GEN1431 [While] the standard midrashic interpretations … See [[] this event as bound up with Rachel’s theft of her father’s idols [and] focus--as the Bible itself implies-on Jacob’s curse [“With whomsoever you find your gods, he shall not live” [Genesis 31:32]), the Zohar understands her death as a punishment for the distress she caused her father in depriving him of his idols, “though her intentions were for the best.” Zohar (Wilna: 1894), I, 164b. Similarly, Joseph’s not disclosing his whereabouts to his father constitutes a major problem for Nahmanides: “… for were it not for what we have written above, Joseph would have sinned mightily to cause his father anguish, and to leave him a mourner so many years … for one asks, since Joseph spent so many years in Egypt, and rose to such high office, how is it that he never sent even a single letter to his father, to tell him of his whereabouts and to console him, for Egypt is only a six-day journey from Hebron, and even were it a year’s journey it were fit that he notify him, because of the honor due his father. …” (Commentary to Genesis 42:9.) Cf. Midrash Tanhuma, Yayeshev 8, Sefer Hassidum (ed. J. Wistinetzki), sec. 941. Despite this gesture in the direction of the more usual antipathy towards idolatry [One thinks immediately, for contrast, of Gideon smashing his father’s Ba’al altar [Judges 6:25] and of the robust delight the Midrash takes in Abraham’s childhood demolition of his father’s idol shop!], the value scale of the Zohar is clear: the pain caused Laban by his daughter is the single most significant component of the episode. R. Isaiah Horowitz, the 16th century mystic, offers another instance: commenting on Joseph’s willingness to abide by Jacob’s wish that he search out as brothers though he knew that they hated him to the death, the Shelah the remarks, “… a man must sacrifice his life to do the will of his father.” R. Isaiah Horowitz, Shenei Luhot Haberit (Amsterdam: 1708), p. 303a.  BLIDSTEIN 80