Rabbi Eliyahu Bergstein on "Who Comes First Me or My Spouse: Navagating the First Year of Marrage"

uh good evening everyone thanks for coming as rabbi ruttenberg mentioned i'm happy to come back always to forest hills it's the old hometown i grew up uh i went to eshiva for 12 years and it started right on 108th street so it's a couple of years ago but i'm happy to be back i'm also happy to address this subject together with rabbi ruttenberg who said so many fantastic and interesting points that without me it would have been worthwhile just to come to hear that that's for sure i'm glad to come for ahmet i'm glad to come for hazak and i'm glad to meet the people that i've met before and also the new people that have come now even before you're married getting married is not such an easy thing the talmud actually has a story that someone once asked rabbi ben khalaft or the great talmudic rabbi god created the world in six days right and what's he doing since then and he answered since then he's a shotgun he's pairing up people he's pairing up shidduchim husbands and wives boys and girls and she says that's what god is doing i can understand creating the world you need god for but to make the shidduchim to make the marriages to put together two people to be get married i can do it too i'll show you and that night this person took a thousand of her slaves and lined them up men on right side living on the left side number one with number one number two with number two and the ultimate speed dating and you know maybe that's what god does i can do it very well till the next morning and the next morning there were plenty of black eyes and bruises and broken limbs and abuse and fights and a lot of them were very unsuccessful and she understood very well that this is a divine thing to be able to put together hassan and kala it's not so easy at all the talmud actually compares it to kriyasyamsov to the splitting of the sea and it's not an easy subject so that's if that's as far as to get married and to get married is a short amount of time to stay married is a much longer amount of time and therefore we need god's help a hundred percent and we have to dive in for it and pray for it and and and say to hilim and all those kind of things but we also as rabbi ruttenberg says have to use a little bit our own cycle our own judgment and we have to try to make it work and to make it happen and to make it right it's interesting to me that i was preparing the class a number of places that i found in the talmud and in the writings of the rabbis that talk about the subject gravitate to a particular pasuk a particular verse which is in the book of eov eova translated into english as job it's a book which isn't learned too much it's not that popular because it's a little bit of depressing book about a man eovo had everything and then was reduced to nothing and was tested with terrible suffering and in the end his suffering was alleviated and relieved from him but he went through a very difficult year and the book deals with basically to an extent why good things happen to bad people and is suffering a punishment necessarily or not and various things like that this not known who the author is but major opinions believe that the author is none other than moshe rabeno our teacher and ultimate rabbi moses who wrote the five books of torah at god's dictation he wrote also say for eof and in seifer eov if you want to look it up it's perique hey possible chapter 5 verse 24. the verse says you should know and you will know that your tenth meaning your dwelling place is at peace and when you reflect on your dwelling place you will find nothing missing and the commentators talk about what does it mean rabbi shimon schwab in his famous book on eoif which is available in any bookstore says the following comment even if god has taken away everything from a person and he's poor and oppressed by the entire world nevertheless he can find inner peace if he knows that at home he will find his beloved wife or husband along with his children who always are there for him emotionally intellectually supportive etc etc meaning the pulsar is saying that where it really counts is not in the office it's not in the synagogue it's not in the marketplace is not in the street where success is really measured is at home if you and your spouse are on the same page and you have an appreciative spouse and if you have an appreciative spouse and a good marriage the children also as robbie ruttenberg mentioned follow suit also and they see the type of house it is that's where it really counts and you could be the biggest success in business it's really nothing if you don't have that then i noticed that's just the translation of the pasuk that the rabbis in the gemara say based on this pasuk are quoted a person who loves his wife as himself and he honors her more than himself muhammad bonovo knows of derek yeshua and raises his sons and daughters in the right way and marries them off at the right time that's what the verse talks about the odata and you will know that your house your tent your dwelling place is at peace and that's what it's really about he says the woman is the house and that's what the talmud says on it the talmud even specially says it regarding shabbat and the talmud says that candlelighting is the ultimate fulfillment of this verse what's candle lighting what does candle lighting do what is shabbat starts with the candle lighting the candle lighting is the start of shabbat it it means that the whole week they stopped and a whole new existence starts the weekday is the days of interference of the cell phone of the blackberry of the telephone of the text of the work of the this of everything basically where we are doing and doing and doing and doing and we cease being human beings and we cut become almost human doings and there's no time even spouse this way that way comes shabbos shabbat that candle lighting is the demarcation now it starts shabbat those little candles those little lights they're in honor of shabbat in honor of hashem they're also in honor of the marriage and that's why asia's kyle is one of the things we sing friday night it's like the shabbos is considered a color a bride the candles the ashes kyle the woman of valor where where wasn't she willing to valor thursday night too wasn't she the wife thursday night too wasn't she the color the bride thursday night too yeah but the blackberry was competing and the text was competing and the job was competing and now friday night all of a sudden those things disappear and all of a sudden what emerges is the real people and there's no more doing so there's no more human doings and then we become human beings and the talmud says on that three things a person is supposed to say in the house on friday afternoon at candlelighting time the three things are isatem you separate ma aser tithes it's not prevalent among us generally we live in america and our produce is out of the out of israel but you have to separate one tenth of fruit for example that you're going to eat on shabbos the second thing you say is a rav tem did you make the a roof a roof everybody's familiar with you know the strings and poles to be able to carry from place to place and the final thing is hadliko saner if everything is set okay time now to light the candles notice that the first two are questions and the last one's a statement first was isaten did you give the ten percent the tithe the piece off of the fruit a rav tem did you make the ayrov and the last one is a command there's a statement i like you as an air the reason on the simple level is because the husband doesn't know if asa may rafter if the tithes were taken or the ayrov is up or not but the husband sees that the candles aren't lit yet he says rabbi yeshua says in the talmud the verse says yoda you know that your tenth is at peace when you come to that final touch weekdays end shabbat starts of the candlelighting and then the next section of the gemara adds a critical piece which is often overlooked the next section of the gemara says omar babhana afal gave even though the rabbis just said in the previous section of the talmud that a person has to command and say s haner light the candles to his wife he has to say it gently nachas means softly de la cable so that it should be listened to he should say these things gently to the wife to the family members so they should accept the reminder from him and art scroll uses the expression when they're translating this piece of the gemara and not reject it out of resentment it shouldn't be okay light the candles now i told you you're late hurry up because then it becomes resentful and the whole purpose and everything we've been talking about falls by the wayside not only falls by the wayside but hashem his presence is only there when that peace reigns when the peace doesn't reign god's presence is removed and those who know hebrew know that god's presence is in the word man and in the word woman in the word man there's the middle letter yud the word man is ish aleph yud shin in hebrew and the woman is isha alef shin hae god's name is yud and hay that's why we say in the tv hallelujah what is the word hallelujah mean hallelu prays hey that's hashem's name so within ish is a yud a letter within isha is a hey if hashem removes his letter his yud from the word ish and the hey from the word isha what's left h and h fire and fire it becomes between the man and the woman just a giant fire feeding on each other burning themselves up so to speak and that's what the talmud says in sota your zion it goes so far and this will need you know some qualification that the talmud in a number of places and the torah itself in a number of places actually recommends and permits deviation from the truth in order to maintain the shalom the peace between a husband and a wife i'll give you the examples first when the bro when jacob died in egypt yaakov avinu and they brought him to be buried in the land of israel the brothers all carried their father all the tribes ruvain chimo levy yehuda and yosef ii the great viceroy and on the way back to egypt after burying yaakov the brothers started thinking you know as long as our father was alive yosef treated us nicely even though we didn't deserve it we sold him into slavery we threw him into the pit we treated him miserably yet when the famine came and we came down to egypt he sustained us he sustained our families he gave us residency he gave us the nicest section to live in he did everything for us maybe he only did it because our father was still alive but now that yaakov our father has died lou used to may know you safe maybe joseph will show his true hatred and take his revenge that we really deserve what did they do they sent messengers to yosef siva our father commanded that we should tell you kosomrun the yosef please tell yosef even though i've died already ono please look away from their sins carry the burden don't let it out on them don't squash them don't hurt them just like you treated them when i was alive treat them going forward too did yakov or vino ever say that never why didn't he say that he knew yosef isn't going to do anything he knew jose better than they knew him he knew yosef didn't take any revenge against them before while he was alive and yazid isn't going to take any revenge now that he died either but the brothers said that the brothers said that why were they allowed to say that were they just lying were they just saying it because they were scared maybe they were saying it actually because there's a mitzvah to keep the peace and if it means sort of embellishing and adding a little bit what the father said okay that's our first example another stronger example we find in the navi where hashem says god says the shmuel hanovi to the prophet samuel go and anoint king david to be king and king saul hamelach is dismissed he didn't do the job of making the war with the amalekites properly he's out he's an unemployed king he's a former king the new one is king david go and anoint him and shmuel says to hashem to god how can i do that shutu will find out that i'm going to anoint his substitute he'll kill me what does god say to do hashem says to him take with you an animal vomato lisboyach and if she will ask you where you're going and what you're doing you'll say you're going to bring a sacrifice hashem is basically telling shmoila navi that if it comes to a situation where shah allah is going to get so angry he's going to want to kill you you just say i'm going to make a sacrifice he doesn't have to know exactly where you're going and you'll anoint king david privately so we see there that god himself gave the permission to shmu el-hanovi to actually deviate slightly to maintain the peace in israel between shaolin and david that's a case where god gave permission to sort of deviate from all the facts there's even a stronger case where hashem himself did it and this is famous and most of us know it when hashem sent the three angels to tell sora that she's going to have a baby and she's already 90 years old and she's you know way past any child bearing age avraham is a hundred and sarah is 90 they're already so old when sora hears the angels telling abraham you're going to have a child she says to herself how's that going to happen va adoni zolcain my master my husband is old that's what she said and what does hashem say hashem says to abraham sorrow is questioning it sorrow doesn't believe sarah doesn't think it's really going to happen you know what she said she said i'm old did she say i'm old no she said my husband's old avraham is all he's hundred he's a hundred years old vadden he's okay and when god repeats it to avraham that sarah is not up to the proper understanding if this is going to happen he doesn't say you know what your wife said your wife says you're an old man hashem changes the words and hashem said that sarah said i sorry i'm old why imagine if he would have said to avraham your wife sorrow she doesn't believe it's going to happen because you're an old man avraham would turn to sarah that's what you said about me i'll start dying my beard what is going on you know how do you say that about me i'm not so old i'm on the treadmill every day always so hashem changes it why should he create a fight so he literally changes the words of sarah tamaniso kante i'm too old now the exact boundaries of where and how and on what circumstances you're allowed to deviate from the truth needs clarification which is above what we're going to do here the talmud mentions a few different cases if you're in a person's house and they treated you royally and you were a great had a great time and and and you were you know treated as a great guest over there and somebody asked you how did they treat you over there you're allowed to say okay you don't have to say oh it was great over there you know why because if you're going to say to everybody it was great over there those poor people are going to have a million guests and they'll eat them out of house and home so you're allowed to have a little bit of mercy on your hosts that you were treated so well you don't have to go advertising that they should have to you know go out on a limb and take a a loan against their a mortgage to be able to to to to accommodate all the people they're going to come based on your recommendation so there are a few cases similar to that but certainly the case of husband-and-white relationships certainly rates for that kind of a thing there are a number of suggestions torah style suggestions that have been given by experts in this field i actually read something by a rabbi ginsburg who quotes the famous rabbi olefsky on a number of things that a husband and wife can and should do and can and shouldn't do and a little bit this is his list number one he says that just like it's a mitzvah to judge another person favorably somebody does something they left schul early they left the beta knesset early in the middle of davening how do you judge them you could either say ah look at that person in the middle of the trila in the middle of the prayer service they left and went home or you can say you know maybe they had an emergency maybe something came up that was extremely important maybe who knows or they come late to shul oh look how late they come maybe something happened maybe they didn't feel well in the morning you know judge the person favorably that's a mitzvah all across the board rabbi alefsky mentions in his ideas that certainly when it comes to the marriage it should be the same way the husband should say to himself why is my wife not home yet she's running late probably she's running late because she had to pick up my shirts in the cleaners probably she's running late because she wanted to get me the special dessert that i like for supper sometimes it's hard to do that when your stomach is growling and you know she's late but that's really you know what is actually supposed to be recommended and that donald cove screws bows both ways he recommends something else also no matter this is recommended to the husband and to the wife sometimes the wife when the husband comes in is in a lousy mood sometimes the husband themselves in a lousy mood when the two of them are in the lousy mood so it's a little bit of asian age fire with fire so things start off on the wrong foot sometimes the recommendation is that the woman when her husband comes home should smile at him even if she doesn't feel like it she feels miserable and she's all stressed out smile at him he from his perspective the same thing he had a bad day he's tired he's already hungry smile at her he recommends even further that she have if the supper's not ready a snack there for him i heard from rabbi israel tauber many years ago another idea that the husband should keep a danish in the glove compartment of his car and when he comes home and pulls into the driveway before he even shuts the motor he should take out the danish and eat the whole danish take two three minutes eat the danish now he's a little bit less hungry now he's ready to walk into the house of course you got to know another danish hide it in the glove compartment for the next night when you come home and sometimes you can do it in a way that you actually fake it you don't feel like smiling you don't feel like saying hi how are you and everything this and this you fake it you do it anyway but it has to be done right there's a famous story of a couple who kept fighting with each other terribly and it was affecting their livelihood because they owned a restaurant and they were the proprietors and he she was the cook and he was the waiter and they they basically ran their own mom-and-pop restaurant and they were always fighting you know where's the portion already the customer's waiting what do you mean you didn't tell me i told you beef you told me pastrami their business went downhill because people come to a restaurant to have a relaxing enjoyable time and if the staff of the restaurant the husband and wife are fighting with each other and yelling that's not where they want to go so they go to a different restaurant so business goes downhill so they went to accident and they asked that see the rabbi what should they do so the rabbi said to them this is what you do whenever you feel like saying something negative stay positive the customers will hear positive even if you yourselves know that you don't mean it but it'll have the right effect in fact whatever you're thinking negative say the opposite okay they shut dot it put up a sign no management new environment new atmosphere new ambiance new everything come back people start coming back give them a chance and it's going great the husband says to the wife oh you should live and be well and she yells back at him you also 120 years oh you should be that compliment finally he says some big compliment to her some real compliment but she knows what he really means and she takes a pot from the kitchen and you just throw it at amazon throws it at him and he understands what she's doing he takes a platter of something and throws it at her needless to say the restaurant was out didn't work so it has to be done right the idea behind it is not that you're just faking it but you really are not you know meaning it the idea behind it is to actually do it till it becomes part of your practice not that you're doing it to fake the people but you're doing it to actually change the way you're communicating and as you change and fake it it becomes now this idea is not my idea and actually this is not robert jolefski's idea this is actually the torah's idea and it's in a specific mitzvah a mitzvah which not a person here has done this mitzvah in their life yet the mitzvah is when we eat the paschal lamb at the say their night in the time of the best time of the temple you're not allowed to break the bones that's and one of the 613 mitzvahs we haven't done this mitzvah because our pesach said it doesn't have a pascal lamb because we have no beta mikdash no temple in jerusalem so we're left just with the madsen with the moro and with the four cups of wine but when the bata mignash will be rebuilt and when the better make this used to stand there was also the pascal lamb the carbon pesach that everybody got a piece of and when you got a piece if you got a piece with a bone you weren't allowed to break the bone why says to say for simple reason what are you breaking the bones for because you want to chew on the bones because you know inside it's soft and tasty and juicy and what happens you're chewing on the bones and it starts dripping on your chin and you know you're chewing away and it's all over your hands you know it's not great etiquette and when you do that you become a person without great etiquette you become a person who's a little bit sort of a slob a little bit you know not high class and even if you run naturally like that if you don't break the bones and you eat the carbon pesach or any kind of food actually in a mannerly way and you do it day after day after day after day you become like that you know if you have supper every night in a fancy restaurant where you have to have a necktie and there's table manners and you're eating there with queen elizabeth who has table manners you know high class royal table manners i imagine you know after a while it becomes habitual but if you go to some low-class place where people are coarse and and and not refined even if you're refined after a while your standards go down so the idea is to actually do this kind of behavior and it becomes part of your regular routine this rack actually doesn't have to do only with a spouse it can be with anybody the talmud says that when you go out in the street you should greet everybody even an idolater even somebody who's a pagan who bows down to statues you should greet them in the street why because you get in the habit of greeting people of being nice to people of being between human and human relations certainly if that's for the pagan then your spouse who's hardly a pagan deserves none the less i'm not an expert in differences between men and women but they say that women have more intuition than men in fact there's an opinion that says that the reason women can't be judges and witnesses in a rabbinical court is because of their intuition if they'd be a judge on the rabbinical court as soon as the two parties come in and they size them up they already have an intuition before hearing anything of what's really going on here that's unfair they may be right but it's unfair the men have no such intuition till they hear the facts or they examine the evidence they can't do it so because of that intuition it can happen that the woman because she has this natural intuition thinks her husband has it too and therefore things that she only in intuits i think that's the word yeah close okay or she thinks but really warren said she thinks we're sad to quote rabbi olefsky's words women are more intuitive than men you think your husband got it when he really didn't get it and then you get upset if you didn't say it he didn't hear it of course he goes both ways too but generally could be the woman has more intuition so i mean if i said a b and c you didn't figure out d by yourself the answer is that he may not have figured out d by himself there are other areas where it works the opposite and there's a lack of communication and understanding because of something the man sees and the woman doesn't for example women tend to want to discuss things there's a problem they say that to the husband the problem husbands the men us men we hear a problem what's good what do we need to do find a solution but sometimes the woman isn't so interested in the solution she wants the husband to hear what she's talking about she wants to discuss the various aspects she doesn't want just okay let's get to that point she doesn't want to just get that to the point she wants to talk about the broader picture and he doesn't understand she wants to talk about the broader picture of course she doesn't understand that he doesn't understand that what do you mean broader picture you said this this this this i know what to do do this but she doesn't want to hear do this she wants to have 15 minutes that we should discuss it all around so that awareness of the differences in the mental process these are important and it's important to stop and step back and try to communicate so that each are understanding each other rabbi ruttenberg mentioned something before about giving everything he said was 100 accurate and right i'll add one just one note the word for i think rabbi mentioned it too the word for love is oh have the ohaf love is ayan hey vais oh have the word for giving one of the words forgiving is have some people start the katamazon when they have a mezuman three men together with havelan underwater i know if you're familiar with that havelan means give to me the cup or navarech and we will say the grace after mirrors have is to give ahav is to love where's the connection was mentioned before giving promotes loving giving your wife likes to go on this kind of vacation give her that kind of vacation the husband likes this in this kind of supper make him listen this kind of supper giving becomes loving we love our children even though literally we give time and effort and money and parents go out and they work years and years hundreds of thousands of dollars from end to end to raise kids you love these people do your children you love them how could you love them you're working thousands and thousands and thousands of hours to earn money to give it to them to support them to raise them they scream in the night you get up somebody else screams in the night you yell at them shut up be quiet them oh my little boy you know what's going on the more you give the more you love them so that's also recommended for husbands and wives sometimes the husband should change his schedule to be more accommodating for the wife to help her sometimes she should do that for him he mentions also timing this is a simple thing if i wouldn't mention it you'd know it yourself everybody knows it when you wanted to say something serious or something important or something that needs a major decision you you you want to have the timing should be right if it's the middle of supper and there's children running around and the phone is ringing and somebody's knocking at the door for charity and the husband just came home and he finally sat down to supper it's probably not the time to discuss should we spend eight hundred dollars on a new couch coming home from work sitting down to supper everybody's making noise all around the phone is ringing should we buy a new couch what's going to be the husband's reaction or if the husband says to the wife we're going to do something or other this and this let's go do this the natural reaction is i'm so busy now just the default reaction becomes no there's a time for it the timing has to be in a time when there's it's more calm and more able to communicate treating each other with respect is something pretty much simple uh one of my kids always says to me if i tell them something this is not husband or wife king this is with a child but it might work with husband and wife too he says to me uh tati father that's a suggestion right you know like not a command this is a suggestion it's advice right i tell them yeah it's a suggestion it's advice you come to your own conclusions much better than you have to do like this so with a marriage it's certainly that way and this is a tough thing not so easy at all and i know it for a fact it's not easy that if you have something to say that's not necessarily positive it's negative might be a little critical if you could say it in a way that you mean it for the person's benefit so that afterwards when you have said it the person whether it be you or your spouse whoever's saying it to the other one actually says i hear you thanks a lot thank you wow then it wasn't at all criticism then it was actually so constructive that they understood it was actually 100 percent beneficial these are just some major points there are two expressions for a ruler whether it be a ruler of a nation or a ruler of the household and it's in the torah one expression is melech means a king the other expression is moshel moshel means a ruler what's the difference the difference is a moshail is somebody who is a dictator a ruler by force a melech is somebody who is a ruler by the people want this person to be their ruler want this person to be on top of them that's why yosef in egypt was shaini lamelach he was the second in command as a melech he was very wanted by the egyptians he saved their lives in the famine he wasn't there against their wishes and the brothers when they came back to their father yaakov and they told him that joseph is still alive they made a mistake and they used the term mitzrayim he's the ruler over egypt and the next verse says jacob yaakov did not believe them why didn't he believe them among other reasons he didn't believe them because he couldn't believe that his son is such a tyrant that he took over egypt as a mo shale as a dictator that can't be yosef when they told him the correct wording and they said odon oh that's a different story and we know this even from the famous possum where it says when it comes to us because we readily accept it and um to the nations of the world god is a dictor dictatorial figure they don't have that kind of close relationship mo shale is not what we want to be melech is what we want to be what is the root of the word melech where does it come from what does it signify the first time we find it in the torah is actually in rashi and voracious where rashi says that when god decided to create human beings he used the term na'ase adam let us plural he's talking to the angels let us make humans and the pursuit created creates problems for non-believers because they say oh look god has partners he said it in plural let us make humans isn't he doing it himself we know he's doing it himself so why did he ask the angels he asked the angels because he wanted to show us that you don't make decisions in a vacuum you ask your spouse you don't just decide yourself what's the term in rashi he asked he took a poll he asked the angels should we create humans the angel said no god said anyway i'm not accepting what you say we're going to create them i'm going to create them. but his word is nimlach that's the same word as melech nimlach means i take into consideration somebody else that's a melech a mo shale takes nothing in consideration i have my opinion you say your opinion i cut your head off now you have no more opinion that's emotional the chosun and the kala are a melech and amalka not dictators are moshel and moshellas they're a melakhana malcolm they're supposed to make decisions together they're supposed to take into consideration what the other one thinks what the other one wants what the other one thinks is best not in a vacuum it's something that has to be learned i suppose because you spend the first 20 or 20 plus years of your life making your own decisions and just waiting to be able to have complete control of yourself where your parents are out of the picture and barak hashem you graduate from your parents and now you got a new person here your spouse but that's the way it's supposed to be nimlach ben azaria was asked by the other rabbis to become the head rabbi of the of the academy of the great tamuda rabbis before he accepted the position he said i'm going to consult my wife same wording emily from word melech am i going to assault my wife he wouldn't take it until he consulted his wife that's how hussein and nakala start and that's how we're supposed to start