Jewish Ethics and Relationships - Rabbi Yitzchak Breitowitz

a very very pivotal issue that people are very concerned about first let me start generally you know everyone knows the ten commandments and the ten commandments are commonly divided into two columns the first five are said to be the duties between man and god believe in god don't believe in idols don't take god's name in vain observe the shabbat and the second five are considered to be the interpersonal duties don't steal don't commit adultery et cetera which are called man and men and we have two terms in hebrew for them category one is called bain adam lamakom between man and god makom is placed but god is referred to as the place of the universe and category two is called being adam between man and man now i don't want to spend a lot of time on that particular division there is actually one problem with that because everyone knows what the fifth commandment is the fifth commandment i'm sure your parents must have told you told you this many times honor thy father and mother and the question is why is that in column one that seems to be interpersonal right so really it ought to be instead of five five it ought to be four six but there are a lot of answers to that one answer is that uh when we honor our parents we learn gratitude for having life and therefore that transfers to gratitude to the almighty for giving you life but okay but be it as it may there's an interesting point here in terms of font size moses comes down from mount sinai with the two tablets of stone and by the way the two tablets were not joined they were separate tablets contrary to the picture now the first five have many more words than the second five just more words right the second five are very staccato don't kill don't steal don't commit adultery don't give false testimony don't covet your neighbor's property but they took up the same amount of space on the tablets so in order for a fewer number of words to take up the same number of same amount of space the letters must be much larger so if you're watching moses coming down from the mountain and you're putting on your glasses and you're trying to squint and see what is on those tablets which commandments are you going to see first you're going to see the interpersonal commandments because they were written in a larger or engraved rather in a larger size of letter so this itself is at least an indirect thought that people sometimes misidentify what it means to be a religious person a religious person is of course a person who believes in god and a person who wants to serve god but people think the meaning of being religious is primarily i keep the shabbos i wear to fill in all that is important but you see over here that the way you treat other people is on some level even more important now both are primary both are vital but it's a real big mistake when we interpret religion exclusively in terms of the ritualistic commandments and we don't look at the the obligation and the responsibility of kindness of compassion of love of caring of concern so in a sense if somebody would ever ask you how come some religious jews are not kind and compassionate people so i could answer although it's a little bit of a wise cracker answer why is guy answer well anyone that does not treat people with kindness is not religious that's like asking how come some religious jews don't keep shabbos well the short answer is anybody would say well what do you mean every religious jew keeps shabbos because if you don't keep shabbos you're not a religious jew so you can't possibly say how come some religious jews don't keep kosher so i would submit to you that the same way we would say that the definition of being religious means you keep shabbos and you keep kosher the definition of being religious means you treat people with dignity and with kindness and with compassion that is part of that same torah and as that little homily i showed you about the ten commandments perhaps it is even a more important part of the torah and the like do you remember there's a famous story in the gemara maybe you've heard this story before about a non-jew wants to convert to judaism it's in the talmud and he first goes to shamai a great rabbi and says to shama teach me the whole torah while i stand on one foot. now give me a short sound bite so sean kicks him out of the house he says you know get out of here you idiot you know i don't need people who uh just scoff around he then goes to the great sage hillel who was renowned for his patience and hillel says yeah i'll teach you the hotel in one foot what is hateful to you do not do to another you don't want people to hurt you you don't want people to disregard your feelings you don't want people to be insensitive to you anything that would hurt you don't do to anybody else the idoc and the rest of the torah of course there's a lot more to learn go and learn it i'm just giving you a one-line synopsis of what the torah is about now let's ponder this story a little bit because there are really two questions you could ask about this story question number one and christianity uses this as a criticism of judaism this is sometimes described as the negative golden rule instead of saying do unto others as you would have them do unto you you'll notice it is phrased in the negative what is hurtful to you do not do to another so you'll sometimes see in the writings of christian polemicists the idea that christian morality is a higher level than pharisaic or rabbinic morality because rabbinic morality simply espouses the ethic of not hurting people as opposed to christian morality that advocates the higher cause of loving people and giving people goodness and the theory goes the positive is higher than the negative but that obviously is not true because the very verse that jesus cites in the new testament love thy neighbor as you love yourself is taken from the jewish bible and it appears in the book of leviticus so yeah jesus may have said love your neighbor if you love yourself but that's in the torah he didn't invent that so the question is actually a good question if indeed judaism espouses not merely the negative ethic of not hurting people but the positive ethic of showing love then why does hillel utilize the lower level of not hurting people because one would assume it is spiritually higher to help people affirmatively than simply not to hurt them right so that's question number one i want to ask why does halo use the negative instead of the positive especially since the torah itself uses the positive love your friend or love your neighbor as you love yourself the second question is how is that the whole torah i mean i understand it embraces all of the interpersonal commandments charity and kindness but i don't see in that statement putting on twill in keeping kosher what is hateful to you don't do to somebody else right how does that pick up the whole torah at most it picks up 50 percent of the total so the second question i can answer rashi actually gives us a beautiful answer rashi says when hillel says what is what is hateful to you do not do to your friend the term friend has a double meaning friend is my fellow human being and friend is also god it's a very beautiful thought that god is described in many ways god is described as our father god is described as our king but god is also described as our friend and that's a very comforting idea when a person feels lost a person feels alone a person feels lonely god is with them god is there to be a source of comfort a source of support you know we'll talk about this a little later on but we say you know how come how come god doesn't answer prayers right but the point of the matter is if a person is going through a hard time and even if things don't come out the way they wanted it to come out but god was there giving him the strength to get up in the morning to put one foot in front of the other foot to keep on going that's also god got in that in that place so therefore when hillel says to the non-jew what is hateful to you do not do to another to your friends to your friends he's including don't hurt god by violating his will so as a result there is a double meaning but to go back to the first question why does hillel use the negative instead of the positive and the short answer is those of you that are planning on going to medical school will learn quickly that the first rule of medicine is do no harm and that is before you start trying to save the world before you start trying to do good before you start trying to say i know exactly what you need and i'm going to give it you first have to step back and be sure you know the person you appreciate the person that what you're doing is not going to hurt that person what you're doing is not going to steamroll that person's awareness of themselves meaning in point to fact before you can do good you have to be sure you're not doing harm let me give you a trivial example it's a small example let's say you know when people are sick people have a flu whatever it is uh they react to it in different ways some people just want to go into a cave they just want to close the door they don't want company they don't want calls they don't want chicken soup they just want to be left alone so they could sleep for 18 hours or whatever other people kind of want to be babied a little bit maybe it's a man woman difference to some degree they want someone to make chicken soup for them they want someone to come over they want someone to talk et cetera now let's imagine that you're the typical you know guy in the cave who says i just want to be left alone and every 15 minutes you have your good friends coming over your girlfriend even coming over with chicken soup and you say well i really can't eat i just want to sleep she says i spent five hours making this soup for you and you're not going to take it well is she trying to help you or is this simply what makes her feel good and therefore you're the person that she wants to use so before you start helping people be sure you're responsive to their needs and that is why hillow starts off with the negative because you really can't help a person until you know what that person really needs people are not simply objects through which i can do my good deeds you know what they tell the story about uh even good deeds can be selfishly motivated uh they tell a story this is kind of a bizarre story but it's a cute story about a man a boy in yeshiva had learned a teaching i'm not even aware of this teaching but it says that if you marry a bad wife your suffering will be so great that you're guaranteed a place in the world to come so somehow this really got the guy and the guy was determined to marry the worst woman that he could possibly marry so he turned down all of the good shidduchim and finally found a woman that was bitter and angry and selfish and people said are you crazy what do you want to do you said nope that's the one so he marries her and he's really really excited because you know 30 40 years 50 years and then he'll go straight to obama you know small price debate so the next morning all of a sudden she's sweet she's gentle she brings him breakfast in bed you know she does everything she waits on him hands and foot and he's getting very very nervous what is going on here and after a week of this extreme kindness he says here you know i appreciate how nice you are but that's not really the deal that i thought we had that's not really the understanding you know you were a different type of person when we got married so she says to him if you think you're going to go to allah because of me you've got another thing coming you know so so so the concept is that even kindness sometimes is a way of hurting people or it's a way of self-advertisement we're really doing it for ourselves okay so let me just say that it's very very important and again i i don't mean to put myself up as any example i mean all of us have our failings and deficiencies but as an ideal of what it means to be a religious jew a religious jew is supposed to be an exemplar of kindness of sensitivity of compassion of tolerance and sometimes in the polarized world we live in you'll sometimes see that religion might make a person uptight and a bit condemnatory and a bit judgmental but they're going in the wrong way if that's where it takes them they're not properly internalizing the teachings of of judaism now it's a little bit of a tightrope because obviously judaism does have a code of ethics judaism is not moral relativism judaism doesn't say i'm okay you're okay and whatever goes goes there are standards and the standards have to be upheld but they have to be upheld with kindness and respect for the inherent dignity of other human beings jews and non-jews going back to what we discussed that man is made in the image of god man men women are made in the image of god and therefore everyone is entitled to a basic respect and dignity for who they are and for the godliness that is within now in particular although this applies to all our relationships let's talk a little bit about man-woman relationships first of all the idea of sexuality and judaism is very very different uh than either other religious traditions on one side and certainly the secular world on the other side in some religious traditions sexuality is seen as essentially an evil that is tolerated because there's no choice paul said in the in the new testament better to marry than to burn meaning people are going to commit sexual offenses anyway so god said let him have marriage as an outlet but ideally if you're a holy person the goal of holiness is to be celibate the theory is that sex is bad sex is evil the man woman relationship is fundamentally tainted and therefore the more you can get away from it the better judaism on the other hand teaches that not only is celibacy not required but celibacy is actually a sin in some ways within marriage i mean that one is supposed to get married there's a mitzvah to get married uh the very first commandment in the 613 commandments of the torah is to be fruitful and multiply we consider the sexual union to be sanctified and holy in fact that is why the one of the time-honored jewish customs is that the holiest night of the week was often set aside for marital intimacy and that is friday night the very fact that it's holy one engages in a holy activity however this also sharply distinguishes judaism from the secular world in the secular world sex is seen as simply a way of getting gratification a way of getting physical pleasure there is not always a spiritual dimension attached to it in judaism it is the holiness of marital intimacy that requires that it be within a sanctified relationship the very word for marriage is ki-du-shin that is what marriage means and kedusan actually means sanctification holiness that intimacy is a function of holiness it is related to holiness i don't mean to say that the only purpose of intimacy is having children certainly having children is a goal and it's a mitzvah but even if a couple is infertile even if a couple is you know the woman is post-menopause or the man is whatever not capable of having children there is an independent mitzvah for man and woman to connect in an intimate way we consider that to be very very holy and therefore if indeed we talk about these matters with privacy with reserve we don't necessarily exhibit a lot of behavior it is not because it is something shameful but because it is something so elevated that it is kept within the confines of the intimacy of the family unit now let's go back to the creation of adam and eve if you read the torah in genesis it seems to be first there was adam and then there was eve but in fact there's a rabbinic tradition that looks at it the other way that the initial creation of man was a man woman unit a man woman units kind of like siamese twins and when god created eve what that really means is he simply separated them so they would be separate so they would be separate entities and able to mate remember adam was looking for a mate he couldn't find a mate so god made adam fall asleep and then he took eve from him and what did god say god said loth hayoots it is not good for man to be alone let me make a helpmate to be opposite him and i'm going to analyze basically the remainder of my talk i'm simply going to analyze that single beautiful verse it is not good for man to be alone i will make a helpmate to be opposite him now keep in mind that this verse was said when adam is in the garden of eden in the garden of eden what is so wrong about being alone you have everything you want there's one one little tree you're not supposed to eat but that's fine you can eat everything else you don't need laundry or tailoring you're walking around naked you have unlimited pleasure you have an infinite capacity to enjoy the world what is so bad about man being alone so one of the commentaries offers a beautiful insight one of the commentaries say that the word tov good the ultimate good is god himself what is good about god what is the quality of goodness goodness is selfless giving because god can only give god cannot take because there's nothing that you can give to god that god doesn't already have so god is the epitome of giving goodness is giving man in the garden of eden without a helpmate has an infinite capacity to take but he cannot be godly if he has no one to whom to give so when it says it is not good for man to be alone we can re-translate it a little bit we can tweak the hebrew by saying man cannot be good in a state of aloneness because the meaning of good is giving man in a state of aloneness can be a taker but cannot be a giver and therefore man the human being can never be godly until they transcend the egotism and the selfishness of the taker and learn to become a giver by the way you know we know that the dead sea in hebrew it's not called the dead sea it's called the yamaha mela the salt sea because of the concentration of minerals but the common uh english name is dead sea now why is it called the dead sea because obviously the mineral content is so high that no fish can live in the dead sea i don't know if you've been down to the dead sea but homiletically somebody once said the reason why it's called the dead sea is because water flows into it but no water flows out of it when you take and you don't give you're dead the meaning of being spiritually alive is to give and therefore this is an amazing thing so if we ask ourselves why god created the man woman relationship why god created marriage god created marriage to make me or my spouse a godly person by learning to give rather than taking so you may remember this again before you were born i'm sure you read about it the very famous inaugural address of john f kennedy ask not what your country can do for you ask what you can do for your country well with marriage it's exactly the same thing ask not what your marriage can do for you because marriage wasn't created to give me self-gratification marriage was enabled created as a structure to enable me to transcend my egotism my selfishness my narrowness my preoccupation with me to learn to truly care about another human being and by transcending that selfishness and egotism one becomes a more godly person because when we're filled with ourselves there is no room for anything else so um i completely understand all the points um to like to give to be selfless um but what is my question would be how can one find that that um motivation to actually make those changes right i'll come to that those are obviously obviously very good questions yeah we'll we'll we'll hopefully address address some of them yeah but it is a a very important and good and good point you know so this is the thing you know uh there's a story about a fellow in the yeshiva another yeshiva story where he was ravenously eating fish he was sitting and dining room eating fish so one of the rabbis went over at him and said why are you eating fish so the boy said i love fish that's why i'm eating it so the rabbi says mean if you love something you chew it and spit out the bones if you love the fish you would put it in an aquarium you don't mean you love fish you mean you love yourself and you're using the fish for your self-gratification in the world that we live in when i often say i love this person i love that person in the same way i love that that fish meaning to say they're giving me what i want they're giving me what i need they're giving me what i want to take and when they don't anymore i s you know chew them up spit the bones and throw them out we live in a disposable society if the phone doesn't work throw it away if the computer doesn't work get a new model if the baby doesn't work or the pregnancy doesn't work abort it god forbid if the baby doesn't work sometimes even that happens and the life so marriage is about learning to look after somebody beyond yourself and that's very hard that is not easy that is not instinctive because although it's true as aristotle said man is a social animal we of course crave company and we crave companionship but it's not so natural to care about another person more than you even care about yourself and yet the talmud says one must love one's wife as much as they love themselves one must honor one's wife more than they honor themselves so when people say judaism is uh misogynist or anti-women which one should ponder statements like that in terms of what judaism teaches now there is a certain subtlety here and that is the following it's not yet your question but it's another question that's related and that is sometimes learning to be a giver actually means you have to be a taker let's imagine i hear this type of speech and i say i'm going to give give give give give give give i'm gonna be a giver and you'll never let the other person do anything for you how are they gonna feel you know they say the following they uh you know there's an old cliche around and it's actually true it's true most cliches are true that's why they're repeated so much that one of the fundamental differences between men and women is will you ask directions when you're lost now hashem we have gps's invented by male engineers so we don't need to ask directions anymore but in the olden days when we didn't have the gps so you know a man doesn't like that and i you know i'll include myself we don't like to ask directions we're driving around we're getting lost we have to be lost for at least two hours until we break down and ask somebody for help but when i'm going with my wife on the trip we're pulling out of the driveway and she would say do you have directions let's go stop asking right away says no we're not even lost why do we have to ask any directions now this is a superficial observation but it's actually a very deep observation and the deep observation is that and the zohar says kabbalistically there's a reason for this if you assume now this is not the opinion i told you a few moments ago that first there was man and then there was woman as opposed to simultaneous it's a maclocus an argument in the gemara it turns out that man's initial moments in this world were aloneness he was not born into relationship relationship came later as a result the male's fundamental sense of autonomy is control power i don't need other people that's why men don't cry that's why men are tough that's why men don't often have the intimate friendships that women have you know you don't talk about your feelings we hang around with sports and you know get a beer or whatever it would be or even if we talk about you know intellectual problems but we very rarely talk about deep emotions and that is because the essential first moments defined our identity our identity is about autonomy control and power man was born alone but women entered a world of relationship women never existed in the world without a relationship as a result the nature of the male is to seek aloneness and a lack of dependency on others because when you reach out to others that is a threat to your very sense of self as opposed to a woman who looks at collaboration and community and connection again i understand i'm generalizing but these are generalizations that are largely true although obviously there are exceptions because every man has feminine elements within their personality every woman has masculine elements but it can be fairly said i think that the masculine element focuses on autonomy and self-sufficiency and the woman's element focuses on relationships and interconnectivity in fact there was a famous classic work of social psychology written by professor carol gilligan she was a professor at harvard university i believe she died a few years ago and this dates back to the early 80s it was called a different voice and this was a response to the feminist movement that tried to argue that all differences between men and women were based on environmental and cultural factors and we're not innate and therefore there ought not to be any distinctions and she gave a number of psychological tests to very young children as young as five or six and she wanted to show that from a very early age boys and girls look at the world in different ways now i suppose you could argue they've already been culturally conditioned by age five but she tried to show that as far back as you go you're not going to see i mean you are going to see significant differences and the particular hypothetical that she used involved the following case let's say you had a child she's asking five-year-old kids this question you had a child and the child is very sick and that if the child doesn't have certain medicine the child is going to die and there's only one drug store that has that medicine in the drugstores at the corner but the drugstore is closed for the night but there is a plate glass window what do you do for your child so every single boy answered you take a rock you break the glass and you take the medicine now that's a perfectly fine answer if you have to save your kid's life that's what you do but every girl that was asked a question also said be sure to leave a note with your phone number on it or call the police ahead of time to tell them this is what you're going to do now what was the point of this difference gilligan said that men tend to be fixated they tend to identify the primary issue at hand and they focus laser-like on the yes or the no what's the most important thing we focus got to do this a woman has an awareness of the web of interconnected relationships that are affected that when i break a window it's not just a question of getting medicine for my child there are other people that are involved there's going to be glass in the street and people are going to get hurt there's going to be property damage and you don't ignore the other relationships by fixation on the primary goal that is why you know a man might look at a woman and say your scatter brains again please forgive the cliches here but the concept is scatter brainedness comes from looking at so many things at the same time a woman might say to her husband you're clueless because you're focusing right that's why don't interrupt a man during a football game you're focusing you're concentrating right that is why uh men i'm sorry for these generalizations but that is why men are uh mainly the great restaurant chefs because when you're a great restaurant chef you gotta stir that soup for four hours staring thinking of nothing else a woman doesn't have time to that multitasking meaning the concept that professor gilligan developed was that men are fixated on a single goal at any given moment in time a woman perceives a web of relationships now because of all of this a man is often reluctant to surrender his autonomy and his control now here is the subtlety in order to be a giver you must be vulnerable enough to let the other person give to you because when you let the other person give to you you're actually giving them the most valuable gift of all the gift of self-esteem the gift that they are valuable in your life the gift that they are needed you see how important that is imagine the situation where i'm just the giver give or give or give or give or give her well what does that make the other person feel like it feels like they're not contributing anything they're not needed so when i say the goal is to be a giver to be a true giver you have to be willing to accept you can't be the strong silent male that is always giving and not being open you have to expose the vulnerability so that's one important point that yes the purpose of relationships is to learn to give but learning to give requires that you be a taker as well not in a selfish way but in a way of showing the other person that you need them that a rabbi wants remarkable very very good way of saying it as important as it is to say you love somebody it's also important to communicate the message not just i love you but i need you you add something to my life you bring something to my life you give me something i otherwise would not have that's very very important and that's something that perhaps we're very very reluctant to even admit to ourselves but it is that vulnerability that can be the root of true love because you really feel that you you need somebody now yeah with um to the point of admitting that you need someone um the question arises uh within generally and increasingly equalizing society between men and women you see you uh see more independent women yeah in society um do you think that's a very big maybe obstacle well i think i think it is a very big obstacle but again you know when i say meeting somebody i don't necessarily limit that to the narrow idea that my wife needs me to support her or vice versa but we're talking about emotional connection that i need you because you understand me you care about me and that's something that adds value to my life when a woman feels that or a man feels that that builds and strengthens a relationship they don't feel they're just a hang around they don't feel they're just taking because remember if i'm the one that's always giving then the other one is always taking how does a person or vice versa how does a person feel if they're always taking they don't feel that good either right so in a healthy relationship self selfless giving does require that balance of of taking taking from the other now it's a little tricky on one hand i can tell you the goal of marriage is giving but what if i'm treated like a doormat what if you know i marry somebody who only wants to take obviously we have to function in the real world and you know we have to have somebody that is also willing to give to me and that's a careful now one has to be very careful in choosing a marriage partner it's not an automatic thing you don't pick a uh a name out of a hat or you don't simply look for the most beautiful person or whatever or these most beautiful external impressions you look for the most beautiful person inside uh you look for qualities of kindness and gentleness and modesty and and and the like uh but i will tell you an interesting dynamic the dynamic is that the more the let me put it this way the less selfish you are in a relationship the more your selfish needs are going to get addressed it's quite an amazing thing that when a woman feels and i i'm speaking since i'm speaking to men i'm talking about what we do impacts on women but the same thing would be the other way around when a woman feels that you truly care about her when a woman feels you're not using her when a woman feels you respect her when a woman feels that she's needed in your life she will go out of her way to give you what you need that's kind of the paradox the less selfish you are the more you will get what you want the more selfish you are the less you will get what you want so in a sense altruistic selfish selflessness is the most selfish thing you can do because if you want in your life a b c and d the less selfish you are and the more giving you are the more you're gonna get it that's the way it is because when a woman feels loved she will do everything to make you happy when a woman feels you're just using her that creates resentment coldness breakdown of relationship and then you'll get nothing at all okay so one has to keep to keep aware of this that we're not telling a person you don't have needs a person has needs in all sorts of ways but the best way of getting those needs is becoming less of a selfish uh selfish person so uh it's it's it is something you think about and i think this is very very common i mean again our commentaries tell us that because a woman is called a helpmate to man a woman naturally wants to give wants to help wants to support you wants to build you up but if a woman feels rejected and not appreciated that turns into anger and there's a beautiful homily that the rabbis say about this the hebrew word for man now adam is a name but what is the hebrew word for man anyone knows ish ish the hebrew word for woman is isha now it's interesting i don't have a blackboard here but it's interesting that they share two common letters alef shin which means fire and the man has a yud and the woman has a hay and that spells god's name so it says when god is in their relationship meaning they're subservient to god's law men are men women are women things work out well take out the yod and take out the hay they become like two fires that destroy each other with their egotism and their anger and their animosity okay so you have a choice keep god in your relationship and there's holiness take god out you have destructive fire okay so these are some things to uh to think about now does this mean things are going to be smooth sailing absolutely not there are going to be disagreements there are going to be fights unfortunately sometimes there's going to be anger but when there is this willingness to give you will be able to work things out most of the time you will go through the difficult times but confident and secure in each other you will be able to weather those storms and that brings me now to the second half of the verse so what did god say it is not good for man to be alone let us make a helpmate to be opposite first of all help mate you know some people in modern society some people look at that as an inferior type of role to be a helpmate and yet to be there for another person there is nothing as great as that god himself is called our help mate and when i can help another person become what they're able to become that is a very very great great accomplishment but look at the verse it is not good for man to be alone let us make a help mate to be opposite him so the rabbis of the talmud have a problem helpmate seems to imply we're working together opposite implies we're in opposition so is it opposition or is it helping how can it be a help mate in opposition so the talmud gives a pragmatic answer it says well some people get one some people get the other some people get a relationship that's help and some people get a relationship that's opposition meaning god is saying you know marriages turn out different ways but in the hasidic books it gives us a different explanation it says that the helpmate of the marriage is precisely the opposition what do we mean by this all of us well i'll tell you let me start with this i once came across in an airport airport a gift shop a wind-up toy and this was a little dao that was intended for beleaguered middle management executives and you wind up this style and this style just says you're great you're wonderful you never make a mistake people don't appreciate you and it's a way of you know building up your confidence after having a hard day at work at least this little doll appreciates who i am now all of us whether it's the husband or the wife introduced because most of what i'm saying applies to both sides of this you know we have a hard time in the world out there you know work was difficult school was difficult people didn't appreciate us we may have had a rough day at the office and we want to be able to come home and have somebody say to us you know you're great you're smart you're so brilliant everything you say is so true and of course in a good marriage there has to be a lot of that there has to be a lot of stroking a lot of building people up i mean that's what you do but marriage has to be more than that because if marriage is simply confirming me in whatever i am i never grow i never become better i never improve to marry your clone is almost meaningless because why have double you you're already who you are two of you is going to be no better so in many many ways the true love of a marriage is when husband and wife man and woman see the world in fundamentally different ways and each one expands their horizons by seeing it from the vantage point of the other again not in a critical way not in a judgmental way not in a sarcastic or insulting way but ultimately my wife should help me to see life in a different way i should help her and by the different perceptions we have we achieve a wholeness and a truth that either one of us would not have been able to achieve by ourselves this is literally the sum is greater the whole is greater than the sum of the parts and that is what it means azer the help is connected that we see the world differently the help of a marriage is not that we both see things the same but it's precisely the fact that we see things in a different way in fact that is why although there are many many many many deeper reasons than this but one of the issues of why marriage needs to be heterosexual instead of homosexual although there are many many more reasons and this is really a talk for another time is that it's precisely the fact that men and women are fundamentally different that the union has to be predicated on two different ways of viewing the world coming together as opposed to a replication of the same although as i understand that that is not a a complete explanation for the opposition to uh to gay marriage so as a result although in a marriage there must be emotional support no question uh but there should be the ability to communicate different viewpoints to create something richer so disagreement is not should not be the cause for animosity should not be cause the cause for resentment it should be understood as the gift of relationship is that i can broaden my vision by incorporating the vision of another the gemara says there's a similar story not about marriage but about torah learning there was a great rabbi rabbi yochanan and rabbi yochanan had a brother-in-law who was also his disciple rabbi shimon ben lucas actually there's quite a back story to this shiman ben lakesh in his early years was abandoned he was a highway robber he would rob people and he once attacked her of yochana and he was going to kill ravioli and said that you know if you study torah i will give you my sister for marriage because this is without asking your sister but basically ryokan was very beautiful physically very very handsome and he said my sister's even more beautiful and with shimon bin lakish dropped his career and shimon bin lakish became a great talmudic scholar he married raviocon and sister and he became ravenna's colleague student colleague and every time raviolcanon would give a teaching rebbe shimon bin lakish would give 24 questions and refutations that ravioli had to answer anyway rabbi shimon bin lakish died and was replaced by another rabbi and this rabbi was very supportive every time rav yochanan said something this rabbi gave him 24 reasons that he was right really good yes ma'am 24 reasons that i'm right the man started ravioli started crying and sobbing and he said i miss reishlukish so much so the student said to him what do you mean wish lucas was giving you trouble every time you said something reshlakish raised 24 questions and this rabbi gives you 24 reasons that you're right you ought to be happy with it ravyocranon said i didn't need somebody to tell me i'm right if i didn't think i was right i wouldn't have said what i said but when rav shimon bin lakish would challenge me i was forced to reconsider my position i was forced to think i either was able to answer and come to a deeper understanding or i realized i made a mistake and i corrected and modified my position that is how richness emerges that is how truth emerges through the dialectic of shared communication that is why in our own talmudic learning we learn bakarusa right we have we kind of create pairs and the like so people discuss and see things differently so marriage is very much that same idea azare the help mate comes from the connecto the different ways of viewing ideas men and women are not supposed to be the same it's fundamentally axiomatic that equality of dignity is not sameness of function and it is not identity of perception men and women are supposed to see the world in different ways but each one shares their perception to the other a man can become more i mean just again going back with my stereotype before if a man tends to be fixated on a single idea a woman can teach him sensitivity to relationships if a woman is scatterbrained going from this to this a man can help a woman be more focused so each person learns from the other how to be better each person gains an understanding that transcends their parochialism now it takes humility to do that because we like to think we're perfect we like to think you know i'm going to be the giver i'm going to be the perfect one but part of being in a good relationship is you're willing to admit at least to yourself that i can learn i can grow i can be corrected of course one has to be careful there's a famous story they say uh with george bernard shaw right you all you've all heard of shaw the famous playwright and isadora duncan is adora duncan was one of the famous uh ballerinas of the late 19th the early 20th century so she was a bit of a flirt so one time at a banquet she said to shaw you know mr shah with my beauty and your brains we could produce beautiful children so shaw said that is 100 true but what if the kids have your brains and my beauty we're going to be in trouble uh so sometimes it could happen i enter a relationship each one of us picks up the bad characteristics of the other and that's that's a little negative but hopefully each one of us identifies the good and we incorporate it into our personalities and therefore the man incorporates some of the feminine attributes the woman incorporates some of the masculine attributes each one achieves a perfection and a wholeness they would not achieve alone and that is really kind of the the goal of a of a relationship so this is very very important you know it's an amazing thing and it doesn't cease to amaze me how much time we invest in in learning how to do our jobs and learning how to make money and the like you know all of our schooling all of our college our graduate work and the like and the hours we spend every day and how little time we spend in learning how to build up number one our spiritual lives and number two are relationships if people would invest a fraction of the time in their relationships that they invest in their jobs the divorce rate would go down exponentially and yet we just assume that good marriages happen by themselves good parenting just happens just have your kids well cities don't get built by themselves armies don't get organized by themselves it takes planning it takes work it takes thoughts it takes introspection it takes study why should the same not be true for the important ideas of marriage relationships raising our kids we got to put in the time to think about these things because ultimately that is what life is about when a person will be leaving this world after 120 years the last thoughts that are going to go through their mind if they're conscious are not going to be i wish i spent more time at the office why didn't i go in more sundays you know to work you're not going to be thinking about that but it is very likely a person will be thinking about how they treated their wife how do they treat their kids those are the issues that are going to hound us at the very end of our lives and if thank god we have a chance to do something about them now or think of at least think about them now then should we not take that advantage so god willing i hope that all of you will find and develop not just i don't want to just say find your relationship because it's not just about finding but find develop and work on your relationships and may god bless you all to find uh your partners in life the people that you can go through life with joy and with depth and with growth and eventually also uh bring up children in a good in a good way so y'all have a good day you