Tale 2 - Letter 1

Dearest Lavan,

Let me start with the deepest expression of gratitude for taking Yaakov into business. You can’t possibly know the nakhes I get in reading letters from Yaakov about his success. I know how much of a risk it was to bet on a free spirit who hadn’t found himself in his late seventies getting his act together; but even if no one else saw Yaakov’s promise, I knew you couldn’t have picked a better mensch. In case I didn’t make it clear at the wedding, you diffused a family predicament somewhat like what happened between Lot and Abba Betuel when we were kids, so I knew that when you saw Yaakov you would guess at the general idea of what brought him to you before he even told you. I have nothing but gratitude for how you brought Yaakov into the House of Terakh as an untried associate. I’ve worried for years that you wouldn’t see what I see in him, and I worry that his father never has.

This makes it doubly unfortunate that I have to speak to you unpleasantly again, but the fact remains that you gave my son permission to marry Rokhel, you knew that Rokhel was the daughter he wanted to marry, and Yaakov swears that all the contracts he signed with you said ‘Rokhel’, not ‘Leyah’. So why then did you give him a different bride than the one he earned? I know I told you at the wedding how unfair a trick you pulled on Yaakov in front of his hundred-twenty year old mother - a mother who’d journeyed for six months just to kvell over her son marrying the love of his life; and I understand I’m an outsider to your situation, but I feel the need to re-emphasize how cruel it was.

Yitzhak’s old and blind. We have no family member in Canaan of proper bloodline to run the corporation but Esav, a son with so much seykhel he sold his birthright for a bowl of soup. He put half our money into a huge investment hinging on getting a hunt-for-profit license whose credit check we may not even pass. I had Eliezer-ibn-Eliezer draw up a report. HIs projections showed that big game has a high short-term yield but that the hunting bubble could pop very soon.

I’m so happy Yaakov’s employment worked out as it has, but we need Yaakov to return as soon as possible to run our organization, and he won’t return without Rokhel as his wife. You obviously lied to Yaakov because you find him valuable, but please, I’m begging you, let him marry Rokhel so we can bring him and his family back to his old mother before she dies.

Barukh Hashem and much love,

Rivka