[Avodah] Love and Marriage

[via Avodah]

From: Professor L. Levine, quoting R' Hirsch:

>> This,  too, is a characteristic that, thank God, has not vanished from
among the  descendants of Avraham and Sarah, Yitzchak and Rivkah.
The more she became  his wife, the more he loved her! Like this marriage
of the first Jewish son,  Jewish marriages, most Jewish marriages, are
contracted not on the basis of  passion, but on the strength of reason
and judgment. Parents and relatives  consider whether the two young
people are suited to each other; therefore,  their love increases as they
come to know each other better.


Most  non-Jewish marriages are made on the basis of what they call
"love." But we  need only glance at novelistic depictions taken from life,
and we immediately  see the vast gulf -- in the non-Jewish world --
between the "love" of the  partners before marriage and what happens
afterward; how dull and empty  everything seems after marriage, how
different from what the two partners had  imagined beforehand. This
sort of "love" is blind; each step into the future  brings new 
disillusionment. <<






>>>>>
 
When I was a single girl (and getting a little long in the tooth, having  
dated dozens of Mr. Wrongs), the Novominsker Rebbetzen a'h once said to me, 
"The  goyim put a hot pot on a cold stove.  We put a cold pot on a hot  
stove."
 
At the time I didn't fully appreciate her words because I thought she was  
telling me to go eeny, meeny, miny, mo and just pick somebody already, any  
random guy.  But now I perceive the wisdom in her words, and I often quote  
her. (I add the caveat that you shouldn't go into a marriage without some  
level of mutual attraction.)  Her words wisely echo R' Hirsch's insight  into 
the nature of Jewish marriage.
 
 

--Toby  Katz
t613k at aol.com
..
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