In 1989, a British epidemiologist named David Strachan noticed that children from larger families had fewer allergies. That observation gave rise to the “hygiene hypothesis”: an immune system kept away from germs may never learn to fight them, so a very clean childhood can leave a child more vulnerable, not less. Whatever science finally decides, the idea raises a question that goes well beyond medicine: can a child be too protected? The Torah raises it too, in Rivka’s origin story.

The Torah only hints at how toxic Rivka’s childhood home was. When it introduces her as Yitzchak’s bride, it calls her the “daughter of Besuel the Aramaean, of Padan Aram, sister of Lavan the Aramaean.” The Midrash reads the doubled “Aramaean” as a hint at their guile, not their ethnicity, and it sees the mention of Padan Aram as an allusion to the corruption of her hometown. Rivka, it says, was a “rose among the thorns.”

Read simply, the contrast highlights her righteousness: She blossomed despite her surroundings. On this reading, she is the exception to the rule that bad environments corrupt. That same worry leads many religious communities, Jewish and otherwise, to circle the wagons.

Because of the thorns

R. Joseph Ber Soloveitchik reads it far more optimistically. Building on one extra word in Targum Yonasan ben Uziel, he writes that exposure to Egypt’s immorality allowed Avraham’s descendants to become a great nation. They could not have developed mercy, modesty, and chessed without meeting the opposite in Egyptian cruelty. Had Yosef not known Potiphar the executioner, he would not have appreciated Yaakov’s greatness. And had Rivka not grown up in Besuel’s house, she could not have embraced the world of Avraham with such enthusiasm. The rose does not bloom despite the thorns. It blooms because of them.

No solutions, only tradeoffs

Economist Thomas Sowell likes to say that there are no solutions, only tradeoffs. Rivka’s story suggests that shielding children from negative influences is one of those tradeoffs. How much protection is right depends on each family, each community, and each child, but purity is never free. At the very least, when we do meet less-than-virtuous influences, we can do what Rivka did and use them to deepen our appreciation for goodness and our commitment to it.

Wishing you a wonderful, healthy, and peaceful Shabbos!