Who's Your Mama Now? Rachel, Leah, and Rabbinic Views on Their Procreative Possibilities

Infertility is a familiar biblical trope. Two women—Rachel and Leah—wrestle with their in/fertility in creative ways. Yet their proactive ingenuity apparently inspires anxiety amongst the rabbis, as evidenced by the many reinterpretations of Genesis 30. This article investigates the ways in which the rabbis labor to reconfigure these biblical women, their motivations for motherhood, and the solutions they use toward this end. In often surprising ways, rabbinic pens penetrate woman's bodies and wombs, reinscribe texts and sex, refashion fetuses, and more.