In the Reform and Reconstructionist Amidah (the central prayer in Jewish liturgy) we acknowledge Rachel and Leah as two of the matriarchs. They may have given birth to the Jewish people, but their story is a painful one. Rachel and Jacob (the father of the twelve tribes of Israel) fell in love but her father, Laban, made Jacob work for him for seven years before he could marry Rachel. Then, at the wedding, Laban tricked Jacob by having him marry Rachel’s older sister Leah instead, since it wasn’t the custom to have the younger daughter married off first. Jacob didn’t love Leah, however, so Laban allowed him to marry Rachel as well for an extra seven years of labor. Leah had many children, but Rachel was, for the most part, barren, so she had to offer up her maid to Jacob as a concubine. Leah ended up doing the same. Eventually they both had children, but going through what they did – having to wait years to marry the man you love, sharing him with your sister, not being loved by your husband, not being able to have children and having to share him with your maid as well, being able to have children and having to share him with your maid as well – could not have been easy. This song is a bit of a midrash – a speculative elaboration on Torah – that plays with how Rachel and Leah’s marriages to Jacob might have effected themselves and their relationship with each other.