The Hellenizers took direct aim at all that most distinguished Jews from neighboring peoples
Our Sages link each of the four great travails of Yaakov Avinu’s life — the struggle with his brother Eisav, his battle of wits with Lavan, the violation of his daughter Dinah, and the loss of Yosef — with a different exile (see Ohr Gedalyahu, Bereishis, p. 114). In that scheme, the violation of Dinah is the precursor for the Greek exile — whose effects continue to be felt until today.
The first quality that we know about Dinah is that she was filled with curiosity about the surrounding people among whom her father and family dwelt. As the verse states explicitly, “Dinah… went out to look over the daughters of the land” (Bereishis 34:1). As a consequence of her violation, resulting from her having gone beyond the confines of her family, the people of Shechem agreed to a full commercial and marital intermingling with the children of Yaakov.
My late brother, Mattisyahu, pointed out in Rays of Wisdom a second characteristic related to her desire to go beyond the boundaries of her family: Dinah was the most weakly rooted of all Yaakov’s children mentioned explicitly in the Torah. Of them, she alone did not become a shevet (tribe). Each tribe had a distinctive identity — its own flag, its own special position when marching and when encamped.
Dinah’s identity, however, was that of a generic Jew, such as a convert, who is bound just as every other Jew by the mitzvos, but who lacks the additional identity associated with a particular tribe.
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