jacob also blessed Issachar that the fruits of his land be exceedingly large. Why? So that when Gentiles inquired about the whereabouts of such blessed fruit, the Jewish merchants would comment that the size of the fruit was a reward to the tribe that devoted themselves to Torah study. God eased this tribe’s path to parnasah because of its devotion to Torah study.9BR 98:12.
Issachar was called a “donkey” by Jacob in his deathbed blessing. Why? Just as a donkey’s bones are well-defined, so too the Torah of Issachar was clear and understood.10Ibid. Alternatively, just as a donkey breaks his bones under his workload, so too the tribe of Issachar “broke Israel” (schooled Israel) in halakhah.11Lekaĥ Tov, Genesis 49:14.
The names of Issachar’s sons were all in accord with the tribe’s devotion to Torah study.12MHG, Genesis 46:13.
Upon death, Issachar was described as having been “in possession of all of his faculties,” a fitting end for one who was regularly praised for wisdom during his lifetime.13Testament of Issachar.
Issachar’s stone on the priestly breastplate was the sapphire (sapir), since the two tablets of law given to Moses (the luhot ha-berit) were hewn from sapphire, and Issachar devoted themselves to study of Torah. The sapphire also had properties of increasing strength of vision and healing many diseases, as the Torah enlightens the eye and makes the body well.14Rabbenu Baĥya, Exodus 28:17.
The name of the prince of the tribe of Issachar was Netanel, meaning “gift of God,” for the tribe devoted its life to studying the Torah given by God.15Midrash Aggadah, Numbers 1:8.
In the formation around the Tabernacle, Issachar was grouped with Judah, since the royal tribe should be partnered with the tribe that excelled in Torah.16BaR 2:10.
The tribe’s flag was black, depicting the night sky, with the sun and the moon emblazoned on it. This symbolism was natural to the tribe that excelled in the study of astronomy and the science of the calendar.17BaR 2:7.
This persistent midrashic motif prompted Rashi to interpret the blessing that Jacob conferred on Issachar (Genesis 49:14–15) entirely in this vein:
“Issachar was a strong-boned donkey” who bore the yoke of Torah like a strong donkey that they loaded up with a heavy burden.…“And he bent his shoulder to bear” the yoke of Torah; “and he became” to all of Israel, his brothers, “an indentured laborer,” to provide for them practical decisions on questions of Torah law and the arrangements of the leap years.
The tribe that bore his name did the same for the blessing Moses bestowed upon them (Deuteronomy 33:18): “ ‘Succeed, Issachar, in sitting in your tents for Torah, to sit and set leap years and to fix the months of the calendar.”
This midrashic motif upon which most of the other commentators also built was clearly very strong. The textual or narrative peg on which it was based was less so. True, Issachar’s name was auspicious, and the wording of his blessings was suggestive. Nonetheless, we have no evidence of any outstanding accomplishments or tendencies during Issachar’s lifetime. We must turn to a much later textual clue, provided by the very last book of the Bible, Chronicles.18Note that Chronicles may be understood as midrash, or interpretation, of the earlier books of the Bible.
These are the numbers of the armed bands who joined David at Hebron to transfer Saul’s kingdom to him, in accordance with the words of the Lord…of Issachar, men who knew how to determine the signs of the times [yod’ei vinah la-itim], to determine how Israel should act…
I Chronicles 12:24, 33
This verse may be interpreted as indicating that the tribe of Issachar was particularly adept at “reading the times,” and advising the nation toward action, given a particular circumstance. Alternatively, the verse may indicate that the tribe excelled in the astronomical arts, calculating and predicting the changes in time. That Jacob blessed Issachar with descendants who would fix the calendar, as well as the idea that the tribe’s iconography was dominated by astrological symbols, provided the most direct midrashic links to this verse “yod’ei vinah la-itim.” A strong argument can even be made that the motif of Issachar-the-Torah-Scholar developed from this verse, as no other tribe was explicitly singled out in the text for its wise men.19An alternative hypothesis to explain the motif of Issachar-the-Torah-Scholar was pinned on the location of Tiberias, the seat of Torah scholarship in the Amoraic period in Eretz Yisrael. Tiberias was to be found in Naĥalat Yissakhar (Sanhedrin 12a; Megillah 6a). A natural extrapolation was that the home of the Sanhedrin was a reflection on the nature of the tribe in which it is located. See Song of Songs Rabbah 8:2.
Ahasuerus and the Wise Men of Issachar
A curious midrashic reference to the wisdom of Issachar surfaced in the context of the Book of Esther: “Then the king said to the wise men, who knew the times (Esther 1:13). Who were these wise men? The Sages” (Megillah 12b). And: “He consulted with the wise men of Issachar, who understand the signs of the times” (Esther Rabbah 4:1).
The clear connection drawn by the midrash between the verse in Esther and the verse in I Chronicles mentioned above hinges on the reference in both contexts to wise men who “understood the times.”
Rabbi Fishel Mael, in his Shivtei Israel,20מייעל, שבטי ישראל, 226–29. believed that something fundamental concerning the nature of Issachar could be teased out from the association with Ahasuerus’s overtures to that tribe. He reminded us that the Persian king sought advice as to how to best resolve the crisis of power distribution that was thrust into sharp focus after Queen Vashti refused his order to put in a public appearance. At the core of the problem was the question of the relationship between the sexes, especially the husband-wife relationship.
That Ahasuerus approached the Wise Men of Issachar for advice is very instructive, posited Rabbi Mael, given the particulars at stake. For Issachar embodied the trait of binah (recall, yod’ei vinah la-itim) – the specific category of wisdom defined as taking a germ of an idea and analyzing it until it is best understood – of building the idea from its original kernel of inspiration. Issachar was born at the apex of Leah’s binah. She had worked diligently at building a partnership with Jacob through the years by bearing him children. She had nurtured and developed the rhythms of their relationship until it reached the point of complete maturity and mutual understanding – “Come to me! And he lay with her that night” – that resulted in the conception of Issachar. The binah necessary to navigate the particulars of the husband-wife relationship is the same binah that is applied to figuring out the rhythms of the natural world. Understanding the nature of things – the sun and the moon, man and woman – and then intercalating and applying that knowledge: this is binah. In this area, Issachar, the product of Leah’s emergent binah, excelled naturally.21The tribal flag was emblazoned with the symbols of the sun and moon (BaR 2:7), intimating perhaps both Issachar’s prowess at intercalation as well as his astuteness regarding human relationships.
Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch further refined the concept of Issachar’s unique wisdom in his commentary on Genesis 49:15:
They [the representatives of Issachar who rallied to David]22I Chronicles 12:24. were “yod’ei vinah la-itim” – they brought with them binah, discernment, the ability to see between things [re’iyat beinayim], to recognize the interrelationships of persons and things and their potential effects on one another. This insight, attained by Issachar during his hours of leisure, was da’at binah, concrete perception, not sophistry but practical understanding of the true relationships of persons and things, which is acquired through genuine hokhmat ha-Torah. And it was la-itim; it came through correct evaluation of the uniqueness of any given moment.
The Talmud informed us that the Sages of Issachar refused to proffer advice to Ahasuerus, fearing the king’s wrath at either outcome.23Megillah 12b. On a deeper level, though, they fully grasped this particular circumstance (yod’ei vinah la-itim). They feared (and were hesitant to confront) the fundamental impropriety of the Ahasuerus-Vashti partnership – that two “suns” could not share one sky, as found in the rabbinic literature: “What accounts for Ahasuerus’s excessive anger [at Vashti]? Rava said: It was because she had sent him a message, saying ‘You’re just my father’s stable boy!’” (Megillah 12b). And:
The sun and the moon were created equal, both in size and in brightness, as the Scripture states, “And God made the two great lights.” Then there was a dispute between the sun and the moon. The moon complained, “Two kings cannot rule with the same crown.” God agreed, and made the moon smaller.
Hullin 60b
The understanding that was the purview of Issachar, masters of binah, was manifest in profound ways. It is the understanding that relationships sour if each party always seeks to outshine the other, if husband or wife fails to grasp the delicate balance that must be maintained for two people to live together peacefully; that in order for this particular personality, the blazing Ahasuerus, to find happiness, he had to partner with a woman who resembled the unassuming moon in her modesty and unpretentiousness. The Sages explain: “If her name was Hadassah, why then was she called Esther? Because the nations of the world used to say admiringly that she was as beautiful as Istahar – the moon” (Megillah 13a). The Sages of Issachar therefore wisely keep silent, allowing for Ahasuerus to realize on his own that Esther was his perfect complement.
Issachar and Zebulun: A Beautiful Partnership
Issachar and Zebulun, the two youngest sons of Leah, were bound together in Moses’s blessings:
Rejoice, O Zebulun, on your journeys,
And Issachar, in your tents.
Deuteronomy 33:18
The nature of their partnership is explained by Rashi’s commentary on this verse:
Zebulun and Issachar made a partnership. Zebulun “shall dwell by the seashores” and depart in ships to engage in commerce. He will earn profit and support Issachar, and the men of Issachar will sit and engage in the study of Torah.
This idea – and that relationship – is a fundamental one to Judaism, having particular influence on the social constructs of contemporary Orthodoxy. Witness the predominance of kollels – centers of Torah study for married men – that are structured on what is known as the “Yissakhar-Zevulun arrangement,” with benefactors supporting the scholars.
More specifics about their partnership were alluded to in Jacob’s blessings. Then, the two sons were inverted: Zebulun, the youngest, was placed before the elder Issachar. A long tradition grew around this inextricable connection: Zebulun, the merchant, offered financial support to Issachar, so that the latter might pursue his Torah studies, free from anxiety and worry.
What is more, the midrash derived an interesting principle from the irregularity of Jacob’s order:
Why was it that Zebulun came before Issachar? Because Zebulun engaged in commerce while Issachar studied the Torah, and Zebulun came and provided him with sustenance. Therefore, he was given precedence.
Genesis Rabbah 99:924Also 72:5 and Tan. VaYeĥi 11.
The rabbinic adage that “if there is no flour, there is no Torah” marvelously satisfies the specific nature of this brotherly relationship: first, one’s worldly concerns must be addressed, and only then is one free to immerse oneself in Torah study.
This concept is reinforced in the blessings of Moses. Moses followed Jacob’s lead in blessing Zebulun before Issachar, but he went a step further, practically marginalizing Issachar in language that was dominated by blessings for Zebulun:
Rejoice, O Zebulun, in your journeys,
And Issachar, in your tents.
They [Zebulun] invite their kin to the mountain,
Where they offer sacrifices of success.
For they draw from the riches of the sea
And the hidden hoards of the sand.
Deuteronomy 33:18–19
The symbiotic relationship between Issachar and Zebulun was manifest in their adjacent territories, allowing for a fluid boundary, or at the very least regular movement, between their naĥalot (so described by the Malbim, Genesis 49:14). The tribes partnered in sanctifying God. Whereas Zebulun ventured out to foreign lands for trade with Gentiles and to impress positively that way, Issacharites stayed by their brother tribe’s shores, plying their produce to passing foreign ships and dazzling the foreign seafarers with their navigation prowess.
The Strong-Boned Ass
The Yissakhar-Zevulun arrangement was best suited to a personality like that of Issachar’s, who was compared by Jacob to an ass:
Issachar is a strong-boned ass,
Crouching among the sheepfolds.
It is strange that a personality that was constructed by generations of rabbinic gloss as an outstanding scholar (the Sages’ own ancient apotheosis!) should be compared to a donkey! This animal is described as crude, boorish, stubborn and ignorant;25Yevamot 62a. indeed, the root of the Hebrew for donkey, ĥamor, means “lowly, material, base.”
And yet. Perhaps it was this very simplicity that appealed to Jacob as he imagined his Issachar as a donkey, with the necessary diligence and single-mindedness required to toil in the complexities of Torah study. The simple donkey puts his head down and his shoulder into the burden – and he also doesn’t put on airs, whine, or ask for luxuries. These too are qualities befitting the Torah scholars, who must remain simple folk, finding happiness in their studies and making do with little.26Zohar, VaYeĥi 681.
Another positive association with the donkey (this one introduced by the Seforno),27Seforno on Genesis 49:14. recalled the animal’s capacity for shouldering a heavy burden or two. The Seforno interpreted the enigmatic verse of the donkey “crouching among the sheepfolds” (plural) as intimating that Issachar paced regularly under the weight of a double burden, a task that only a strong ĥamor was capable of handling. This double burden of Issachar was Torah im derekh eretz; that is, the application of wisdom to political and practical matters. Entirely insufficient was his study of Torah if it were not made relevant and accessible to the rest of the nation. Other commentators took the same tack, as Rashi comments on Genesis 49:14: “Rovetz – this means wandering, since Issachar traveled around deciding on matters of halakhah for the nation,” and Radak on Genesis 49:15: “Le-mas oved – Issachar was the servant of Israel, involved in disseminating wisdom and Torah matters.”
Issachar’s diligence, commitment to the greater community, and unparalleled capacity for binah established him as a worthy recipient of Zebulun’s largesse.
Issachar the Farmer
There was an additional striking facet to Issachar that is consistently absent from contemporary references to the Yissakhar-Zevulun arrangement. As always, the key is to be found in Jacob’s blessing:
When he saw how goodly was his rest,
And how pleasant was the country,
He bent his shoulder to the burden
And became a toiling serf.
Genesis 49:15
Rashbam interpreted Issachar, the diligent donkey, as a farmer:
Not like Zebulun who travels the sea as a merchant, he [Issachar] works his land like a donkey with strong limbs…who saw that resting on the land was better than going out to far-off places, “how pleasant was the country” and successful, as it is written (Deuteronomy 12:9): “to the rest and the inheritance.” “And he bent his shoulder to the burden, and became a toiling serf” to give tithes of his produce to the kings.…This is the essential simple meaning, and it is a tiding of wealth for the tribe of Issachar.
Nehama Leibowitz noted that Rashbam understood Issachar’s goodly rest (menuĥah) not as a respite from work, but the work itself – the settlement and development of the Land of Israel.28,גליונות לעיון בפרשת השבוע תשכ”ה פרשת ויחי – משרד החינוך והתרבות vol. 24.
What often goes unmentioned with regard to Issachar, the Torah scholar, was his connection to the land. Yes, the fruits yielded easily, and yes, he rejoiced in the blessings of an accommodating land, but his was a deeply rooted tribe – rejoicing in the industries of Eretz Yisrael, Torat Yisrael, and Am Yisrael. He embodied Torah with a literal “derekh eretz,” a knowledge of the ways of the land, with a rich understanding of the rhythms and ways of Eretz Yisrael.
Expanding on this concept, Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch29On Genesis 49:15. added a piercing insight into the nature of Issachar:
Issachar is happy to work, but only to the extent that there is value to the work for the Jewish people.…Issachar exemplifies the essential core of the nation of Israel: the Jewish farmer. He doesn’t work for so as to labor without letup or to accumulate wealth; the Jewish man of the people doesn’t subjugate himself to the work, but rather works so as to merit menuĥah [rest].…He regards the leisure he earned by his own labors as his greatest asset and most prized possession. For leisure enables a person to stand tall and to find himself.…Knowledge of Torah and its practical application to current circumstances are not attained by one who immerses himself in business. Rather, they are attained by one who, in his hours of leisure, frees his mind of all else, of whom it can be said that “Va-yar menuĥah ki tov,” he regards leisure as the true profit to be obtained from work; thus “oseh Torato keva u-melakhto ar’ai” – he regards Torah study as the main goal, and work as merely an incidental means. Issachar regards ha-aretz, agriculture, as the surest path to this goal. Hence, he devoted himself with enthusiasm to the taxing chores of tilling the soil: “va-yehi le-mas oved.”
Issachar succeeded at his tasks, both tilling the land and toiling in the beit midrash. He was one who “put his shoulder to bear,” happily engrossing himself in meaningful hard work. But he was at his best when he could busy himself with both. Note the sobering response with which the Wise Ones of Issachar put off King Ahasuerus:
“Our master the king! When we were in our land, we had the means to achieve wisdom. Now [that we’ve been exiled], we’re no longer connected!” They quoted to him the following verse from Jeremiah 48:11 as illustration:
Moab has been secure from his youth on –
He is settled on his lees
And has not been poured from vessel to vessel –
He has never gone into exile.
Therefore his fine flavor has remained
And his bouquet is unspoiled.
Esther Rabbah 4:1
Distance from the land and the heaviness of exile weakened Issachar’s faculties. Only when he was safely home, happily toiling the fields of his naĥalah with mind unfettered, could Issachar truly flourish.
Naĥalat Yissakhar
The naĥalah of Issachar was alluded to in Jacob’s blessing:
“Issachar is a strong donkey” refers to his territory. As a donkey is short on this side and short on that side with a high place in the middle, so too [his land] will have a valley on this side and a valley on this side and a mountain in the middle…the Valley of Kesuloth, the Valley of Jezreel [and Mount Tabor in the middle].…“And he bowed his shoulder to bear” the yoke of the Land of Israel.
Genesis Rabbah 98:1230Another explanation of how the blessing indicates specific topographical features within Yissachar places the central Givat haMoreh as the donkey’s back, saddled by the twin hills of Nain and Naaura (suggested by friend and guide Yossi Buchman).
Issachar’s territory encompassed the whole eastern swath of the Jezreel Valley, from Afula as a westernmost point to the Jordan River in the east. The southern border can be roughly identified as the Harod Valley, the southeastern dip stretching from the Jezreel Valley to the Bik’ah, or the Jordan River Valley, and stretching south of the Gilboa mountain range towards the west to include the city of Ir Ganim (Jenin). Perhaps the Jabneel Brook, which bisects the Jabneel Valley up at the southern tip of the Sea of Chinnereth, served as the northern border for this naĥalah. As expected, the heights that separate the Harod Valley from the Jabneel Valley are known as Ramoth Yissakhar.
The abrupt rise of Mount Tabor served as the nexus point of three tribes: Zebulun, to the west; Naphtali, to the east; and Issachar, to the south. The biblically famous sites of Jezreel, Shunem, En-dor, and the Harod Spring were all found in Naĥalat Yissakhar. While not the largest naĥalah, this region of primarily plain and inviting hills had tremendous agricultural potential. No wonder that it was given to the “Jewish farmer,” Issachar.
Visiting Naĥalat Yissakhar
Itinerary: Havat Kinneret, Museum of Art in Kibbutz Ein Harod, En-harod, Tel Jezreel
What was true during biblical times – that the Jezreel and Harod valley regions of Naĥalat Yissakhar were a virtual “breadbasket” for the country – has come full circle in the modern period. Early in the twentieth century, this cradle of flatland intrigued Joshua Henkin and Arthur Ruppin, two leaders of the Palestine Land Development Fund, who rallied hard to purchase these areas for the ĥalutzim, the young pioneers of the Second Aliyah. These visionaries, along with labor socialist idealists such as Manya and Yisrael Schochat, saw past the malarial swampland that had condemned the region to waste for centuries, and energetically set about training bands of young farmers.
As background to the period of the Second Aliyah, we start our tour with a visit to the Havat Kinneret, Kinneret Farm, a training farm founded on the southeastern shore of the Sea of Galilee in 1908.31Though this site is in Naĥalat Naphtali, just north of Naĥalat Yissakhar, it serves to illustrate the difficult realities of life for these early ĥalutzim. Recommended as well is a visit to the Emek (Jezreel Valley) Museum, located in Kibbutz Yifat – also not technically within the biblical borders of Issachar’s territory (the museum is located in Nahalat Zevulun), but a wonderful, evocative display of daily life for the first half of the twentieth century. After rigorous training – agriculture in the fields and labor Zionism in the dining hall – bands of young idealistic and socialist farmers were dispatched to found the first collective settlements, like Degania, the first kevutzah,32Deliberately small and intensely communal settlement. Ein Harod, the first kibbutz,33Different from the kevutzah in that it welcomed new members. and Nahalal, the first farming moshav (cooperative agricultural settlement)– all of which are in or near Naĥalat Yissakhar.
In 1911, Hana Maizel Schochat established a separate training farm for women at Havat Kinneret. One of her prized pupils was the poetess Rachel Bluwstein, whose verse expressed the determination and commitment of those early ĥalutzim to cultivate their own land:
Here on Earth – not in high clouds–
On this mother earth that is close:
To sorrow in her sadness, exult in her meager joy
That knows, so well, how to console.
Not nebulous tomorrow but today: solid, warm, mighty,
Today materialized in the hand:
Of this single, short day to drink deep
Here in our own land.
Before night falls – come, oh come all!
A unified stubborn effort, awake
With a thousand arms. Is it impossible to roll
The stone from the mouth of the well?
Rachel Bluwstein, “Here on Earth”
Rachel’s mentor was the secular Zionist philosopher, A. D. Gordon, her neighbor at Kibbutz Degania, who preached and practiced a certain “religion of labor.” To his thinking, work for its own sake was a redemptive and necessary measure for the Jewish nation in its homeland. Labor and defense should not be contracted out, he preached, but should be embraced as necessary, just, and good.
A people that was completely divorced from nature, that during 2,000 years was imprisoned within walls, that became inured to all forms of life except to a life of labor, cannot become once again a living, natural, working people without bending all its willpower toward that end. We lack the fundamental element; we lack labor, but labor is [the means] by which a people becomes rooted in its soil and in its culture.34A. D. Gordon, Selected Essays, translated by Frances Burnce (New York: League for Labor Palestine, 1938), 51–52.
Driving down the Bik’ah from Havat Kinneret and then west through the Jezreel Valley gives a clear picture of what Naĥalat Yissakhar has become – a fertile track of crop circles, irrigated fields studded with bales, and lush stretches of patchwork green and brown. It suffices to make us marvel at the realization of Issachar’s potential in our day.
We stop at Kibbutz Ein Harod and head for the Museum of Art, built in the 1930s, shortly after the kibbutz itself was founded. The museum, founded by the original kibbutz members, expressed their ideology that art and culture were critical to society. Indeed, the museum was completed even before other essential buildings in the new kibbutz were erected.
It is a lovely, large and airy building, showcasing mainly modern art and avant-garde exhibits. Its only permanent collection is the Judaica room, where the keepsakes that the ĥalutzim brought with them from the “Old Country” are on display. At the time of their most earnest ideology of labor Zionism, the early pioneers had little use for such mementos, like Hannukah menorahs or havdalah spice boxes. Yet the hardened ĥalutzim were loathe to discard these relics; instead, they were put on display in the museum as curious artifacts from a former life.
Considering the personality of Issachar, it is quite startling to realize that the land in his naĥalah was tilled and readied by ĥalutzim of an era that abandoned traditional Judaism and embraced instead the ethos of labor – an approach that is inimical to Issachar’s regard for work as a necessary means to nurture the ultimate Torah scholar.
Lest we despair, however, that the ideological gap between the old and the new Issachar is unbridgeable, we may find comfort and inspiration in the words of Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook, the esteemed sage who toured these communal settlements of Naĥalat Yissakhar in 1914 to bolster and encourage the ĥalutzim in their Torah observance. While visiting one of the new settlements, he articulated a vision so infused with binah that we marvel at how, indeed, the yod’ei vinah la-itim of Issachar became manifest in his own naĥalah, in our own time:
I feel like a man who is called to raise the banner, like a man who must unite the good and the healthy in both communities: the Old and the New. I am like a poor person sitting at the crossroads, in the shadows between these two holy communities, the New and the Old. These two communities are connected by a bond that cannot be severed, just as the soul is connected to the body, and together they form the person who lives, breathes, acts, and creates. The Old Community in the beauty of its holiness and the glory of its aristocratic old age shines a wealth of beautiful rays upon all of the New Community. And the New Community in its dewy youthfulness, in the wildness of its youth, in the dwellings of its adolescence, stands ready to electrify the heart and strengthen the hands of the Old Community, which has already been uplifted toward the heights of holiness for hundreds of years. Their mixing together will bring about the renewal of Israel.35Love of Israel, Rav Avraham Yitzchak Hacohen Kook, Teachings in English, translated by Yaacov David Shulman, http://www.ravkook.net/love-of-israel.html. Excerpted from רזיאל ממט, לחישה רועמת: סיפורו של הרב קוק (ירושלים: יד יצחק בן צבי, 1990).
In the period after the Israelite conquest, when the tribe of Issachar would have been working their fertile fields, their naĥalah was also the stage for some famous biblical stories. The setting of one of the exciting battles in the Book of Judges is right across the road from Kibbutz Ein Harod, in the En-harod National Park.
Visit the Harod Spring (En-harod) in the national park, gushing forth from a cave at the foot of the Gilboa mountains. This is the site where Gideon’s soldiers gathered in preparation for war against the Midianites. Gideon himself was a Menassehite from the town of Ophrah, most likely located in Naĥalat Yissakhar, but belonging to Manasseh.36For a survey of the various possible locations of biblical Ophrah, see חנן אשל, ״לזיהויה של עפרה עיר גדעון,״ קתדרה 22 (תשמב) 3–8. Along with the men of Manasseh, the tribes of Asher, Zebulun, and Naphtali were called upon to join his troops. Curiously, Issachar was entirely absent from the story, though the battle was arrayed squarely in its naĥalah. This was most likely because Issachar had suffered the brunt of the previous seven years of Midianite incursions into Israel, and their land and numbers were severely damaged. In a sense, Issachar’s countrymen were coming to their aid (and their own), trying to drive the Midianites away, so that they all could rebuild.
Gideon tested his soldiers at En-harod, seeking only those who were not serial idolators. He asked each soldier to drink from the spring. Those who prostrated themselves were sent home, as were others who were fearful of battle. Gideon was left with a mere three hundred soldiers to man his army. They successfully fought the Midianites, who had encamped just north, in the Kesuloth Valley between Mount Tabor and Moreh Hill37For an entirely different theory about the Midianite encampment and the location of the battle, see אליצור, מקום בפרשה, 123–125. (Moreh Hill was opposite En-harod, but the Midianite camp would not have been visible to the Israelites at En-harod; it was, though, close enough that Gideon could easily spy on them). The miraculous victory over the massive Midianite force helped cement Gideon’s authority over Israel, and restore Issachar’s lands to that beleaguered tribe.
Just east of En-harod is the aptly-named yishuv of Gidona. It’s worthwhile to pay a short visit to the atmospheric cemetery here, the final resting place for many of the young ĥalutzim who died in the 1920s–30s while draining swamps, building roads and fighting Arabs. As you wander around the tilted and moss-covered tombstones, notice how disproportionate the losses were to their ranks at the time. Disease, accident, and suicide were rampant – these young ideologues could hardly tolerate the dissonance between their will to work and the near-impossible conditions of daily life. At the entrance to the cemetery, there is a mass grave for all the infants who died at birth or shortly afterwards. These young parents – barely adults themselves – had no elders to guide them through their grief. The price of revitalizing Naĥalat Yissakhar in our modern period was steep indeed.
Our final stop is a tel on the eastern edge of the Jezreel Valley that saw some of the greatest biblical drama in its heyday. This is Tel Jezreel, the site of the ancient city of Jezreel, a city of Issachar.38Joshua 19:17–18. In the last days of his life, King Saul gathered his troops at the nearby Jezreel Spring (the cluster of trees visible in the near distance from the eastern lookout point on the tel), in preparation for war against the Philistines. His strategy was to draw the Philistines to higher ground, where their chariots would be less effective. The battle, however, quickly turned in favor of the Philistines, and Saul and his sons died on Mount Gilboa.
Jezreel was a Canaanite city strategically located on the trade and military route linking Egypt with Damascus. There was ample water supply from the nearby Jezreel Spring, water cisterns on site, and the surrounding fertile fields provided excellent agriculture and grazing land. Canaanite Jezreel was ostensibly appropriated by Issachar, though there is no destruction layer indicating a violent takeover.
The town seems to have been repurposed as either a central military base or a winter palace for Omri or his son Ahab in the early ninth century Bce. Archaeological excavations headed up by David Ussishkin uncovered a casemate wall-and-tower fortification system, as well as an impressive rock-cut moat, dating to this period. Little excavation has been carried out at the center of the tel, so the scope and function of the rectangular, symmetrical enclosure formed by the casemate wall is hard to define.
Jezreel next surfaces in the Bible with King Ahab, who coveted the vineyards of Naboth the Jezreelite that may have been located in this area.39For a discussion of an alternative identification of כרם נבות further south in Samaria, see אריה בורנשטיין, ״במקום הרשע שמה המשפט: מקומו של כרם נבות ומקום עונשו של בית אחאב,״ מגדים כב, 69–77. Ahab’s Queen Jezebel had Naboth killed so that the king would have quick claim to those vineyards, an act for which both king and queen were severely censured by the prophet Elijah and cursed with death:
The dogs shall devour Jezebel in the ramparts of Jezreel.
All of Ahab’s line who die in the town shall be devoured by dogs,
And all who die in the open country shall be devoured by the birds of the sky.
I Kings 21:23–24
This gory premonition came to pass when Ahab was killed in battle against Aram. Years later, Jehu, who aspired to rule Israel at the behest of the prophet Elisha, killed Jehoram, son of Ahab, in the fields of Naboth – poetic justice if ever there was! He then entered Jezreel and accosted Jezebel in her fortress tower. She was thrown from the tower by her servants and eaten by the dogs.
The excavated northeast tower would have been the watchtower from which the royal sentry first spied Jehu approaching the Jezreel, since it faced the hills of Gilead from which Jehu was approaching the city: “The lookout was stationed on the tower in Jezreel, and he saw the troop of Jehu as he approached” (II Kings 9:17).
It is almost too much to suggest that this tower was the one where Jezebel met her death. After all, how often can we place the exact location of key biblical events? It must have been in one of the towers of Jezreel, certainly. Ussishkin does suggest a definitive location for the piling up of the dismembered heads of Ahab’s seventy children, killed on Jehu’s orders in Samaria. According to II Kings 10:8, the heads were put on display at the entrance gate of Jezreel, where the archaeologist excavated on the southern casemate wall.
Have a look at the crop circles on the plain below you, and our tour will come full circle with the prophetic words of Hosea. The prophet-poet recognized the potential of redeeming “Jezreel” from a symbol of desolation and ruin to the promise of growth and productivity in his plea for a wayward Kingdom of Israel to return to God. Hosea first lambasted a sinning and traitorous Israel as “Yizrael,” destined to suffer the same cursed fate as this city and valley that had seen so much bloodshed. But then, as God remembered His love for His people and forgave them their iniquity, “Yizrael” came into its own as the “Zera-El,” the seed of God, a fertile tract, abundantly blessed. As it once was in the early days of Issachar, before all of the bloodshed that maligned the valley into a synonym for utter desolation, so it now is, in our day, as the Jewish farmers live and work the land: