The well known, and most misunderstood, Mishneh in Gittin 90a lists three opinions as to when one may divorce his wife.
Beis Shammai— ervas davar, evidence of lewdness or adultery.
Beis Hillel— hikdicho tavshilo, she ruins your food.
Reb Akiva— motzo acheres no’eh heimeno, you found someone else who is more beautiful than she.
Everyone knows this mishneh, and it is always a source of amusement or chagrin. We read the mishneh, and understand Beis Shammai, who defends the Institution of Marriage. Beis Shammai says that one may not end a marriage unless it is beyond hope, that the spouse is unfaithful to the vows and laws of marriage. Then comes Beis Hillel, and he says, even if she burned your food; and our eyebrows start to rise. Then comes Reb Akiva, who says that even if you find someone more beautiful, go ahead and divorce your wife, and we are completely astonished. Do Beis Hillel and Reb Akiva think so little of marriage that such trivial and selfish matters are good grounds for breaking up a marriage? And how does this conform with what we know about Reb Akiva’s great love and respect for his dear wife, his muse and inspiration, Rochel? This is the Reb Akiva of ‘rak, sachak, ubacha’?
But the truth is, this Mishnah is an example of ‘shicheis lo, lo bonov mumam’, that most people have no idea of how carefully one must read a mishnah, and they think it can be read superficially, and come out understanding it precisely backwards. Correctly understood, the mishneh becomes completely different.
The Gemora in Kiddushin says that "loving one’s neighbor as one’s self" is only possible after one is married. It is only through marriage that a person finds the necessary element for becoming a true tzelem Elokim, to attain the Godliness of pure empathy. To even begin to conceive of what "ve'ahavta le'rei'acha kamocah" means is only possible after experiencing the selfless ahava of kamocha that can develop in a marriage. What is this perfect marriage that the Torah envisions? What is this marriage that the Torah considers worthy of defending at all costs? Reb Akiva says that the Torah-marriage is one of perfect and selfless love and harmony. If not, it’s not what the Torah had in mind. If your relationship with your wife is so shallow that you find someone else more beautiful than she, if you think you can experience true love with someone else, go ahead and try. What you have in your marriage is not what the Torah wants anyway. Beis Shammai says, Relationships? What ‘relationships’? We have duties in life that demand our full energy and attention: get up, go to work, learn, come home, educate your children, who has time to waste on ‘Relationships’? As long as your wife is not a prutzah, that’s good enough. Beis Hillel holds that if your wife is indifferent to your well being, this dysfunctional family life will generate a tension that will distort and disturb your ability to grow spiritually or to achieve anything worthy.
Now, you see that it is not Reb Akiva that confounds and astonishes us, it is Beis Shammai's utilitarian view of marriage that is more depressing. Unfortunately, some people have come over to me after hearing this drosho and said they still find Reb Akiva surprising, because of course Beis Shammai is right.
(If you're the sort of person who talks about the din of Ben Sorer U'moreh at Bar Mitzvahs, and "yemei shenaseinu bahem shiv'im shana" at eightieth birthday celebrations, then I suppose you could use this at a Sheva Brachos.)
Showing posts with label Marriage. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Marriage. Show all posts
Sunday, August 19, 2007
Sunday, November 12, 2006
Chayei Sarah: The Purchase of the Machpeilah Cave. Sheva Brachos #4
On the purchase of the Me’oras Hamachpeiloh, the double cave Avraham purchased to bury Sarah.
One of the most famous exegeses in the Gemora states that the laws of effecting a state of marriage are similar to those of executing a land purchase contract. This "gzeira shava" is called “kicho kicho misdei Efron,” which connects and equates the two areas of law on the basis of a word match.
It has been pointed out that deriving the laws of marriage from the purchase of a burial plot is incongruous, ironic, and bizarre. (If you don't think so, I offer you my condolences.) However, upon reflection, several interesting observations may be extracted from this association. (Unfortunately, the morbid aspect makes these observations utterly useless for a Sheva Brochos, although I have heard worse things at Sheva Brochos parties. If you have any good stories of chasanim discussing pesach pasu'ach or mekach to'us or meis oviv shel chosson, send them in.)
A. Both sides of the deal won. Attributed by some to the Bobover Rebbe. A friend once told me that most business transactions have a winner and a loser. Each side thinks that they are getting more than they are giving. The winner is the one who sees the real value and the loser is the one who doesn’t see it. Sometimes the buyer is the visionary, who sees that the value is greater than the price he is paying, and sometimes the seller is the one with vision who knows that it’s worth less than the price he is being offered. But in the case of Sdei Efron, they both got more than they gave away and they were both winners. Efron got far more than market price. The Gemora in the end of Bechoros talks about how much he got for the land, that ‘over lasocher’ means that it was far more than face value. When Efron came home, he told everyone how delighted he was at the sale, that he had gotten far more than he had given away. For Avrohom, he got something that was priceless– the M’oras Hamachpeiloh, the burial place of Odom and Chavoh. This was insignificant to anyone but a person that is fit to be buried there or a person that can perceive its holiness. For Efron, the land was only a useless rocky headache. For Avrohom, every inch was a treasure. Both sides came away knowing that they had gotten the best deal they could have dreamed of. This is the feeling we hope people have when they make a shidduch. Each side should feel that they got more than they gave, that the other side is better than they are.
To describe how little value the land had to Efron, I was reminded of something General Norman Schwartzkopf said. He said that "Going to war without France is like going deer hunting without your accordion." For Efron, the land was as useful as an accordion on a deer hunt.
B. The price of love is grief. I think that a truer answer is along the lines of what Queen Elizabeth said at her daughter-in-law’s funeral, that the price of love is grief. The Torah is connecting the most joyous of events and the inevitable concomitant of loving dedication to another human being. You can live a life of indifference. But if you commit to another person, if you love another person, there is a cost. The idea is that the gzeira shoveh between love and bereavement is appropriate because the two events are part of the same idea, one doesn’t exist without the other, it’s two sides of the same coin. And even though loving someone means that you will mourn their departure, the benefit of love far outweighs the eventual cost. Like the epitaph someone wrote on a relative’s grave, “Here lie the bones of Amelia Jones, for her life held no terrors. Alone she lived, alone she died, no hits, no runs, no errors.” An unpleasant observation, but with some truth.
An anonymous reader, m, sent in a comment, that he heard the Stuchiner Rebbe say this thought on the passuk in Shir HaShirim 8:6,
C. Marriage is the creation of a perfect neshomoh. A friend showed me that in Ma’ayonei Hayeshu’ah or something, R’ Wolfson of Torah Vodaas says, in a much more Ari Zal style, that whenever a man is mekadeish a woman, he aspires to the state of perfection symbolized and realized by the residents of the M’oroh. It is there that the perfect neshomos, which were intertwined from the moment of their creation, and who, through marriage, formed a perfect whole, are buried.
D. Marriage is not just for a lifetime, it is for an eternity. Every person should realize that their marriage is not limited to their time on Earth. Their marriage transcends death, and they will be together in life, in death, and in life after death. So the idea of kiddushin being tied to the burial of Soroh takes on a positive light– that their marriage did not end with her death, and that Avrohom took steps to ensure that they would be together in death just as they were in life. Marriage is not just for a lifetime, it is for all eternity. “U’b’mosom lo nifrodu.”
E. Avrohom was negotiating for something he was fated to get anyway. Rabbi Yosef Osher Weiss, Rosh Yeshiva and Artscroll author and editor, said that Avrohom was negotiating for the land, and we have no proof that he even knew who was buried there. We don’t even know whether he knew how significant the land was and that he was fated to be buried there, along with Soroh and the others. So, he was negotiating for the land, while all along he was fated to be buried there. He was working and negotiating to get something that he was going to get one way or another anyway. It’s like he was negotiating to get the land, and the land was negotiating to get him. This is like the shidduch process– people go through a lot of effort to get what is bashert for them in the first place.
One of the most famous exegeses in the Gemora states that the laws of effecting a state of marriage are similar to those of executing a land purchase contract. This "gzeira shava" is called “kicho kicho misdei Efron,” which connects and equates the two areas of law on the basis of a word match.
It has been pointed out that deriving the laws of marriage from the purchase of a burial plot is incongruous, ironic, and bizarre. (If you don't think so, I offer you my condolences.) However, upon reflection, several interesting observations may be extracted from this association. (Unfortunately, the morbid aspect makes these observations utterly useless for a Sheva Brochos, although I have heard worse things at Sheva Brochos parties. If you have any good stories of chasanim discussing pesach pasu'ach or mekach to'us or meis oviv shel chosson, send them in.)
A. Both sides of the deal won. Attributed by some to the Bobover Rebbe. A friend once told me that most business transactions have a winner and a loser. Each side thinks that they are getting more than they are giving. The winner is the one who sees the real value and the loser is the one who doesn’t see it. Sometimes the buyer is the visionary, who sees that the value is greater than the price he is paying, and sometimes the seller is the one with vision who knows that it’s worth less than the price he is being offered. But in the case of Sdei Efron, they both got more than they gave away and they were both winners. Efron got far more than market price. The Gemora in the end of Bechoros talks about how much he got for the land, that ‘over lasocher’ means that it was far more than face value. When Efron came home, he told everyone how delighted he was at the sale, that he had gotten far more than he had given away. For Avrohom, he got something that was priceless– the M’oras Hamachpeiloh, the burial place of Odom and Chavoh. This was insignificant to anyone but a person that is fit to be buried there or a person that can perceive its holiness. For Efron, the land was only a useless rocky headache. For Avrohom, every inch was a treasure. Both sides came away knowing that they had gotten the best deal they could have dreamed of. This is the feeling we hope people have when they make a shidduch. Each side should feel that they got more than they gave, that the other side is better than they are.
To describe how little value the land had to Efron, I was reminded of something General Norman Schwartzkopf said. He said that "Going to war without France is like going deer hunting without your accordion." For Efron, the land was as useful as an accordion on a deer hunt.
B. The price of love is grief. I think that a truer answer is along the lines of what Queen Elizabeth said at her daughter-in-law’s funeral, that the price of love is grief. The Torah is connecting the most joyous of events and the inevitable concomitant of loving dedication to another human being. You can live a life of indifference. But if you commit to another person, if you love another person, there is a cost. The idea is that the gzeira shoveh between love and bereavement is appropriate because the two events are part of the same idea, one doesn’t exist without the other, it’s two sides of the same coin. And even though loving someone means that you will mourn their departure, the benefit of love far outweighs the eventual cost. Like the epitaph someone wrote on a relative’s grave, “Here lie the bones of Amelia Jones, for her life held no terrors. Alone she lived, alone she died, no hits, no runs, no errors.” An unpleasant observation, but with some truth.
An anonymous reader, m, sent in a comment, that he heard the Stuchiner Rebbe say this thought on the passuk in Shir HaShirim 8:6,
שִׂימֵנִי כַחוֹתָם עַל לִבֶּךָ כַּחוֹתָם עַל זְרוֹעֶךָ כִּי עַזָּה כַמָּוֶת אַהֲבָה קָשָׁה כִשְׁאוֹל קִנְאָה רְשָׁפֶיהָ רִשְׁפֵּי אֵשׁ שַׁלְהֶבֶתְיָה.
On the words כי עזה כמות אהבה Rashi says
כִּי עַזָּה כַמָּוֶת אַהֲבָה. הָאַהֲבָה שֶׁאֲהַבְתִּיךָ עָלַי כְּנֶגֶד מִיתָתִי שֶׁאֲנִי נֶהֱרֶגֶת עָלֶיךָ:
Still, it is a strange way to describe love - that it is like death? Pshat is that the greater the love, the greater the suffering when it is taken away. The price of love is grief: great love ultimately causes terrible suffering. Of course, it is worth the price. How empty life would be without choosing to love.C. Marriage is the creation of a perfect neshomoh. A friend showed me that in Ma’ayonei Hayeshu’ah or something, R’ Wolfson of Torah Vodaas says, in a much more Ari Zal style, that whenever a man is mekadeish a woman, he aspires to the state of perfection symbolized and realized by the residents of the M’oroh. It is there that the perfect neshomos, which were intertwined from the moment of their creation, and who, through marriage, formed a perfect whole, are buried.
D. Marriage is not just for a lifetime, it is for an eternity. Every person should realize that their marriage is not limited to their time on Earth. Their marriage transcends death, and they will be together in life, in death, and in life after death. So the idea of kiddushin being tied to the burial of Soroh takes on a positive light– that their marriage did not end with her death, and that Avrohom took steps to ensure that they would be together in death just as they were in life. Marriage is not just for a lifetime, it is for all eternity. “U’b’mosom lo nifrodu.”
E. Avrohom was negotiating for something he was fated to get anyway. Rabbi Yosef Osher Weiss, Rosh Yeshiva and Artscroll author and editor, said that Avrohom was negotiating for the land, and we have no proof that he even knew who was buried there. We don’t even know whether he knew how significant the land was and that he was fated to be buried there, along with Soroh and the others. So, he was negotiating for the land, while all along he was fated to be buried there. He was working and negotiating to get something that he was going to get one way or another anyway. It’s like he was negotiating to get the land, and the land was negotiating to get him. This is like the shidduch process– people go through a lot of effort to get what is bashert for them in the first place.
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