There is a figure in the book of Genesis who appears suddenly, painfully, and then slips away into silence. A daughter. A sister. A young woman whose story is told mostly through what men do around her, and almost never through what she wants, says, or chooses. Her name is Dinah.

We meet her in Parashat Vayishlach with heartbreaking abruptness: “Dinah, the daughter of Leah, whom she had borne to Jacob, went out to see the daughters of the land.” A simple social visit. Perhaps curiosity, perhaps friendship, the sort of errand any teenage girl might do. And then — violence. The text says Shechem “took her and lay with her, and abused her.” No euphemisms. The Torah confronts us with the raw fact of assault. And from this moment onward, everything becomes about everyone except Dinah.

Jacob hears of the assault and remains silent. The brothers hear and burn with fury. Shechem and Chamor speak of marriage. Agreements are proposed, conditions negotiated, weapons sharpened.

But Dinah? The Torah doesn’t give her a single word. Not one. She becomes an object passed from tent to tent. The actions taken “for her honor” never ask what she wants. Even when Shimon and Levi carry out their violent revenge, Dinah appears only in a brief phrase—“they took Dinah from Shechem’s house and went out.” She is carried, lifted, moved, but she does not get to walk out on her own terms. It is a painful........

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