[Be-Ahavah U-Be-Emunah – Noach
5773 – translated by R. Blumberg]
Marriage
involves the constant giving of oneself. Yet it isn’t easy, because people
naturally love themselves too much. One is certainly allowed to love oneself.
It says, “Love your neighbor as yourself” (Vayikra 19:18), which implies that
one does love oneself. Yet one shouldn’t exaggerate that self-love.
When there
were just two brothers on the face of the earth, two brothers, it was enough
for one to pounce on the other and kill him. That tells us that we must be
cautious. It’s not easy to get along together. Adam didn’t physically hurt Chava,
but when G-d asked him why he had sinned, he blamed her, basically saying, “The
woman You gave me is a tainted gift.” Yet that wasn’t so. Eve was a marvelous
gift, and Adam was denying a goodness done for him (see Rashi). G-d rejected
Adam’s claim, punishing him together with Chava. This same shortcoming surfaced
later in his sons.
Still, despite
this difficult beginning, G-d does not give up. He wants people to learn to
live together, lovingly. After all, there are a hundred billion planets in the
Milky Way, so every human being could be settled alone on one of them, thus
avoiding any tension. Yet G-d instead crowded us all onto one planet, so we
could learn to live together.
This
gargantuan mission starts small, with relationship between husband and wife,
between two people who chose each other and love each other. Yet it requires an
investment. In initial love there is no need to invest. It comes by itself, and
one does not generally know why. It’s similar to a person loving orange juice –
no investment is necessary, it love just exists!
A boy
asked his father: “How much did Mom cost you?” His father answered, “After so
many years, I cannot recall what I paid for the ring, but I keep paying each
day…” This may be meant as a witty joke, but it holds an important truth: by
signing a Ketuba, a groom undertakes an obligation to support and love and
respect, etc. his wife. All his life he must keep investing in her. Nothing
comes for free. Man is born for toil.
You might
ask: isn’t it irksome, or frightful that marital bliss requires such an
extensive investment?
The
answer: no! just the opposite is true. If compatibility depended on hidden
reasons, then we would need to be worried about the possibility that we were
not where we should be, and that we would never know how to keep things right.
Then, the first time a problem arose, we might say, “Perhaps we made a mistake!”
Yet since
marriage depends on our investment, we have control over its success.. We must
invest more and more, until we succeed. From that moment on, “the [miniature]
‘Temple’ is in our hands”.
In other
words, on the most fundamental level, there ARE no compatible couples. Rather, there
are couples who WANT to be compatible, and who invest in order to succeed in
being compatible. The stubborn will succeed.
Mazal
Tov!
