Machshavot HaLev - Yeshivat Lev HaTorah

60
בלה תובשחמ
children have been born – a practice not done today), Tamar is given to his
second son (Onan) who also dies. Now, both his sons had died as a result of
doing something they should not have, but Yehudah did not know this. What he
did know was that there was a concept of a “cursed woman” who, if two husbands
of hers die, one does not have to marry her (or marry his children to her) since
she is considered cursed. Yehudah had a third son (Shelah) and he was worried
Tamar was cursed. What Yehudah did was try and delay the marriage, telling her
to stay but wait until Shelah was older and ready to get married.
Now Tamar had received a prophecy that she was to have a child through someone
in Yehudah’s family (and this child is in fact the line of Moshiach ben David).
When Tamar sees after many years that Yehudah does not want her to marry
Shelah, she realizes that she will have to trick Yehudah himself into creating a
child with her. So when Yehudah’s wife has passed away she poses as a harlot and
he consorts with her (not knowing it is her). Having no money to pay her, he
leaves his signet ring and staff with her and goes off.
When Tamar, three months later, is clearly pregnant, Yehudah orders her to be
burnt for adultery. (Though she was not married to Shelah she was considered
betrothed since they had not done yibum and so this would have been considered
an act of adultery if it had been from someone other than Yehudah or Shelah.)
Tamar does not say Yehudah did this (which would have saved her life and from
which we learn (Sotah 10b) that “it is better to engage in a fiery death than to
embarrass someone in public”), but says “By the man to whom these belong I
am with child” (38:25) and she raises the ring and the staff. Yehudah could have
been silent and let her die, but instead exclaims “She is more righteous than
me” (38:26), since she was prepared to die rather than embarrass him. Tamar is
allowed to live, married to Yehudah and they have twins. We then revert back to
the story of Yosef.
That is quite a diversion from a story. So what is it doing here?
At this point in time a fascinating “battle” or “argument” is taking place. You see,
Yehudah (because of what happened in the above story) becomes the archetypal
“Ba’al Teshuvah” because he admitted in public what he did wrong and changed
his behaviour. The story of Yosef continues with how he resisted temptation