With Your Spouse and with Hashem: It is the Relationship Itself that Matters Most

This class was presented on Tuesday, Parshas Behar, 13 Iyar, 5784, May 21, 2024, at Bais Medrash Ohr Chaim in Monsey, NY. The Midrash recounts that in the second century, in the famous seaport town of Sidon, on the coast of Lebanon, there lived a married couple blessed with wealth and an honored position in the community. There was, however, a great void in their lives. Although they were married for ten years, they had no children. The couple decided to get divorced. They turned to the great Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai for advice. He looked at the couple for a long time, and then he said to them, “I ask only one thing of you both: If you must part, then just as you wed with celebration, so should you part from each other with celebration.” They took his advice and arranged a great feast. During the evening, the husband raised his cup and said to his wife, who would soon leave, “True, this is the last meal we shall share. Before you go, look around at the treasures of this house, choose the most precious jewel your heart desires, and take it back with you to your parents’ house.” The wife did not respond to his offer. Instead, she mixed and spiced the wine, and they drank a lot. The candles burned low in the room, and the husband fell asleep, overcome by heavy drowsiness. While he was asleep, the wife told her servants to lift him on a bed and carry him to her parents’ house. As dawn broke, the husband opened his eyes in a daze and discovered he was in unfamiliar surroundings. Astonished, he asked, “Where am I?” “In the house of my parents,” she said. “Why?” he asked. “This is where you asked to be taken. Did you not say to me last night, ‘Take with you the most precious thing your heart desires?’ To me, dear husband, there is nothing in the world more precious than you. They had found each other again. They now fully realized how strongly they loved each other. The next day, the couple of Sidon appeared again before Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai. He prayed for the couple, and after a joyful year, they were blessed with a child. What is the message of this story? And why didn’t Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai pray for them in the first place? The story of the couple of Sidon, says the Alter Rebbe, is not only about them; it tells an eternal truth about every marriage and the enduring power of love. When the couple first came to Bar Yochai, their love for each other was conditional and goal-oriented. If the marriage was not producing a child, there was ultimately no point in it. But then as they were about to part, they discovered how deeply they loved each other. They began to celebrate the intrinsic value of love. So, the couple returned to visit the rabbi, not because they had a solution, but because they knew they wanted to be together. Paradoxically, when the couple began to understand the purity of love that has no ulterior motive, their relationship bore fruit. The class explores how our first marriages must morph into second marriages, even with the same partner, and how the setbacks and betrayals we experience are often cries of the soul for a deeper, more authentic, and more vulnerable relationship. We can grow from a superficial relationship to one in which the very relationship means more than anything else. The same is true also in our relationship with Hashem. We tell a story of the Lubavitcher Rebbe saving a marriage, even after divorce, when the husband discovered he was not a Kohen.

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