R' Avraham Nissanian on "Marriage and Rosh Hashana"

We are getting closer and closer to Yadin, the day of judgment, Rosha Shana. If you ask people when is Shana, some people will say soon. People that's a little bit more into that will say in 10 days. Wow, it's getting closer. And there are some people that already when we did Shabbatim when we announced the month of Elul is coming they already start preparing them themselves for the Dday the day that we all going to face the court the heavenly court. Now we know exactly what we did the previous year, the past year and we kind of preparing ourself during the month of Aulot. We waking up early and we're singing all those songs. We doing all those preparation for the holiday mainly we're trying to prepare ourself between us and God because it's easy I can talk to him directly I don't see him in front of me so I don't face the challenges all the time nevertheless there are certain things that we do and as soon as we do them, we regret them, the Torah said to us. And we saying it three times a day, do not follow what your heart and your eyes desire. And unfortunately as men our eyes many people saying to me God I mean Rabbi God gave us the eyes to look around. So imagine we going to war. Usually how long war takes? The shortest war that I remember is the six day war. And wars usually last for years. Look, America, Vietnam, America, Iraq, Iran and Iraq, South Korea, North Korea, Israel and the Arabs. So when we go to war especially a war of mitzvah who supposed to go to those who will be the soldiers usually people that they don't have any of their hands and the Torah said to us you're going to war and you might find a there that you would like during the war. You're far away from home. Your wife is not around. And in the desert we're saying every thorn is a flower is a rose and you really like someone a goish girl and you go to the rabbi and you ask the rabbi, "Rabbi, can I take this shika, this girl for myself? what the rabbi will say. Of course, why not you can? But rabbi, there there is no if, but I can take it. Yeah. To begin with, not with the aad aftermath. Yeah. Yeah. No problem. Imagine the wife of this person will hear this conversation between her husband and the rabbi. She will poke the eyes of the rabbi and then will chop the the head of her husband. What is it? No one especially young couples they don't like the wife doesn't like that the husband is looking elsewhere and it's happened left and right the Torah said to us do not follow the desire of your heart and your eyes and here the Torah gives us a permission that we should follow our eyes and proceed with what our heart desires. How come? How come one of the mitzvot that the Torah commanded us, you should be killed and not do this a and here the Torah give us permission to do that. Before someone asked here how many wives a person can marry. According the Torah, a person can take up to four wives. And again, this is not for fun. This is more to help the first wife because when the kids coming, it is very very hard for the mother. after the second third kids to take care of the laundry to go to the well to bring water. By the way, this was the job of the ladies to bring the bucket from the well to prepare food and so on and so on. So the husband would marry another one that to be the help for the wife and the more kids coming he could marry more. But today we don't have it because we cannot we don't know how to handle one's spouse and therefore it is so hard to understand this command of the Torah that give us permission to do that. Nevertheless, when the war finished 13 years later, this person has a a nice quotation quotation quotation boy that start giving him hard time and by now this person is regretting that he married this woman. He hate her and he cannot handle it anymore. He comes to the rabbi and say, "Rabbi, you said to me it was okay for me to marry her. So why I have so much trouble? You told me to begin with the Torah allows me to marry this goish girl. So why I hate my wife? why she gave me so much hard time. And on top of that, I have a Ben Sorero Mor, a weward child, a rebellious child. He wants every day meat and wine. And we're talking about quantities. And this badbach guy, poor guy already spent all the money that he had. And now he get to the point that he had to take his child to the court to the bedin. And the bedin sentenced this child to death by stoning. really doesn't make sense regardless how much we give hard time to our parents and hashem we all gave we still giving my mother Ali Shalom used to tell me I wish you would have children like you I used to drive her nuts like I like all of us and I used to say amen and babu I have kids like me giving me a little bit hard more to my wife but to that point to take them to the court to the bedin to be stoned. So we have to understand in life the rabbi said to him any action that we do there is some consequences to that we do something good we write the benefit we do something bad unfortunately we have to pay for that and this is the concept of rash shana the d-day day the judgment day that's everyone every person in this world is giving account for what he did and accordingly he is judged by. So what can we do in order to come to the court and face the almighty with a little bit more sense of I'm going to win the case. I mentioned before that the aonote the sin that we did between us and God for us it's easy to ask for forgiveness but God says for what you did for me no problem I gave you two tablets in one of them it's between you and I and the other one is between you and your fellow human being. Human meaning friends, spouses, people that you deal with day by day in the community, in business and said start from home. If we want to do something to benefit us to be forgiven, we have to start from home. As kids, we have to find a way to ask for forgiveness from our parents. It's easy. Okay, mom, you forgive me, right? Okay, of course, Janam, I forgive you. But somehow to ask forgiveness between husband and wife, wife and husband, this is something that it's hard to do. We mentioned before the wars that last for years. We have also internal wars between spouses. One say one word, the other one completed it and they don't talk. So sometime it takes just a few hours. And I know some cases that last for years they don't talk. Why they don't talk? Because no one wants to break the silence first. I'm not going to put myself down and I'm not going to talk to my wife. She started it. She's the blame. And she said such a has talked to me like that. I'm not going to talk to him at all till he will apologize. And of course to ask a man to apologize it's a little bit hard. to accomplish to get. And in our case, this husband doesn't talk to his wife already few weeks and tomorrow morning he has to go with his friend fishing. Needs to wake up 5:00. He's heavy sleeper. He wants to ask his wife, you know, that she will wake him up. But I'm not going to talk to her. Finally found a solution. Take a piece of paper and put it on her bed. Please wake me up tomorrow 5:00. Thank you. Very hard, but thank you. Tomorrow morning he wakes up. Whoa. 10:30. He lost the trip with his friend. But he got much angrier. Why his wife didn't wake him up. So he get up and you see the piece of paper that he wrote. Wake me up 5:00. Good morning. It's 5:00. Wake up. She wrote for him. So this is what's happening when people don't talk to each other and we come to Rashashana and it's a little bit hard to build ourself down and say to our spouse I'm sorry and I want you to know the most important three words in English. It's not I love you. It's I'm sorry to apologize. It really means that you care about the other person. It really means that you made a mistake. You're human being. But by putting it deeply in our heart and talk to ourself, it's amazing how much we can talk to ourself. Nobody's around. He said to me like that and I answer him like this and I'm going to answer him like that and I'm going to bring his mother to the picture, his father and the last 10,000 generations from day one. And I'm sure I'm going to show him. And he said the same thing. No respect. What is this? I'm the head of the house. How dare she not prepare for me my meal when I come from war? Doesn't she understand? And he's talking to himself. Doesn't she understand that I'm providing here? So yes, you are providing and you are completing him. But nevertheless, the communication between us, it's good for nothing. We can talk to our friends so easily. But when it come to our spouse, to our husband, to our wife, it's a little bit difficult to express ourself. And why is that? One of the reasons is because we facing each other day by day. And sometimes we know that the same mistake is going to repeat itself because this is who am I? He's not going to change me. This is who am I and she's not going to to change me. And it's amazing that before we got married, we saw some blemishes. We saw certain things that we don't like with him, with her. But we kind of comfort oursel. Don't worry. After the wedding, I'm going to change her. Ah, after the wedding, I'm going to make him religious. He will learn by me that's going to bet every day it's very important and he does it through the first she days and after that hey don't bother me I pray to god whenever I want I have direct line to god don't bother me or he I told you you know I don't like Sher, we spoke about it before. I want you to go with a hat with uh dasal whatever she doesn't want. Look, I look like a yak, like a bibish, babash, babula. I don't want to look like that. I'm young. I want to put a wig and things start cooking up. So why is it so hard to explain to our spouse what we think? Because after we get married, we realize that I need to be like my father. I need to be like my mother maybe. And I have to show from day one who is the boss here. If you want to show who's the boss, why you got married, go to work. Open your business because showing who is divorce in this business of marriage, you will not get far. You as a matter of fact, you're ruining your life because everything that he will say, she will oppose you and whatever you said, he will oppose you. So basically it will be much nicer like we sitting right now. Imagine if we ate some coffee, tea, some fruit maybe and we have nothing to do and we talk to our spouse. How was your day? Fine. And you know remember that's I said to you that I want to go to I want you to go every morning to Besset. Why you don't go? Ah you start again. No I just want to know. You know what? If you really want to know, it's because it's too early for me to go 7:00 to Bet Kesset. Okay, no problem. How about if you go 8:00 to Bet Kesset? There are so many minimally in our town here, we have minanim upon minion. And if you go to Brooklyn, I saw some place saying latest shakar 11:30 in the morning. It's already mil time. What is it? 11:30. But if there is a will, there is a way. And the only thing that we have to do is just open a line of communication. If we will not fight, it will be boring. That's true. People that are far from each other, people that are not connected, they very polite. Hi, hi Net. How are you? Everything. Hi. Bye. But with people that you are day by day close, you show exactly who you are without putting a mask. So sometimes you don't guard yourself. Sometimes you expect when I say e she should understand I meant encyclopedia. I don't have to say everything. By now 3 weeks after we got married he should understand who am I. It's very hard to do that. And unfortunately when we go to acquire driving license, we're going for a few months months to learn. But here when we where we going to be together with a person that we know maybe a month or two or six and if we gather the net amount of time that we've been together that we spoke that we exchange some ideas maybe maybe it will be six, 10, maybe 12 hours. I'm kind of excluding all those hours of movies that basically you didn't talk at all, you just sat together, you watched something and at the end instead of talking about what you saw, a nice movie. Did you enjoy it? Yeah, very nice. You want to eat something? Let's go. two hours that just wasted. So no wonder why we don't know each other and we don't know how to approach each other and we have fights and sometimes we do not regret those fight and we facing Yadin we facing Rosh Shana and God send us a message text for what you did for me. I forgive you. You came to you send your husband to so it's the same thing and you ask so nicely for forgiveness. You even you man you went you went to mikvah. So between you and I God says in this message everything is clean. I'm giving you another chance, but it's not complete because you hurt someone that's very close to you. As a matter of fact, you hurt yourself. What do you mean you hurt yourself? We have to understand that we husband and wife are an isama that were was splitted before we came here to this world and we got reunited with this nisha later on when we got married with our spouse. So if you belittle you degrade your spouse, it's as a matter of fact, you're degrading yourself. You belitting belittling yourself. You know, it's happened to everyone in the kitchen. You cutting the salad and all of a sudden, Chuck, you cut your nail, your finger. And it's not the first time. So imagine you would take a knife in the the hand that's got hurt and you injure the other hand. It's crazy. But this is exactly what we doing when we hurting our spouses. This is one unit. So therefore when we facing Rosha Shana we have to come up with a plan that's the very first person that we ask for forgiveness if we are married it's our spouse later our parents and if you don't do that you and come to Kennisa. Sing out [Music] loud. You can sing it as much as you want. And God says, "I heard you. I forgive you. Did you ask for forgiveness from your spouse? part of the asking for forgiveness to do tasha. It means that I regret what I did and I promise not to do that in the future. Rabbi, I regret. Okay, I used a few words that's not proper and it's amazing sometime we just get locked on the ABC on the B on the F. We don't go we don't understand any other letters there. I cannot promise that I will not do that again. I'm a human being. That's true. Nobody's perfect and nobody is asking from you to be perfect. Even Mosher Rabenu made mistakes. The question is are we repeating the same mistakes? Are we doing purposely to make the the spouse angry or it just this is our limitation? I don't understand. I give my heart to my husband and he always complain why the tea is not hot but it's boiling. Why my my wife cannot understand that I'm a man? Men don't like orders especially to be neat and in order. So my shoes, one of them is here and one of them I'm still looking for that. And my pants is in the other room and my shirt is on the way to the bathroom. This is who am I? This is how I grew up all my life. My mother ne never complain. So why my wife is complaining? Why I cannot one time just don't hear about that? And of course, our spouses don't understand how bad and not neat we could be. Because women, most of them, meaning 20% of them, basically they need their shirts, their shoes, 100 of them is in the closet. And whenever she wants something, she can find it. And she expect you to be like her. And we have to understand that men cannot be like women and women cannot be like men. Why is that? Because this is how the DNA of men and women work. Men understand only black and white. Men understand only you have a problem, I have a solution. The women, they have the whole spectrum of colors between black and white. They're more emotional. For them, I I like to bring this example all the time because this is something that's happened all the time. You come home, don't talk to me. I have such a headache. And what is our respond? Take Advil. Take two of them. So kind of do you think that your spouse doesn't know that if she has a headache she has to take adv? Of course she knows. But this is the way that the spouse, the wife wants to start a conversation with you because she missed you and she want you to ask her, "Oh yo yo, I feel so bad for you. Tell me, honey, how was your day today?" Ah, all of a sudden you just ask the right questions. There is no headache anymore. John, I'm sit here. I want to tell you what happened to me today. You want tea? You want some uh ice uh water or something? I'll bring you. And that's it. You, as a matter of fact, you want the heart of your spouse, but you can lose it as fast as it's possible. You come home and you kind of so happy. Finally, you leave all the problems of work outside and you open the door and screaming out loud nicely, "Honey, I'm home." And she from from the kitchen, giving you such a hard look, finally you came home. Look what the kids are doing, fighting with each other. Look what they did on the wall. They don't want to eat. They didn't do the homework. Where are you? And you're kind of thinking into yourself, what is this? It's not enough that my boss scream at me. It's not enough that my client didn't pay me on time and I'm still running after an invoice from three years ago. Now I have to have it at home. And what happened? You come to the kids, two smacks here and there. Don't fight. Go to sleep. How come you didn't do the homework? You know what? No homework. Your teacher will punish you. go to bed and you collect all the toys and you go wash your face and in a few second the house become quiet and you go to your wife and say you see it's your fault you don't know how to control the kids and at this point what you did you took a bucket of gasoline and you put it on fire because she's going to answer you now. As a matter of fact, both of you losers and each one of you holding grouch and sometime this grouch goes to rash shana because none of you want to bend down and admit you know what maybe I was wrong. Not maybe I was wrong. I didn't understand that, you know, you had such a hard time at work. And you say, I didn't really realize how how hard is that to take care of kids. And I want to tell you guys that taking care of kids, it's very, very hard. How do I know? So my wife volunteered to open Camp Safa. My my daughter is working and there is no babysitting for her for the kids. So my wife volunteered both of us without even consulting me. We will take care for the two months our two grandchildren. No, it's not nice for me. a father that's not his daughter so much to say it's only mommy not me and I regret that I didn't say that because the whole two months I understood how hard is that to take care of kids to feed them to change them to tell them stories 50 time the same book again so you know it by heart again. And God forbid if you don't, you hear a conerto of screaming. She doesn't want to eat now and you have to take them to the to the park and it's a whole day of work. So why I'm telling you? because you don't have a chance except maybe Sundays to be with the kids but us men Sundays we kind of you remember you said to me that I have to go to shoreim I promise you to go to go to shim well Sunday is the day that I can go to shoreim and you go to shoreim just to eliminate to be with the kids you will regret it later on and you come to the shore And after 5 minutes you fall asleep. In the meantime your wife is so happy. My husband is going to sh him. So she suffer a little bit more but she's happy. And when you come back from sh the wife so excited. No. Tell me what did you learn? Ah, it's too complicated for you. Too complicated for me. So, make it easy. But you said to yourself into your heart, I was sleeping. I didn't understand what they're talking what I'm going to tell her. So, remember start from home. How many times your wife told you you're such a hypocrite outside? You're so nice. You smile to everyone. You help everyone. When I ask you to do for me something, I don't have time. Can't you do that by yourself? I will never take the garbage out. This is not a custom in our family. I never heard about such a custom but we don't want to do we want to show that we are macho and then again we are going to overlook all these things for Roshana and unfortunately unfortunately this part is not forgiven. by God. It's a black mark in our record. We didn't keep Shabbat properly. God says, "You know what? Ah, I have patient. I'm sure next year you're going to learn as you promised me the last 15 years and you didn't do about kib. You're doing it very good." God says, "I'm very happy." You leave your wife waiting for you at night and you go momentarily 3 hours, 4 hours to give kibbutam to your mother. Father, and of course your mother, Janam, you look so skinny. 300 lb. Your wife probably doesn't feed you. Here, eat. I prepared for you. Palo, ash palo, ales, what have you. And it's not nice. My mother, you know, and you know in your heart, you know that your wife prepared for you food. And you don't know how to say to your mother, no. And unfortunately, mothers don't know when their job ended. And this is something that's I have to to I'm saying it to all mother-in-laws that's ruining families. You miss your son Barashem. Apple created for us, iPhone, Samsung created for us other smartphones and just learn how to use it and call your son. John, I miss you. How are you? Everything is okay. Did you eat? Really? Okay, I'm happy. Bye. Don't come visit me today. That's it. And if you want to be a nice mother-in-law, come and I prepared for you for both of you some food. I will bring it down. I will bring it to your car. Don't come and visit me and go. And you don't have to ask your It's amazing. It's always the son. You don't have to ask your son every night to come and fix a bulb. And by the way, sit for four hours. You know, I don't understand this movie. It's they talking English. Explain it to me. And when you come home, you see that your your wife prepared for you a nice dinner with candles. And of course, you didn't come. She didn't eat. She's angry at your mother and soon she's going to hate her and soon you just don't understand what my mother did to you. Why you hate her? If you think twice you will see that you the husband you caused the whole thing. You have to explain nicely to your mother. Hashem, my wife knows how to cook. And if you need something, I will come, you know, once a week. Put all of them together and I will take care of it. But Rabbi, you know what is this? A mitzvah. All of a sudden you become adore mitzvah. You you have to do mitzvah. So I want to tell you there is a saying and therefore a husband will leave his father and mother and cling to his wife. That's it. Mitzvah from the Torah. You have to cling to your wife. Not not respect your parents or her parents. But cling to your wife. You want to see your mother go together. So your mother will see that your wife is taking good care of you. There is a peace and harmony between the two of you that you coming both of you to visit the mother-in-law and both of you eating the food or what have you. So we have to understand that when it come to facing Rosh Shana, it is not only between us and God. It is also between us and our spouses. It is also between us and our kids. Sometimes we uh neglect to understand that kids are kids regardless of their age. And we just belittle them all the time. Oh, you're such a stupid son. You You never understand what I'm telling you. No, your son try to do the best. And when you belittle degrade him like that, no wonder why soon he's going to answer you back soon when he will start working he will tell you chao bambino I'll see you maybe he's in maybe in the holidays he goes and rent another place to be far away from you. So all these things we have to understand we have to face it for Rosh Shana and we have to make sure that we will not come empty-handed there that we have the forgiveness of our spouse that's our kids when they will come to us for forgiveness we will not remind them things that's happened 100 years ago you've been such a lousy person. You never knew how to read the Torah in your bar mitzvah. I was so ashamed of you. No, they're coming to ask for forgiveness like our father in heaven. I forgive you as you requested and by doing that will inscribe all of us theima shalom shalom peace and harmony at home. peace and harmony in the whole world, especially in Israel. And this upcoming year of 5776 will be a year that as we all expect will be the year of Mashiach. Amen. Amen. Any questions? Yeah. I remember you were telling you were talking about a kid. I'm sorry, I can't hear you. There you said that there was a kid who was wanting to eat meat and wine and they killed him. Did you finish? So the Torah said to us about Ben Sorero, Ben Sorero. At the beginning of Parasaki, the Torah tells us about a case that a person goes to a war and during the war he fell in love with a shika with a goish girl. The Torah set said to us, "You have permission to have her." And then the Torah goes to another paragraph. A man would have two wives and one of them he loves and the other one he hates. And what he's supposed to do if the firstborn came from the wife that's he hates, he should give him double. And then the Torah goes another paragraph that said parents will have a child that it's a wayward a rebellious and they have to take him to bedin and the bedin will stone him. Our Kamim said if you take such a wife in the middle of the war, not Jewish, and just to have fun because you cannot hold your desires. So it will not last forever as a love and passion. Soon you're going to hate her. But since you spend time with her, you're going to have child from her. And this child is going to give you hard time. It's kind of for your action. You have to pay. What you going to gain by marrying a goish woman? You're going to have a goish nat. What is go nat? Problems from the wife and problems from from the children that's coming from her. A Jewish nat is peace and harmony at home. You are you are very proud of your children and you're happy to be the leader of such a house. So this is what the Torah said. By the way, the Torah, the said that this case of Ben Sorom never happened, never will be. So if so, why the Torah put it there? To teach us that we should learn this this paragraph, this part of the Torah as we did it right now and to gain reward for that. listen to to my lecture about that on Torah Anytime. By the way, Torah Anytime doing wonderful job spreading Torah all around the world and we should kind of support them like them and so on and so on. And I explained that basically from this case of Ben Sorero Mor, we're learning a lot of how to educate our kids. Maybe we'll talk about it next time. Thank you very much for coming. Tell your friends to come next time to all of us. [Music]