Rabbi Yitzchak Breitowitz: Which Qualities to Look for in a Marriage Partner

[Music] i good evening everyone uh first i want to say that tonight's learning is dedicated for the refuse leima of binyamin israel benjamita uh he is in our thoughts and art filos and all of the different torah that we say should be to bring him a refusal israel again i i apologize i'm a little not in total sync with the partier but there are some important ideas that i want to get out and i'd like to talk tonight about what do you look for in a marriage because really it was last week's parsha but marriage is a perennial issue that all of us have to deal with some of us are single and looking and others of us are married but we still need to improve our marriage to strengthen our marriages build up our relationships and i think there are a number of important insights that we can get from the story of yitzhak and rifka and their marriage and how their marriage came about first of all it's very very notable how passive yitzhak was in the choice of his marriage partner ghazal tell us that because he was an akedah because he was sanctified as a korban he was not allowed to leave eric israel so he cannot go and choose a wife for himself a wife is chosen for him and not only that but even the concept of the the agency yitzchak didn't make somebody a shaliak to go and find a wife it was avram the father took over everything yitzhak's passivity itself is a very very interesting topic in many many ways it was a function of his holiness he was kind of removed from the world and in fact that actually connects to this week's parsha this is part of why asav was able to deceive him because yitzhak was on a type of spiritual madraiga where he couldn't understand duplicity he couldn't understand hypocrisy if you remember the sages tell us that asap would ask would ask all sorts of super from questions how do you take the tithing how do you take the truman and the masair from straw or from salt which of course you don't have to do but asap gave the the impression of a super machmer person and perhaps someone like rifka could see through that because after all rifka was raised in a house of liars and deceivers so she knew when she saw it yitzhak was kind of above it and in fact and the civ even says this sounds almost like a modern pop psychology idea but then the civ actually says it that the the reason why rivka had to do a deception in order for yaakov to make the bracket why couldn't she just tell yitzchak directly is that the relationship between yitzhak and rifka was a little different maybe very different than the relationship between sarah and abraham sarah and avraham you had a sense of kind of a virtual equality in their relationship when sarah had a problem she confronted avraham she says you got to get rid of your smile he's a bad influence and when avraham was in doubt as to what to do god told avraham very straightforwardly call a share tomorrow whatever sarah says listen to her she knows what she's talking about and because i'll tell us avraham worked in kirov in outreach to bring people to hashem avraham worked with the men and sora worked with the women this is the nephesh the souls that they made all the way back in before they even came to the land of israel so when you look at avraham and sorry you actually see a team kind of a team of equals each one had their views and there was a very free exchange of use then it siv says and again i say this sounds a little pop psychology but he actually says it that the relationship of rivka and yitzhak was very different rifka was in awe of yitzhak rifka felt she was not always able to totally discuss things with yitzhak as an equal and there are two reasons for this one reason is the age discrepancy remember because i'll have a message you may consider this believable or not that rifka was only three years old and yitzhak was 40 years old a 37 year difference and even like the alternative view in ghazal that drifter was 14 there was still a very significant age difference of course avraham and sorrow were 10 years apart but you know that's not that's not the same as as 37 years apart and second of all yitzhak had a certain otherworldly quality to him yitzhak was so removed from the world that rifka had a sense of awe and therefore she could espouse her position only by indirection only by hinting only by subterfuge indeed because yitzhak was above everything so you actually see already two different kinds of models in marriage again you have kind of the equal the team and then you have kind of the sense of awe and reverence depending of course of course most of us are not on the madrega to command the on reverence aspect of it but it is interesting that you see a different family dynamic here which can result in some problems because obviously just on the most basic level the communication between yitzhak and rifko was not as optimal as perhaps it could have could have been but okay but i want to go backwards a little bit i want to talk about the shidduch so the first point is of course the passivity but there's a second point uh that the gemaran khulen talks about and that is the verbosity of the account of the whole story because you'll recall the way it's written in the parsha is things are happening and then when eliezer tells basuel who's rifka's father and then lovan rivka's brother he tells them the whole story over again now the torah is normally very economical with words the torah will often say and he said everything that happened he doesn't have to go over if you if you're given a narrative structure a through z happens and then it says and the servant told the family what happened it's not going to repeat a to z again the torah is very economical there are many many halachats that we derive from a single verse from a single word and sometimes even from a single letter the torah has great economy of expression if an idea could be conveyed in one word it's not going to be conveyed in two words and in fact if it is conveyed in two words we're going to ask the question why say two words if one word would have been enough so why is there so much repetition here the story happens and eliezer then says the exact not the exact story but all of the details of the story again why does the torah bother to have that verbosity so the gemara itself gives a relatively straightforward answer and the gomorrah says even the casual conversation of even the slaves of the patriarchs is more beloved than god and more beloved to god than all of the torah that was later given to the children meaning god so much cherishes everything that is connected to the lives of avraham yitzhak and yaakov that he will go into great and repetitive detail to elaborate to go over to hazard to review even though with respect to us the whole torah's whole laws are given in a very great economy of expression so the quran simply answers that the repetition is due to khabibos right something that you love someone that you like or that you love you kind of you know you want to spend time with you repeat i love you i love you i love you i love you you say it over and over and over again and you don't say like a london oh why did you have to say you love me the second time you already said it the first time that's not the way love works love works with an abundance of language and the abundance of language the gemaran khulan says is an example of divine love but here is the thing and this is a very important general tool in understanding hummish when the torah repeats narratives it never repeats the narrative in the identical way this is what is critical meaning you don't simply say oh why is there a repetition in every repetition there will be redundancies there will be omissions there may be contradictions there may be different ways of saying the same thing stylistic variation and stylistic variation isn't just a matter of poetic expression i want to sound nice by varying my expression if a different expression is used there's a reason the great commentator the abarbanel again uh his life was so colorful it's worth a minute uh just to talk about him uh now called don yitzha barbanel because he was actually of the spanish nobility was the finance minister of spain during the reign of ferdinand and isabella in fact he was involved in financing the expedition of columbus to the new world and of course during his tenure was when we had the great inquisition against the jews culminating in the expulsion of the jews the jews who didn't want to convert to christianity some of them converted externally and they remained practicing jews in private and they were called although it's a derogatory term morano's mother actually means pigs but but they were called muranos we call them today the anusim those who were forced others were burnt at the stake and still others were expelled and there's a tradition that this happened on the 9th although historically that's very very tenuous but nevertheless 1492 was the year of the expulsion of the jews from spain and because the abarbanel was so needed by ferdinand and isabella he was given the opportunity to remain in spain as an observant jew as an observatory he would have been the only openly observant jew in spain but he refused he basically said if my people are leaving then i will go with them so he actually left that very very prestigious government position and he was at the head of the procession of the jews that were leaving spain interestingly enough a little bit of detail the barbados was in his 70s at the time and he was at the head of the procession at the edge of the procession there was a mother with a young four-year-old child that four-year-old child who was of yosef cairo he grew up to brevis cairo the author of the shogunate who first went to turkey constantinople and then found his way to eric israel to tswat and of course he was the great rav of zlat and one of the greatest post kim we've had the definitive posing the one who authored the the shogunate there is a tradition again these are traditions i'm not sure if they're historically accurate that the ravenel was leading the procession on the ninth above and he ordered that they play music as they were leaving and there's a much locus as to what's going on how do you how are you allowed to play music on the 9th of we don't even do it from rosh chodesh so i'll give you two shots they're actually two explanations why one was that people were so devastated they were so heartbroken that he felt it was almost a matter of life and death that sometimes there are extraordinary situations where you have to cheer people up or they're not going to be able to go out even today you know you know then you have to ask around but if somebody is suffering from from severe depression or anxiety so even on the ninth above you know we might tell the person uh you know depending on the situation in private do what you need to do that's chat number one but i saw a shot number two that i thought was very fascinating the ravenel was actually making the point that when you're kicked out of gullus there's nothing to cry about we cry when we were taken from marriage israel huh you're kicked out of spain all right you were in gullets now you're in gullis what's the problem meaning don't look in other words you're looking at spain as if we're where you know where we're leaving our home it's not your home it's a very interesting point it's not your home and therefore nothing to cry about so an interesting idea that a jew should not be so attached to khutslawarets to ever regard it as islam in fact the shalom who lived in the 1500s the generation after and he was a very very prominent raven frankfurt he was actually quite well off and he left everything to come to yerushalayim and he wrote the safer shenay luchot habrit which is a virtual encyclopedia of kabbalah in halakha just uh it's hard to even find anything there because it is such a vast and rich safer that's why he's called shalla shall lie as an abbreviation so he writes he writes he was very critical of jews who build big houses in the golan houses that will last hundreds of years stone houses brick houses he says the jew should never look at his place in the gola as something permanent rabbi barrel wine tells a story and the railroad wine has a yeshiva that he founded in muncie so when he was building the yeshiva i guess maybe 30 35 40 years ago so one of his supporters offered him special wood from finland that doesn't warp for 200 years i guess average wood tends to warp after 50 years a certain structural problem this wood would last 300 years and rabbi wine said he didn't want to take it because he was not going to deliberately build the yeshiva and fritz lawrence that would last 300 years that would have been a statement now i have a kashan rabbi wine or at least an alternative explanation because the gemaran magilla tells us that all of the shoals and hutslarets are going to be uprooted and it in eric israel so mama would have said to rabbi wine build your yeshiva with the finn finland's timber and you're not making a statement that is going to be in flowers because your yeshiva is going to be uprooted and it's going to come to eric israel okay be this at night going back to the barbanel which i'll then go back to the main subject the ravenel however is best known not for the fact that he was finance minister of spain but he's known for his great great commentaries on the humish and on the naviem he did not write on the kusum except for safer daniel because the barbanel was one of the great great writers about mashiach and the book of daniel has many messianic calculations which are very obscure so the rabbinelle did write actually more than one parish on daniel but he did not write as far as i know on the other ketuvim but he did write on the hummish and he did right on the niveam and the barbanel is a very lengthy parish which is which is really too bad in some ways because there's a lot of tremendously beautiful good things in the abarbanel but sometimes it's a little long that's why you'll find today even in english there are abridgements condensations adaptations as it were to bring the webinal to the general public the rabinell's style is an interesting style uh he prefaces each chapter or each part paragraph of the hamish or not in the vm with many many questions he may ask as many as 100 questions and then give an explanation that will answer all of those questions so there's an old joke about a person who became an api chorus because he studied the barbados because he used to read the abramonel's commentary after eating children shabbos afternoon so he's sitting in his chair and he's reading a hundred problems with the hamish then he falls asleep he becomes not because he says how can i believe in a book that has so many questions so many difficulties so many contradictions so he never got to the answers so it's a little dangerous to have a lot of questions without giving any type of answer okay but be it mate the reason i'm bringing this up is the abarbanel pays very very careful attention to the different recountings of the story and he points out no fewer than 50 differences between the account as it happened and the account as eliezer recounted it now i'm not going to go over 50 i'm only going to over three or four and to show how important it is so this is going to be important both for marriage and it's important it's an important key to hamish that when you look at swamish pay a lot of attention to repetitive stories because repetitive stories will often be very very significant in terms of the differences in the repetitions they're never going to be exactly the same so here let's go back to the story the story begins with avraham calling his servant to him and making his servants swear that he will not take a wife for yitzhak from the canaanite women but he will go lrt violated to my land and to my place of birth now note that avraham did not specifically say go to my family for reasons that you'll see a little later avraham's emphasis was on geography it was not on family art c um again i'm translating with letter t as place of birth now some say melody means family of birth but if you say molarity is place of birth avram's pada was not about family at all avraham sakpada was about taking a woman from a certain geographical area when eliezer is recounting the story to basuel and levan he says my master made me swear that i would go el base avi um i will go to my father abram said he will go to his father's home and his family so eliezer made a switch here eliezer switched the definition of the mission from geography to family is there a significance in that in that switch okay that's that's issue number one uh issue number two eliezer brings up a question perhaps the woman will not want to go shall i bring your son there if the woman doesn't want to go so avraham said shalom under no possible circumstances shall you take my son out of eric israel in such a situation you are absolved of your oath and we can take some canaanite people particularly honorary ashkelom who are avraham's close confederates now when eliezer is telling that story to love on he raises the question i asked my master what if the woman doesn't want to go and eliezer simply says and my master said don't worry about it god will give you success he doesn't mention under no circumstances shall my son be taken there eliezer omits that detail he changes it into an assurance hashem will give you success third eliezer devises a test now this test is clearly not superstition it's not like saying for example the first woman that's wearing a yellow dress is going to be the right wife that would be superstition that would be forbidden eliezer's test is not based on superstition eliezer's test is based on character it's based on midote it's based on kindness and we'll see how to tell you as you know to look for that well we'll come to that eliezer wants to find a woman who is kind and considerate and compassionate so he devises a test i'm going to ask the a woman for uh give me and my camels and my animals to drink and the woman that does that is the right woman now did rifka do exactly what eliezer proposed she actually did not but she did better eliezer's proposal was she will give me and my camels to drink meaning she'll give the water and say give this to you drink it and give it to your camels rivka didn't do that riska gave the water to eliezer and said drink up and only after he finished drinking she then said i will go back and draw more water for your camels see the difference eliezer's original proposal was she will give me and the camels rifka did better and ricka did better in actually two different ways first of all rifka did better because when you tell the person this is both for you and your animals the person might be reluctant to drink everything they need to drink because they know they have to save something for the camels rift on the other end said drink up drink up drink up don't worry about it and then she went back so while the ezra would not be inhibited number two when you say to somebody this is for you and your camels there's a certain denigration of human dignity because you're saying yeah you and your camels you're the same this way you know you drink after you drink i'll give your cameras now most of them before i can do ask kakacha according to you're supposed to feed the animals first how could rifka give him first how could all the edges take first okay the mugging of rum learns from there that only applies to eating not drinking because drinking a person you know god forbid could die of thirst or whatever it would be and number three look at the fact that she went to the trouble of going back to the well the second time uh right because when she says drink up and then i'll go back she's talking about his second trip so did she do ex it was like she did extra credit meaning did she do a hundred percent of what eliezer stipulated she did not but she did 120 of what eliezer stipulated and since his test was not based on superstition his test was based on character when a test is based on character so of course the better you do the better it is but when eliezer tells the story to love on eliezer makes it a one-to-one correspondence i said the woman that will give me and my camels is the right woman and behold rifka gave it to me and to my camels in other words he makes the correspondence exact even though the correspondence was not exact he doesn't emphasize the difference in what she did another dip problem after rifka passed the test eliezer immediately gives her the jewelry jewelry and gold and then he asks her oh by the way basmiyat you are the daughter of whom meaning when he gave her the jewelry he didn't know who she was when he recounts the story to love on he says after this woman passed the test i said that's who is your father of course it was avraham's nephew her father was avram's nephew because basuel is the son of nacho nacho is avraham's brother who's no longer alive rashi explains why did eliezer change the order because eliezer wanted to be logical if eliezer would have said i gave her the jewelry first and then i asked pasmiat they would have said well how could you give her the jewelry until you knew she was our family so eliza changed it to make it a sensible story but if that's what makes it a sensible story then why didn't early edger do the sensible thing okay now a final observation is not about discrepancy but it's about something that we sometimes don't even notice i think i mentioned before naham alibiza's a famous observation that there are some midrashim that are so well known and beloved to us that we literally are sure it's in the homicide even though it's not in the hamish like our minds literally read it into the text the example we talked about was avraham being thrown in the fiery furnace if you remember and being saved and that is not in the flemish well it's interesting i've probably said 25 or 30 times in the course of a half an hour eliezer elizer eliezer show me in the homicide where it says eliezer was the one who was sent to find a wife for yitzhak doesn't say meaning we know from other places elijah was abraham's servant but on the other but i've remembered other servants as well and throughout the narrative the man that is effecting this marriage is not described as eliezer his name is not mentioned once he is described only as abed avraham he is anonymous it's as if he doesn't have a name it's as if he doesn't have an identity why is that some so you see with these discrepancies and the unusual fact that eliezer is not mentioned by name although he is mentioned by name in other in other in other parts of the hamish as well so let's start off to understand the meaning of these discrepancies these anomalies let me start with a very beautiful observation from the run rabbenu nissan one of the great rishonim the iran is is known primarily as a master of halacha the iran wrote commentaries on the rift and on the gemara that are still in the yeshivas are still learned but iran wrote another very very interesting safer on the jewish philosophy and the explanation of major themes in the torah which is called the jurassos haran recently i think artscroll published a translation of the dreshasharan there's an earlier translation from uh rav shraga silverstein's which i actually wrote an introduction to it so uh you can get you see either version is good but the dresser surround is really one of the major major philosophical works of the middle ages and the dresser surround points out the following idea tell us and rashi brings this that eliezer himself had a daughter and eliezer himself was hoping that perhaps avraham would choose eliezer's daughter to be a wife for yitzhak after all eliezer is righteous eliezer is avraham's faithful servant eliezer is abraham's greatest talmud and yet avram rejects eliezer in favor of avram's own either family or city depending on it even though the people there were idol worshipers oh if they have a desire what's going on here is this pure racism my family is better even if they're idol worshipers than a person who's exotic and righteous and learn it so the iran says quite an amazing idea the ron says certainly eliezer was righteous certainly eliezer was worthy but elijah was a canaanite and the one thing about the canaanites was they had a natural propensity to cruelty and a lack of compassion now obviously we don't assume eliezer was cruel though the other worked on himself but inside his nature because this was the nature of the canaanites was a cruelty avraham knew that in kharan the people of kharan were kind they were good so here's what the ron says if a person is an idol worshiper a person is not religious that's kind of an educational deficit i didn't learn true beliefs i didn't learn a way of life that's correctable you take somebody who simply doesn't know what the world is about doesn't know about hashem and you teach them about hashem and you can bring them to a good place but when there's a character flaw cruelty that is much much harder to change and even if it changes through hard work it may re-emerge in a later generation and therefore it's an amazing thing avraham rejected eliezer because there was a begum a defect in kindness and that explains an an obvious question how did elias how did eliezer know to devise this particular test who told him to devise the test avram didn't say what to look for but you see the fact that eliezer was excluded was because of a lack of hasset therefore eliezer understood exactly what he had to do now this itself is an amazingly relevant lesson because it really tells us what do we look for in a marriage what do we look for in a right do we look for a black hat in the case of a man or whatever equivalent to a black cat would be in the case of a woman are we looking for super from tight my wife is so machmer that you know she will take you know trumas and myself from even what you buy from the badass which by the way is not uh in irrational positions some uh people do that uh you know and again i got to it i don't i don't mean to demean that aspect of life but the run is saying i mean look what iran is saying iran is saying better to take a person from a family of idol worshipers who has kindness and generosity in her heart than to take the most religious god-fearing person who has a streak of cruelty you look for hassan you look for kindness now again you have to ask her of i mean if somebody were to tell me if one of my students were to tell me oh i met the most wonderful woman a heart of gold it happens to be she's jews for jesus but okay you know okay listen i mean uh you got to talk about that obviously i wouldn't i wouldn't approve that particular but just in terms of priority assuming that your shadow is basic commitment to mitzvoth the kindness and the hazard is going to be more important than many other than many other elements an amazing thing and in this way by the way you need to see the greatness of eliezer this must have hurt eliezer tremendously this must have hurt him and yet and all the other actually had every incentive for the mission to fail because if the mission were to fail eliezer might be next in line because remember abram said the oath will be announced and yet avraham had confidence that eliezer will carry out the job and we're going to see eliezer not only carried out the job but he did more than he had to do and you'll see this in a moment and that is why eliezer's name is not mentioned because eliezer totally obliterated his ego his self-interest his agenda he ceased to exist as an independent person with his own dreams and his own desires that's how faithful he was to avraham and his teaching that's a very very high madriga indeed the madraka of being movatel yourself nullifying yourself to what your master wants and again what abraham wants is a reflection of what hashem wants so really it just movato himself to the rut zone a boy because abram was a nubby and that's very very difficult you know pierce talks about nullifying your will to the will of god and then god will do what you need so so now with this understanding we can explain all of the discrepancies number one eliezer had every incentive personally to sabotage the mission and he didn't but number two not only did he not sabotage the mission but he deliberately did more than he had to do in order to maximize its success and you and this explains the shinryum in what he said and what happened when it happened avraham as i said initially did not care about family avram just said go to my city go to my place go to my place of birth why did navrum care about family because based on iran avraham is basically telling eliezer go to kharan because they're bale it doesn't have to be my family in kharan they are ballet but eliezer understands that he has a big job ahead of him he has to flatter up he has to butter up the family and make them realize how important they are because otherwise they would never consent to let young rifka go so what does he have to do to butter up if he would just say oh my master said i should show up in haran and pick a girl from the street that's not very impressive they have to he has to say the great avram who is rich prosperous famous sent me all the way here because he was looking for you you're special you're a family that he wants to be reconnected to in other words if elijah would have just said oh avraham told me come to this land and find a woman that would not have appealed to their ego right and now elijah could have done that because that's exactly what happened but he was me he changed the story a little bit to maximize success the second issue i raised was when avraham said god forbid if the woman doesn't want to go do not under any circumstances take my son there so you'll remember eliezer doesn't say that part to love it very simple if i want to impress you i want you to think how important you are i'm not going to tell you by the way my master said that his son will never ever set foot in your house under any circumstances that would be perceived as an insult eliezer leaves it out the test the test you'll remember was not a hundred percent because eliezer's test was she's going to offer me and the camels and instead what rifka did was she first gave him and then for the camels from eliezer's perspective that's even better but eliezer is using the test for a different purpose eliezer is doing two strategies one is flattering them and the other is appealing to their superstitious belief in omens remember lavan and besuel were pagans and pagans very much connect to superstition to omens and the like eliezer wants to communicate to them you see that god or the gods small g want this jedi because of the sign of i propose the test and rifka passed it now the difference between an omen and a test of medos a test of character is an omen is on omen only if there's a 100 correspondence if eliezer would have said oh i said the woman that offers me and the camels and rifka offered me and after i drunk she went back to the camels lovin would have said that's not an omen it didn't happen exactly the way you say close is not good enough so from eliezer's perspective which is a character test it's even better but from the superstitious omen perspective that wouldn't be good enough so eliezer has to make it a closer correspondence than it otherwise would be the sequence as soon as the woman passed the test eliezer gave her the jewelry and then he asked by the way who's your father from elijah's perspective that was totally logical because eliezer wasn't looking for a member of the family he was looking for a person from kharan that had as far as elijah was concerned as soon as she showed that meter that was enough but here is the thing one of the skills that we learn uh as a little child maybe it's something we shouldn't learn is that whenever you lie you gotta be sure to be consistent and change every part of your story if you're changing part of your story you got to be sure to change the other part of the story now here is the thing eliezer changed the mission from geography to family but once he changed it to family he couldn't say i gave her the jewelry first and then i asked who was her family because if you didn't know who her family was you couldn't have married her you see bislima based on the original mission when avraham said go to the place and find a suitable person so eliezer could have given and did give her the jewelry before asking the family because family didn't make a difference but once he changed it from geography to family he had to also change the sequence i gave her the i asked her who she was and then i gave her the uh the the jewelry right so this explains all of the differences what eliezer is essentially doing is he is lying he is lying yeah and you might say oh lying is no good okay that's all the other by the whole union of lying we have in this parsha as well but the idea was that number one uh to extricate a righteous woman from a house of avodahzara you know there's a mitzvah lie together out to get her out to bring her to the shidduch so in there there are cases again one is not supposed to lie and again one of the unfortunate attributes sometimes of religious societies is people are over lenient in lying to the government or or filing false claims or insurance i know people are always cutting corners and this is wrong one is supposed to be honest one is supposed to be truthful uh you are supposed to be truthful not only to other religious jews which is obvious but certainly even to non-religious jews and even to non-jews non-jews whether it's the government whether it's non-jewish people whether it's non-religious jews whether it's religious jews a jew is supposed to be honest the very first question we're going to be asked after we die is did we conduct our business affairs with honesty and integrity that's question number one did you learn torah on a regular basis that's question number two so the very first question is honesty so obviously i'm very in favor of honesty it's a very very important value but there are times i mean there are times i think everybody would agree when it's permissible to lie right if a terrorist is asked you were the kids you know give me the directions to the kindergarten you know you kind of steer him away right if he's asking you those questions and uh and uh and the like so uh it's a halal issue but suffice it to say that under the circumstances of extricating rifka from a corrupt and degenerate environment eliezer was allowed to do what he was allowed to do but the issue is why did he do it he would have every motivation to have this mission fail and if he would have said things exactly the way they unfolded there would be no taina against him because he told the truth so he went the extra mile to maximize the success of the mission because had he set it over the way it happened there would have been less of a chance that the mission would be successful so you see a tremendous tremendous lesson in faithfulness but going back to the major point of the run and i think iran is our foundation point here the ron says the single most important quality that one looks for in a marriage partner is the kindness compassion and caring okay very very important and this is true now in this context of course it is what the man is looking for in the woman but the commentary say it is equally true that a woman should seek this in her husband in a man as as well you know it's interesting that the torah says by the creation of khabar that it is not good for man to be alone lo tov it is not good for adam to be alone i will make a helpmate to be opposite him and the question is when was this said this was said in the garden of eden and this was said before the sin remember there was no sin until khabar came in and ate the fruit so what is so bad with man being alone in the garden of eden the garden of eden has all of the delights he could have anything he wants except for one tree okay but everything else is his uh he doesn't have to worry about laundry he doesn't need clothing et cetera he has a whole world that belongs to him that's for his appropriation what is so bad to be alone in a world of infinite pleasures and the commentaries say that god is described as the ultimate good and the reason god is described as the ultimate good is because god gives and god does not take because there's nothing that you can give to god so goodness emulating hashem is when we become a giver more than a taker so when it says it's not good for man to be alone you can translate it slightly differently man cannot be in a state of goodness when they are alone because man in the garden of eden has an infinite capacity to take from the world but man has no one to whom to give and without giving he cannot be godly and without giving he cannot be good because good equals hashem in fact some say derek drosh i mean it only fits the english name the dead sea why is the dead sea called the dead sea of course in hebrew it's not called the dead sea it's called yamaha so this is this is a drought based on the english it's called the dead sea because it only takes and it doesn't give meaning all the water that flows into the dead sea doesn't go anywhere else the dead sea is a dead end so the concept is if all you do is take and you don't give you're dead being alive means giving sharing so the tour writes that hashem created marriage to enable us to be more godly by becoming givers rather than takers you remember of course um john f kennedy's famous inaugural address from the 1960s most of you were not born then but ask not what your country can do for you ask what you can do for your country marriage is the same thing ask not what your marriage does for you ask what you can do for your marriage again the whole purpose of the creation of man and woman is that we should become more godly by learning to go beyond our egotism in our selfishness because once we open our heart beyond our selfishness there's room for hashem to come in when we're closed because of our selfishness then there's no hashem now there is a certain subtlety here there is absolutely a subtlety here and the subtlety is that in order to be a giver you have to be a taker i mean imagine a situation where a guy hears this mr schmooze and says you're right the purpose of marriage is to be a giver i'm gonna give give give give give and every time his wife wants to do something for him he says i give i don't take how is she going to feel she's going to feel demeaned she's going to feel that she has nothing to contribute she's going to feel that she's just a recipient of charity which is etc right so the subtlety here is that when you give to another person one of the deepest ways you give to another person is to have that other person understand how much you need them to give to you a person who only gives and doesn't take is actually selfish and egotistical in a different way you can be selfish because you're always taking or you could be selfish because you always need the ego satisfaction that i'm the big sonic who's always giving so the subtlety of married life is that to be truly a giving person i open myself up to what the other has to give to me i'm willing to be vulnerable i'm willing to be weak i'm willing to say that there are things that i need from you and that makes a person feel needed and that makes a person feel wanted and therefore this is the minuet so to speak that to be a true giver you also have to know how to take and when to take and be open to take because then you're giving a great gift you're giving the gift of self-help or validation legitimation uh to the other uh to the other person so that's a very very important idea uh since we are talking about marriage again that's here in the back just got married on on sunday uh no shannaram and uh so there are no accidents um i didn't know you would be here but uh happens we were talking about marriage or brexit i'm glad i'm able to uh get this in let me just mention the rest of the puzzle going back to gracious lo toef hey yo sadam lavado it is not good for men to be alone okay we talked about that i will make a helpmate to be opposite so what is the lush and i'll make a helpmate to be opposite opposite implies opposition so the gemara gives a pragmatic answer if you're fortunate you'll have a help mate if not you'll have opposition that there's it's this or that but this ms gives a deeper explanation this facebook says that the true help mate in marriage is the opposition meaning to say like this all of us would like kind of a clone of ourselves in which they would i would like my spouse to agree with me every single time but the question becomes if all i have is a duplicate of myself and a different gender how will i grow how will i ever become a better person so the truth of the matter is god badafka made men and women with different personalities different ways of looking at the world so that each person can become greater by developing qualities within themselves that would otherwise be dormant that's why for example avraham represents loving kindness sora was much more disciplinarian and she understood when things had to be done and through the interaction of avraham and sarah sarah developed greater kindness than she would have had and avram developed greater discipline yitzhak in rifka yitzhak in many ways was like his mother he was inward focused rifka was like his father abram you have to have a harmony a balance now you have to be careful the idea that each one right so if an extrovert marries an introvert the extrovert becomes more reflective because of the introvert and the introvert becomes better able to relate to people each one develops from their interaction with the other a quality that they otherwise would be lacking the harmony the balance so people say opposite to track that's not totally true if someone if two people are absolutely opposites it may not work but it is good to look for someone that has certain aspects that are deficient in your own personality because then it gives you the opportunity to grow and become someone that would be greater then you otherwise now you have to be careful that each one doesn't pick up the negative attributes they tell a story with george bernard shaw and there's adora duncan who was a very very famous ballet dancer that you're a little bit of a flirtatious person so she once said to shaw at a party mr shaw you know with my physical with my looks and your brains will have wonderful children together so shah who is known as a curmudgeon said to her that's true what if the kids have your brains and my looks then we're going to be in big trouble so it could happen you know it could happen that each one learns from the other the thing that you're not supposed to pick up okay but that's not the hope the hope and the aspiration is that conegdo badafka in the ways that we're different is where you get growth you see things in a different way a new way a deeper way a different pair of glasses and different me dot that would be dormant come out and that's why azer kineto is not a contradiction it's precisely in the opposition the differential personalities that goodness goodness emerges this is what you might call in in politics they used to be afraid i think there probably is still a phrase although uh both in israel and the united states is largely dead called the loyal opposition there was a concept primarily emerging from british politics that even if you were in the opposition you were fundamentally loyal to the good of the country and marriage is the same way that there is loyalty there is love no there is connection but that doesn't mean there's not going to be opposition meaning there's going to be different ways of looking at things and that actually is healthy and positive and that brings people to a better place than they otherwise would be so bizarre hashem we should take these lessons to heart and miracles who bless all of those who need to find their jedi to find they should with the proper midot and all of us who are married we should be so good to work on our marriages strengthen our marriages to understand as our sages tell us uh we talked about this a few weeks ago ishvisha when a man and a woman are together in proper shalom the presence of god is with them may we be zoha to make our homes a residence and abode for the divine presence [Music] it's [Music] oh