R' Reuven Epstein on "Making a Great Marriage Better"

Okay. So, like Aram was saying, I think a lot of people throughout throughout their lives, throughout their careers, they're solicited and some people they give their advice without being solicited for marriage advice. And one of my things that I used to do when I was a child was there's these Encyclopedia Brown books. I'm sure you're familiar with these books. I don't know if they have them in Russian, but it's a big it was a big thing when I was a kid. And these books, you read a story and you're reading a story about children who are playing or fighting or stealing or whatever the case is. And there's a mystery and at the end you're supposed to try to solve the mystery. You hear a story and you're supposed to say, "Who's at fault? Who did something right? Who did something wrong? Who stole something?" And very often in marriage, we ask questions and we say, "Am I right or is she right? Are we both right? or tell me that I'm right. You know, very often part of the question is you're saying I'm right. Right? This is what she did and you know this is the story. But I'll tell you a story and let's put on like our encyclopedia brown hats and try to think if we could come up with who's right and who's wrong. And you know a lot of times people talk and they say you know I know somebody who has very good marriage but it's if I tell you you know I know somebody who has a very good car from the outside a lot of times a car looks very very good but I'm not a mechanic. You could say is this car a good car? Yeah it's a good car. It looks like a good car but a mechanic could look at it and say you're looking at the outside of the car. It looks really nice, but if you pop the hood, there's a lot of issues underneath it. I would not buy this car. This car has a lot of problems. If you buy this car in 6 months from now, forget it. You're going to be in the mechanic in his shop very often. I'll tell you a story. A guy is sitting at work and every few minutes he's calling and calling and calling a big supplier of his. They have to close a deal. Millions of dollars. got a nice haircut. He's moving up in the ranks and he knows that he needs to close this deal. It's very important to him. At the end of the day, can't get in touch with the guy and he leaves his cell phone number and he tells the guy, "Do me a favor. Please, whatever you do, call my cell phone, whatever time it is. I need to speak to you. This is a very important deal that we have to close." Drives home. As he pulls into his driveway, his cell phone rings. It's the supplier. Picks up the phone. He walks into the house and he says to his wife, "Hi, I'm on the phone a second." And he's talking and talking and his wife turns to him and says, "Kids dinner." And he says, "Put everything down. I have to take care of this phone." Okay. They finish dinner. He's still on the phone. He finishes. He's there for 45 minutes. He's on the phone. He turns off the phone and he turns his life and he says, "I have 10 minutes. How is your day? You know, how's it going?" And his wife gets very, very upset and she's screaming at him and they get into a whole argument and she slams the door in the room and she says, "I'm never talking to you ever again." And he says, "I don't understand. I don't understand something. Come, I need to make money. I have a job. I have responsibility. I'm an important person. Come home. Like where's your brains? Like I I don't understand. Like where's your priorities? You need when it comes to spending money, you're very supportive. Comes to making money, I don't understand. Don't have a right. Have have a job. I have responsibility. Have children. I have a family. I don't understand. What are you thinking that you could get into a bad mood over something which is so clearly this is an important business opportunity that I have here? Who's right? I'll tell you another story. It's a biblical story. Maybe you heard this one. Who's right? I'll tell you. Hang on. The story goes that Jacob Ainu Jacob he goes to his father-in-law's house and he gets married and he has four wives, two primary wives and two secondary wives, Raf and Leah. And at the end of about 20 years of his father-in-law swindling him and him trying to get the upper hand, Hashem finally comes to Yakov and he tells him, "Yakov, it's time for you to leave." And what would happen if your wife came to you and you were in such a situation, living in your in-laws house with a whole bunch of children and four wives? I think you would say, "Thank you, God. I'm out of here. Be very happy. So what does Yakov do? He calls his wives into the field and he turns to his wives and he says to them, "You know, I was working for your father for so many years and we had an agreement that I would get certain types of sheep and your father changed the agreement." And then we made an agreement for different types of sheep and your father changed the agreement again. And then we made another agreement and he kept changing the agreement. a hundred times he changed the agreement. And also last night, Hashem came to me and he said that it's time for you to leave. And he turns to his wives and he says, "What what do you think we should do?" I don't understand the whole biblical story. It almost doesn't seem to make any sense whatsoever. First of all, if Hashem comes and tells you something, what do you do? You listen. And second of all, why didn't he come into the field and tell his wives, listen, Hashem said we should leave? He said we should leave. We're leaving. Start packing. He's talking to them about sheep and switching this and that and we had an agreement. Who cares? Who cares? Why is that an important conversation that Yakov has to have with his wives at this point? Couldn't just say, "Honey, you should know Hashem came. It's time for us to leave." But I think if it was me or you probably about 15 years earlier, we would have woken up one morning and said, "Hey, you should know." Hashem came to me last night, he said, "It's time for us all to leave." Right? Finally, Hashem shows up and Hashem tells him, "Leave." And he he doesn't even say that right away. He says, "Sheep and war sheep and there was discolored sheep and striped sheep. What are you talking so much about sheep for? pack up the family, get on the van and start leaving. To understand these two stories, the first story and the second story, we have to understand a very important principle. It's really it's really three principles which I believe are strong foundations for any marriage. If you have these three principles, I guarantee you, you'll see tremendous, as they say in Hebrew, in your marriage. But a marriage that doesn't have this is like a beautiful car, but you're not looking under the hood. This is the engine. This is the muffler. This is the key components in a marriage. It doesn't have this. It's missing something very fundamental. When I was a kid, I was like third grade, fourth grade. So, see, my I have a son who's like three and a half and he's very into money. Very into money. And he knows how to count. It's cute. He's Jewish. He knows how to count. And it's funny because when on Purim when when people were giving him dollars, he was like holding it up to the light to see that it was real. And he would turn to me and say, "This one is real." three and a half years old. When I was little, we didn't really we didn't have money, meaning money wasn't a big thing when I was in elementary school. So, what did kids how did you how did you what was the currency? The currency was business cards. True story. You go into a doctor's office, you would take like all of the business cards and put them in your pocket because business cards were money. You would walk around, you would say, "Oh, you have a bag of soda, a bag of chips, a can of soda. I I'll buy it off you. How much? 25 business cards. Okay. And I would start paying you business cards. Business cards were money. I used to come to school with a huge backpack filled with my business cards. And people guarded their business cards. It was like it was like this was like your your your Brinks truck. You went out to recess, you took your business card. Your business cards were it was business card. There was no meaning. This was this was how it was. Instead of money, we traded business cards. People would bet business cards and they would say, you know, heads or tails and you say, "Oh, tails." "Oh, no, it's heads. You owe me 10 business cards." It was money. Business cards were money. And people would walk around anyway, go into a doctor's office, an accountant's office, anybody. You just, "Do you have a business card?" "Sure." The guy would take out, "I'll take all of them." And you just take business cards. That's how it was. Business cards were money. Imagine if every business card in my backpack had your name on it. Okay. So, you open up your backpack and you look inside and it says on it accountant with your name. Says in it lawyer with your name, plumber, electrician, contractor, barber, psychologist. All these different business cards. They all have your name on it. They have a lot of jobs. Be very busy. Imagine it's right before PES, the busiest day of the year, of PES, and there's a major flood in your house, and all of your cousins are there. And the fifth cousins, and everybody, you know, they're all in the house. It's packed. People are sleeping in the attic, in the basement, and all of a sudden, everybody starts screaming. You go, "What's the matter?" And they say, "There's a huge flood in the basement. The toilets are overflowing. The showers are overflowing. There's water coming from the top floor down to the basement. And everybody's screaming and everybody's yelling." And you pick up the phone and you make a call and a guy comes down and he says, "Yes." And you say, "Are you a plumber?" And he says, "Yes." You say, "Well, look at my house. It's 20 minutes before Pesak." and he looks at him and he says, "Oh, one second." And he pulls out a card and it says on it, "Elect electrician." He says, "I am also an electrician." He say, "You're an electrician." I don't need an electrician. I need a plumber. And he says, "Wait one second. I'm a psychologist." Psychologist? I don't need a psychologist. I need a plumber. I need a plumber who knows how to do his job. And he says, "Wait a second. I have a lot of business cards." And he's pulling out business cards and business cards and business cards. He says this guy, "You are out of your mind. You have a lot of business cards here, and some of them are seemingly more important than others. But right now, I need one business card, the one that says plumber. That's the only one I need. I don't care about all these other business cards because they might be important in the right time." and in the right place. But what I need is a plumber. Every one of us has business cards. When you're born, you're born into this world with a business card. In fact, in the hospital, they even have that little card that they put on and it says Epstein baby, right? You know, Ibramov baby. It says the baby boy. It says the weight. That's the card. But then as you go through life, people hand you more cards. Those cards are not physical cards, but they're real cards. You go into kindergarten, you go into pre18, people hand you cards. You now has your name and it says first grade, second grade, third grade, accountant, doctor, lawyer. As you go through life, you accumulate more and more business cards. So that when you're doing things in life, essentially what you're doing is you're playing a card. You're saying this is who I am. I'm an accountant. People come to my office and I say I am an accountant. I might also be a psychologist. I'm not. But I might also be a psychologist and say, "Oh, tell me all your life's problems." They're not in my office for that. They're here for a specific reason because they need their tax return done. They have a tax question. They have a financial question. Everyone has business cards. And every business card has two sides. The front is what it has on the card. Tells you who you are. The back of the business card tells you what you do. What is my job in first grade? What is my job in second grade? My job in first grade and my job in second grade are going to be two different jobs. In first grade, I have to know what I need to know for the first grade. And second grade, I have to know what I need to know for the second grade. You ever hear sometimes people talk about their kids and they say, "He was so smart and that's why he always got kicked out of class." Like the kid was so advanced that when the rabbi was talking, he was so brilliant that the rabbi kicked him out of class. That's great, wonderful. He's such a brilliant kid, but he's not playing the right card in the right classroom. He might be playing a third grade card in a first grade classroom. It's not going to work well. You have to play the right card at the right time. And every card is very specific. You can't be playing with blocks in the fifth grade. You're playing the wrong card. And you can't be doing algebra when you're in nursery. Every card has its place. And every person has the right card in the right place, then they'll be successful. Jacobu, he shows us the right card for marriage. He shows us what a marriage looks like. He shows us the the fundamental, like the essence of what a marriage is supposed to be. You see every card, some cards you're handed. You go through life and you're handed a card. You're in first grade, you're in second grade, you're in third grade, you got to do it. Nothing to do. You become a a bar mitzvah, 13, they say this is what you have to do, right? You take a job as a as as whatever it is. They tell you this is what you have to do. But certain certain things you select, you became a barber. Nobody forced you to be a barber, right? Nobody said this is what you have to do. You said, "This is what I want to do." You go into a shop and you say, "I would like to work here. Take the business card. Put my name on your business card." You're asking, you're begging, "Please, I would like to sign up to something." If after two days working somewhere, you look at them and you say, "Cutting here so greasy. This is not for me." They'll say, "Fine. So, leave." Certain certain things you have to do in life and certain things you don't have to do. You decide, I want to take this plunge. I want to take this step. Marriage is a step that we take voluntarily. You can't be forced into marriage. It's Jewish law. Nobody could force you. You have to look at the person. You have to like the person to date the person. You say, "I like you. I select you. Will you marry me?" And they say, "Okay." Nobody's being forced. No. Yeah. Back home. Yes. Even back home, it wasn't a forced marriage. It can't be forced according to Jewish law. It has to be that there's a consent on both sides. And they may have been young. They may have been guided. No, but according to law, yes. But still, I feel like every girl and a guy have a choice. If they didn't want to get married, they would not be secretly that I don't want to marry him. And if the parents do want to listen to their kids, they will take their advice. If they don't Exactly. You can't according to the Talmud, you have to you have to come into this willingly. I agree to this. I like her. Or even if I don't like her, I'll get to like her. I'll get to know her. I don't know anything about her. I'll figure it out. But there's an agreement. Nobody could force you into this agreement. Now, you come into this marriage and you get a business card. And the business card says on it husband. It says on it wife. And the question is, what is on the back of that business card? What does it say? What's the what's the goal? What's the job behind that business card? If I'm a barber, so I have to know a lot about being a barber. I have to know about cutting hair, washing hair, right? Shaving the back. What does it mean when they say a fade? What's a three? What's a There's a lot of things I have to know about being a barber. And what do I have to do? What do I have to know when I'm getting married? What's my job? What's the essence of my job? What do I have to do? So the Ramanities, he says, "I'll tell you what your job is." It's based on the Torah where the Torah says that a man's job is to be. What's the Hebrew word? Dev. What does mean? Glue. It's glue. To cling, to stick, you know what that means? That means What does that mean? Means to connect one person and another person says it's talking about their minds, their mindset. Two people whose mindsets become one. That is marriage. Everything else is not marriage. Everything else is a roommate, is a coexisting friend, is a coexisting marriage, is a coexisting relationship. But the essence of what a Jewish marriage is supposed to be is summed up by one word kesher. And kesher means just as you worry about yourself and you feel for yourself and you care for yourself and you know what you need intuitively. You say I need food. I need this. I need respect. I need attention. I need affection. I need appreciation. All these things that you need. Great. Wonderful. Because now there's somebody else in your life. And you can now turn to that person. and you could give them the things that they need. So Jacobu, he says like this, if I bring my wives into the field and I say to them, we have to leave, we have to go, Hashem came and spoke to me. What are they going to say? Okay, we have to leave. But is there any kasher in there? Is there any solidification of their relationship? No, the connection is not there. Yakob calls his wives into the field and he says to them, "The fact that we have to go is true. But before we go, I have to get on the same page as you. Let me sit here and talk to you. Let me explain to you why I feel that we should leave. Let me explain to you why I feel that it's time for us to leave your father's house. Time for us to take a journey to face life's uncertainties." The reason is because it was very difficult for me here. and he starts laying out his plan for why he thinks they have to leave and where he thinks they're going to go from here. And what do the women say? They say, "We agree with your plan. And also, Hashem told us to leave. Let's leave." The fact that they have to leave, everybody understands they have to leave. But to get onto the same page to create that connection that bond that Yakov says is even more important in a certain sense than the fact that we actually have to go. How she believed in me. It was a different world. It was a different world back then. They had Abraham the head was the third in line. They knew he wasn't joking around. It was a very different world. It's very hard for us to put our forefathers in context. If me and you came home and said, you know, God told me this, who came after you after Yseph, right? Yseph was one of the 12. Yeah. So, it was a different world then. But they trusted him. They knew that he was telling the truth. Rabbi. Yeah. Isn't it taking the risk of in order to try and making this casher the connection before leaving? If I would think okay if I was in this situation in the story I would think okay I I do need to make this case or the connection with my wife and speak to her about it explain to her why we need to leave so that both of us are on the same page but what if she doesn't want to regardless of why I think we should she says no I want to stay here it's she's not connecting basically so isn't it it's taking a risk basically I'll tell you another another biblical story look at the story that happened with Lo Lo and his wife, they were not on the same page. How fast did that marriage end? Very quickly, who's Lot again? Lo was Aram's nephew in Saddam. The angels show up to Saddam and they say, "It's time for you to leave Saddam." And Lo is running and running. And the Torah even says, "And he was delaying. He was here. He was there." Doesn't talk to his wife at all. And the angels turn to him and they say, "We just have one rule. when you run, make sure you're running away. You're not looking back when everyone gets destroyed. And Lo says, "Okay." And he runs and his wife, she turns around. They weren't on the same page. The marriage is over pretty quickly. Yakov understood something. You could listen to direction, but you're going to just be driving right into a wall. Life has so many challenges. So many challenges. Having children is a challenge. Not having children is a challenge. Having a business is a challenge. Not having a business is a challenge. There's so many challenges in your life. Said the fact that I have to take another step forward is all great and wonderful. But if I'm taking a step forward and that's a step away from my spouse, then that's very dangerous. That's very dangerous for everybody. What happens when we get faced with something where who am I going to turn to? It's going to be me against her against this challenge. Hashem's going to be telling me to go in one direction and she's not even holding where I am right now. So Yakob says before anything, I have to get around to the same page. And your question is, what happens if the women would have said, "We're not interested in going." Then guess what? Maybe Yakov would have said, "I have to solidify my marriage a little bit more." What does that mean, solidify? Maybe he would have said, "I have to What did he do?" Let's understand. What did Yakov do? What was the practical thing that YaKob did to his wives? He turned to his wives and he essentially said to them, "I care about you. I care about your feelings. I care about what you're thinking. I care about I care about what you're feeling. I care about your emotions. We all live in four worlds. We live in the spiritual world, the mental world, the physical world, and the emotional world. Those are the four areas that we exist in. And a marriage, a solid marriage is where you turn to your spouse and without even saying it, you show them that I care about all of these worlds. When a husband comes home and a wife has food waiting for him, what she's saying is, I care about your physical world. I care that you should have food on the table and I respect you enough that I'm going to put the food out and I'm going to make it. I'm not going to call you up and say just go pick it up from a store somewhere. That's a a woman saying, "I care about you." And that builds that's casher. That's a relationship. She could simply say, "Go take care of it yourself." A marriage is about two people saying, "I'm going to care about you and I'm going to give you unconditionally whatever you need." So that's exactly what Yakob does to his wife. He turns to them and he says to them, "I care about you. I feel you. Because if I didn't care about you, I would just say, "Let's leave." I would just say, "Pack up the car and let's drive and I'll explain it on the way." But he doesn't do that. He stops before and he has a conversation. And the conversation is, "What do you think about this? What are your thoughts? What are your feelings? Tell me what your thoughts are." He doesn't say, "We're leaving." He says, "Let me understand what your feelings are over here." And once the women say, the wives say we're ready to go. Yaka says, "Great. Now I know that whatever I'm going to face in the future, it's me and you together. We're going through this together. We could deal with this together. You know, sometimes, let's say you have a child in school who's having a hard time. So the rabbi says, he calls up the parents and he says, "You should come down and you should to you know, we have to have a meeting about your son." So what happens very often is that the parents come down. The father's screaming like a lunatic. The mother's sitting there and she's dead embarrassed and she's kicking her husband under the table. Don't talk so much. and he says, "This is my son and blah blah blah." And he's screaming and screaming and screaming. You could see there's no cash. They It's not the two of them united with what their position is. It's it's a man who has his position and it's a woman who has her position. And on the outside, they might look very happy, but when it when they're confronted with things, you see that there's no pressure here. Yaku says, "We're going to deal with things. Let's get on to the same page. Let's get first on the same page that we're leaving, and then we'll get on to the same page as everything else in our lives." That is a marriage. Casher is marriage. That's what the Torah says. The Torah gives one directive for marriage. You would think the Torah would write books and books all about marriage. It doesn't. It has one sentence about marriage. It's the whole the whole guidance is one sentence. It's the whole thing. Without it's no marriage. Because you know why? Sometimes you read a book and you say to yourself, maybe I do something from this chapter. Maybe I do something from that chapter. I don't do everything. Okay, here the Torah is saying there's one thing to do. You either do it or you don't do it. You can't pull out and say I do a little of this, a little of that. No, it's one thing. You either do it or you don't do it. It's a very simple directive. What does the Ramban say? Get on the same page. Not just on the same page theoretically, physically, emotionally, everything. I feel you. I sense you. I know you. I know exactly what you need and I'm willing to give it to you without expecting anything in return. And that is the business card of a husband and that is the business card of a wife. That's what a marriage business card looks like. And Yakovu says this is what a marriage is supposed to look like. I have to do a million things but this is this one comes this one comes first. I think the second thing that Yakov does is like an underlying component to every marriage. Without this, it can't happen. He takes his wives into the field. Why? Why didn't he just sit down by the dinner table and say, "This is the deal. What does everybody think about this? Tell me, what do you think? You think we should leave? We shouldn't leave. We're taking a poll." What? Talk to them at home. Talk to them in the room. Talk to them in the attic. So the Talmud says that a field is a place of privacy. You want privacy, go into a field. Nobody's around. Nobody's listening through the walls. A field is a place of privacy. Yakov takes his wives into the field to show them that they are important. You could very often you have a conversation with your spouse. You send them a text, right? Some people, everybody here is part of like a WhatsApp group. You know, sometimes you're on a WhatsApp group, there's like 80,000 people on the WhatsApp group and your phone is hijacked. Very often you see a couple that they're talking to each other on the WhatsApp group, like a private conversation. Hey, what time you coming home or 8:30? It's like a WhatsApp group. There's there's 50 people listening in and they're having a conversation. Yakov says, that's not showing your wife that you're important. Important means it's me and you. It means I put away my phone. It means I sit there and I talk to just you. It's not a family conversation. It's me and you. We We decide what was going on. You have a kid who's having trouble in school. You don't sit down by the dinner table with all the rest of the children and say, "Shlay is having a hard time in in in yeshiva. What does everybody think about it? Oh, Schlami is an idiot. A Schlami is so stupid. Oh, yeah. What do you think? Oh, Schlami stole your toy last week. Okay, good. What else?" It's not that's not a conversation. The conversation is you bring your wife into a private place. You go out for a drink. You go to 7-Eleven. You go for a walk on the boardwalk and you turn to her and you say to her, "What do you think we should do about?" It's a private conversation. It shows her that it's me and you and there's nobody else here. I don't have my phone. I'm not answering my phone. I'm not in the middle of a business call. I'm not in the middle of anything. This is important. You are important and therefore it's just me and you. You know, some great rabbis when I when I used to visit some of my rabbis in their house, you would see that they would eat dinner very very late at night. some of them 11 12:00 at night they would come home after a very very long day and when they would come in the wives would come running over and they would sit there and they would have dinner for them and sometimes I would come let's say 12:00 at night and I would see that the husband was sitting there the rabbi was sitting there he's finishing eating dinner and his wife is sitting right next to him right next to him she ate 5 hours ago but she's sitting right next to him it's private time between me and you it's not just here's the food goodbye it's you're an important person. I want to spend time with you. I want to get onto the same page as you. I want to sit there. That's what Jacob does. He says, "If you're an important person, I'm going to take you out into the field and it's going to be a personal conversation between me and you." So, there's cash and there's importance. You show the person that you are important. I have nothing else that's going on. I have a question. Yes. Since he had four wives, he did that individually with all four wives or all four at the same time? He took out only Raa and not the other two not the other two because the other two originally were like the maid servants of Ra and Leah. So he took out these two these were the primary wives and he didn't do it individually. Why he didn't do that I don't know but he took out the two that he felt were the ones who had to be made the conversation and that was how because they were sisters maybe they were together. They were together. Yes. So that was that was his his mindset going in cash. And how do I do it? I showing you that you're an important person. Your opinion is important. I value what you say. If somebody asked before, what would happen if the woman would say we're not interested in going? This wasn't a charade. It wasn't a show. Hey, what do you think? They would say, uh oh, this is a terrible idea. And he would say, okay, well, too bad. We're going anyways. It wasn't a joke. It was a real thing. He was taking their their their minds into consideration. Now sure he was he was able to to present his case and he did he said this is what I think what do you think and presenting my side now what do you think about this that was his conversation but it was a real conversation but the third thing that he does knocks it out of the park if you think about it it makes it almost sounds like every two seconds I have to call my wife hey honey what do you think should I make a right or should I take a some women think that their husbands need to do this you know like they're driving down the street make a right turn go other way, you know, like they're giving directions every 5 seconds, but you think, okay, I guess they're getting onto the same page. It usually doesn't work that way. What is What about Yakov? Yakov, if you look in the Torah, never ever has a conversation with his wives ever again. Never. Doesn't ever talk to them. Now, it sounds like, okay, big deal. So, he was an older man and he didn't have to talk so much. He just, you know, just sat at home. He didn't have to talk so much. Look at what happened in his life. He had to deal with the fact that Yoseph was sold down to Egypt. He had to deal with the fact that he decided to transplant his his whole family from Cananan down to Egypt. That was a major conversation. He he takes his family out of Loveand's house and right away Asov his brother attacks him with 400 men and Yakov says, "I have a brilliant plan. We'll split up the family into two. Half of us will run and half of us will fight." Okay, he had 12 sons, right? How old was the He had 11 sons at the time. How old was the oldest? Ruvane, according to many commentaries, he was 12 years old. A 12-y old boy and an older man. We're going to fight 400 giants. We're going to destroy them. You don't think this is a conversation to have with your wife? Honey, you have a brilliant idea. Watch this one. His wife would say, "Are you crazy?" But that's not what happens. He doesn't have any conversation with his wives. You know why? I'll tell you why. because his wives his wives knew that when there's a major thing that's happening, my husband has my back. My husband knows what I'm thinking about. My husband he he knows about me. He knows what I would be saying in such a situation. This concept is fundamental to every single marriage. It's a concept called pass besale means bread in the basket. It's as if you have it already. I don't have it, but it's as if I have it already. I'll give you an example. On we fast. In the days of the temple, when they used to fast, they had this thing where they would call it the they would take a goat, they would walk it out into the desert. And when they would be out in the desert, somebody would take this goat and they would throw it off a mountain. How long did this person walk in the desert? It was a very far walk, a number of miles. It took them a long time to get there. And every every time he would walk, there was a little hut. And in this hut, there was a man sitting there with bread and food and water. It was the middle of the desert. And sometimes in Israel, it gets very, very hot. And he would say to this guy, "You're walking in the desert. Would you like a drink? Would you like some food?" Now, I don't know about you, I'm not the greatest. I think if I was the guy who was be was walking a goat for miles and miles in a desert, maybe I would say, "Yeah." And don't forget, this wasn't like he was violating anything. He was allowed to eat. He was allowed to drink. He was He was the exception. He was allowed to take a drink because he was thirsty. He was on a mission, right? We're sitting here for a half hour on a day that we're allowed to eat and everybody's drinking. Imagine you're walking in the desert on a fast day. Sure. Okay. I could have a cup of water. I'll take a cup of water. How many times in all the history of the of the B mikdash do you think anybody ever took a drink? The answer is never. Never. Over 8,000 times people were offered drinks in the desert and they never took a drink. Never. And the Garra says, the Talmud says, why didn't they ever take a drink? What? There was a miracle that they weren't hungry. And you know what the Talmet says? They had something called you know sometimes like it comes yum kipper and and you're supposed to say I accept upon myself yum kiper right you ever have this you say I accept upon myself yum kipper and all of a sudden two seconds later you're like I feel like I'm going to die like how am I going to make it 25 hours I feel like I'm expiring hot like you're already dying if you just accepted the fast three minutes ago and you just ate a meal that's like you know fit for 12 people how you going to make it because Once you say, "I I'm fasting." All of a sudden, you finished. Over here, you have a person, he doesn't feel like he's fasting. He's going through the day and they tell him, "You could eat. You could drink." He said, "Oh, I could eat and I could drink." Who needs it? I'm doing okay. Very often, somebody comes to your house, you say, "Hey, you want a drink?" What do they say? No, doing okay. That was this guy. I'm doing okay. Why? Because I know that if I really need it, I could take the drink. So, therefore, I don't need the drink. But if I know that I can't drink it, ah, we're dying right away. I need something about the fundamental. It's all about the head. It's all about the brain. No, exactly. It's all psychological. And marriage is all psychological. What Yakov says is as follows. He says, I know that my wives need my attention, my affection, my appreciation. They need me to be there thinking about them consciously. But if they know that I really take this seriously and that I'm always doing this to them that I'm I'm thinking about them, what would you be saying in such a case? For example, you have a child who's having a hard time in school. When you walk into that school building, if a husband is sitting there and he's yelling and he's screaming at the principal and the wife is sitting there and she's looking at her husband and she's nodding her head and she's saying, "Yeah, this is what I would have said also. I'm very upset you didn't not treating my son the right way." That's casher. They don't have to have a conversation before they walk into the principal because they are on the same page. I'm not saying you should yell at principles. What I'm saying is that when you get into a situation, when you see that the couple is on the same page, that's possible. He takes his wives into consideration and then he says, "I don't have to have this conversation with you ever again because you know that whatever you would say, I'm already thinking it." It's such a high level to get to. It's not a simple thing that what what he did. But on our everyday lives, when you show your spouse, I care about you. Really do. I'm always thinking about you. You came home. Look, I had food waiting for you. You know, I I know you're in a bad mood today. I gave you a little bit of space. Whatever it is that you feel that your spouse needs without them asking for it, without them begging for it. Just I intuitively feel you, that's kesher. And then you don't have to do that every 5 seconds. You don't have to have that conversation every 5 seconds. Why does a woman have the need to tell her husband every two seconds, turn left, turn, he doesn't know how to drive? How does he get wherever he's going when you're not in the car? What she's saying is, I don't feel like you're caring about me. I don't feel that you you know what I'm feeling inside. So, I'll tell you, I'll nag you to death until you finally realize that I'm in the car also and that I have feelings. Let's go back to our original story. You have a guy who comes home and he's on the phone and he's on the phone and he's turning to his wife and he says to her, "Look, I'm on the phone. It's very important." What he's saying is, "I have a million business cards and one of those business cards is a job, but you're another business card. Now, which card comes first? You or my job? And you know what he tells his wife? This comes first. And his wife reminds him. No, we are not holding there yet. Even though it's just once that happened, that that's the that's the that's the symptom. He could have played it a little different. He could have called her on the way home and said, "You should know I'm expecting a very important phone call. I really miss you. I really care about you. I can't wait to spend time with you. It might take a little bit of time. If I get this phone call, he could have told this guy, "Hang on one second. I'm gonna text my wife." There's ways that he could connect with his wife. But if his wife is getting into a bad mood, what she is expressing is a lack of a lack of you don't feel me. You don't feel me. Okay, I'm going to make you feel me. I'm going to make you remember me. I'm going to make you remember that you didn't make me number one. That is what happens in every situation when somebody gets into a bad mood. When somebody's yelling at somebody else, when somebody's telling somebody talk, don't talk, get, they get upset, they're yelling, they're screaming, they're saying, "Where's the kasha? Where's the kesh? I don't feel it." You're playing business cards. You're playing the wrong cards. Reashv, he said that when a husband and a wife spend time together, it's like a yiff. It's like a holiday. It's like a Pes right before Pes when things are going crazy and the house is flooding. What happens then? You need to you need a plumber who's going to play the right card. When a wife is waiting at home for her husband, she's saying it's Pes. I set up food. I have the kids. This is Yantiff. This is a time. This is a Yeah. This is a time for us to sit down and spend time as a family. This is your business card. Your time to play the right card. What's that right card? A husband with casher making you important. And when he walks in the door and he says, "I have other business cards." It's like the guy who shows up and he's sitting there and you say, "I have a flood." And he's pulling out, "I'm an electrician. I'm a psychologist. I'm a barber." You say, "My friend, you're out of your mind. I don't need any of those things. I need one card. I need a plumber." And you come home, your wife says, "I need one card. I need the card that says an husband. That's the only thing I need. When you give that to me, I'm I'm happy. I'm fine. And when you give it to me enough and I really know that you mean it, when you come home and you don't do it, I could forgive you very easily. It's not a problem. But when you're always forgetting this, when everything else is important and it is important to make money and it is important to spend time with the children and it is important to do all the millions of things that we have to do, but guess what? It was important for Yakovu to leave. Hashem told him to leave. It was important for him to leave. But he said there's one thing that comes before that. Another business card, the business card of marriage that trumps all other business cards. That I believe are three fundamental things that when you put them together, you have a good marriage. You pop the you pop the hood of a car, it's beautiful. It purr. That's what they say, right? It purr. Car purr. It It runs well. But when you don't have that, the car could look very, very nice on the outside, but underneath there's bickering and there's fighting and there's people vying for attention and there's wives slamming doors and saying, "I hate you and never talking to you again and there's husbands walking out. There's everybody's getting upset at each other. There's no reason for it." So simple. Kasher is marriage. No kesher is no marriage. That's it. Okay. English.