Welcome. We’re continuing our program of Semichat Chaver. Baruch Hashem, our members are enjoying the learning and practical application of laws that are very, very, very practical and very, very common in married life.
Before we begin today’s halachic section, I’d like to bring to your attention a beautiful piece from Michtav MeEliyahu, by Rabbi Eliyahu Dessler. Rabbi Dessler was the nephew of Chaim Ozer Grodzinski. We mentioned him yesterday, Rabbi Grodzinski. He was married to the granddaughter of the Saba from Kelm, and he was a great, great rabbi. He was a rabbi in the United States, then he went to the UK, and eventually ended up in Bnei Brak. He didn’t write a book, but his students took his teachings and wrote a collection of his works in six volumes. Michtav MeEliyahu is mandatory reading, literally the letters and the teachings of Eliyahu. There, in Chelek Aleph, on page 38, he has a piece about what he refers to as love, ahava. I’ll tell you what it is. I’ll tell you what it is. I’ll quote his statement. He says, “When they’re married and they’re perfecting the other one, even if everybody’s getting perfected, the marriage will work.”
Now, what is perfection, he says? This is a very important yesod (foundation): love can only come through giving. The rabbi is giving us a very important yesod in marriage: in order to maintain the love, love can only come through being concerned about the other’s welfare and giving. This is the opposite of modern views of marriage, where you think, “What can I get out of it? He has a lot of money, and she has beauty. He’ll take me on a vacation, he’ll buy me two houses,” and whatever. Everybody’s looking at what they can get. So that’s a marriage that clearly starts on the—I’m not going to say the left foot—but it doesn’t start; it has no footing at all. With the left foot, you have a chance to stand. There’s no footing at all.
And then he says something amazing. Why do marriages fail? He says the natural tendency of humans, if you let gravity take its course, is to be takers. You have to break your nature to be a giver. So what happens in the beginning of marriage, when everybody’s trying to impress? You’re buying gifts, taking care, opening the door, and saying, “No, don’t worry, I’ll get it for you. I’ll do it for you,” because everybody’s trying to put on a nice show. So, unfortunately, after the marriage, you see a natural tendency, and the natural tendency is always to be a taker instead of a giver. And then, all of a sudden, you no longer have concern for the other. Where there’s no giving, there’s no ahava. And therefore, all of a sudden, it starts to dwindle. He says that shortly after the marriage, nature takes over. They return to your... They become takers, like they were. You know: “You didn’t do this for me, you didn’t do that for me. I do everything.” And then, all of a sudden, it turns into a problem.
I once said at weddings, when we break the glass, and explained many reasons why the chatan (groom) breaks the glass. One interpretation I gave is that the word kos (the glass) has the numerical value 86, and that is the exact numerical value of the word hateva. Hateva means the nature. This means the chatan is saying he has to break his nature under the chuppah (wedding canopy). And what is the nature? To take. That’s why, when we get married, the first thing the chatan must do to get married is give us something, in order to say that this is the only direction that will bring true ahava. So basically, the secret of a good marriage is when each spouse is concerned about how they can benefit the other and how they can give to the other. Once the relationship starts to become selfish, when you’re asking what you can benefit from, what you can take, there’s no love, and obviously you cannot reach perfection.
I saw a beautiful interpretation on this week’s parasha. It says that Yaakov Avinu worked for Rachel for seven years. And it says that when he worked for seven years, the days went by very quickly. It was like a few days. The question is, why was it a few days? Why did the time go by quickly? You have to know that the seven years Yaakov worked were just as difficult, the Midrash (rabbinic teaching) says, as the work the Jewish people did in Egypt. Meaning, it was backbreaking, terrible work. Yaakov Avinu says at the end of the parasha, “I got frostbitten at night in the cold, and I got heat stroke during the day.” And I worked outside, and I was concerned 24 hours a day. How could that be such an arduous task? And it says it went by quickly. The language of the pasuk (verse) is, “Out of the love that he had for Rachel.”
Now, that’s counterintuitive also, because when you’re waiting for something, the time usually goes by slowly. It doesn’t go by quickly. You tell a kid, “Winter vacation.” Until you get to winter vacation, he’s counting the days; it goes by slowly. Winter vacation takes five minutes. When you’re enjoying yourself, time flies when you’re having fun. So it should say, “He loved Rachel.” If he loves Rachel, it should say the seven years felt like 70 years. Instead, the pasuk says the seven years felt like a few days. So the pasuk says something beautiful. The pasuk says, “He loved her.”
Rabbi Dessler has a famous mashal (parable). What does it mean, he loved her? Somebody comes along and is eating fish. You ask him, “Why do you eat fish?” He says, “I love fish.” Now, if you love fish, you wouldn’t have killed it and eaten it. If you love fish, you’d just keep it in the fish tank. You love yourself, and you want to pleasure yourself. So, therefore, you kill fish and eat them. You don’t love fish. So, most of the time, when people say, “I love my wife.” But you love yourself. And since your wife brings you all sorts of pleasures, that’s what it means: you love your wife no differently than you love a fish. So that’s a very important...
In the case of Yaakov, why did the time go by so quickly? For an amazing reason. When Yaakov came to the well, what did he see? Rachel. He saw Rachel at the well, being a shepherd for her father. She was doing the shepherding. And that’s pathetic, because her father didn’t have any hands. He didn’t have any labor. So he had to use his daughters for the shepherding. When Yaakov took the job for seven years, he would relieve Rachel of all that work. And that was a great... Yaakov knew that even though he had to do the work, it brought him great satisfaction if his future wife didn’t have to do it. So for the seven years, he was actually giving to Rachel. And that’s what it says... He loved her, not himself. If he was just waiting for a girl to get married for his pleasure, then the time would have been very long. And then the pasuk would have said... But he says, “No, he loved her. Even though I have to work very hard, if my hard work will make this girl’s life easier, so that she doesn’t have to do this terrible job, that’s giving.” And when you’re giving, there’s love. And when there’s love, the time goes by very quickly. It’s a very important perspective.
So, therefore, when a man comes home from work, let’s say, and sees his wife sitting on the couch reading a magazine, his reaction should not be, “I’m sitting, working all day long. I’m killing myself, and you’re sitting on the couch.” Baruch Hashem. Baruch Hashem. I’m able to work. Are you able to enjoy yourself? Are you able to relax? It shouldn’t be that you have a claim. If my avodah (work) allows you to be more comfortable, I’m happy that I’m able to give you this. And you’ll notice in life that the happiest people are the givers, and the most miserable people are the takers.
I once read a story of a girl that had a... She herself was a very, very negative person to start with. Then she got cancer, got the BID. A young girl, 16 years old. And that didn’t help. She was very, very depressed and down, and so on and so forth. They didn’t know how to get her out of it. She was in the hospital, so her friend started a fund to help pay for her treatments. They said she could spend the other half of the fund on charity. But she was a 16-year-old girl; she’d never given out charity before. Anyway, she was in the hospital, and there was another girl in the room with her. The other girl was just sitting there, all depressed. So the girl with the iPad came over and said, “You know, what’s the matter?” The other girl said, “I see you have an iPad. I wish I had an iPad. It would take my mind off the chemotherapy, the chemo treatments.” So she said, “You don’t have an iPad?” She went and gave her her iPad. The mother said that at that moment she transformed. Just by giving somebody else this one item, all of a sudden she lit up. She came to her mother: “You know what I did today?” They came to the conclusion that the giving did more for the giver than it did for the taker. Now she felt that she has a word. And that’s godliness. God doesn’t take. Whenever you’re taking, you’re not acting like God. God only gives. At the time that you’re giving, you’re turning yourself into divineness. And therefore, in marriage, it’s the same thing.
When a person gets married, the pasuk says—and I’ll conclude this section, even though obviously these are talks that can last for a long time—the pasuk that introduces divorce says, “A man who takes a wife, has relations with her, and then later hates her.” One interpretation is that the pasuk is not only telling the result, that he ended up hating her, but is actually telling us why he came to hate her. Because he took a lady and had relations with her. He was only looking to get married for his own personal satisfaction: “What can I get out of her?” Oh, so you’re doing it for your own personal... that will ultimately lead to... When a person has the right attitude in marriage—“I want nothing. I don’t want anything. I don’t expect anything”—it’s assumed that if you have that attitude, it’s contagious to the other spouse, and she’ll have the same attitude as well. Attitudes are contagious. If a person is selfish, you’re going to bring selfishness into the house the other way. But if a person is modeling the proper way to be an ohev (one who loves), and wants to benefit the other, then he’s thrilled that he has to do the work if it’ll cause his wife not to have to do the work. To him, he’s the happiest. That’s singing in the rain for Yaakov Avinu. That’s seven years of saving his spouse’s suffering. That, Be'ahavato Otah (Out of the love that he had for Rachel).