The World’s Building Blocks

Translated from Rabbi Arush’s feature article in the weekly Chut shel Chessed newsletter. The articles focus on his main message: “Loving others as yourself”.

You started 

There is a joke that tells of an uneducated man who was looking for work, but the salaries offered him didn’t satisfy him. He asked some friends what sort of job pays well. “Hi-tech,” they told him. So he started searching for hi-tech companies and came to the large headquarters of a famous company that develops extremely sophisticated technologies and employs the best brains in the market and in the world. He was stubborn in face of the guard at the door, stubborn in face of the secretaries and finally reached the office of the CEO. When he was denied entry, he made a fuss, until the CEO himself came out to see what was going on.  

The CEO looked over the guy and understood whom he was dealing with, but still, he invited him into his office. When he understood that he was looking for a job, he said to him: “No problem. You are hired. You will earn NIS 40,000 a month and be provided with a company car. Of course, you will have a spacious office and will enjoy vacations abroad. Is that okay?” 

“And what will I have to do?” asked the unemployed man. “Nothing,” replied the CEO. “You will sit here and do nothing, and receive a fine salary from me.” 

“Are you kidding me?” asked the unemployed man in a hurt tone. 

“Excuse me,” said the CEO, “but you started”… 

Don’t Kid Around 

I hope that you, dear readers, are intelligent enough to understand that one cannot expect to have a job like that with such good conditions without suitable training – at least one or two academic degrees in technological subjects, and a good few years of rich and successful experience. Someone who expects to receive these conditions without training or experience, is simply a crackpot. He’s kidding around.  

That’s why I can’t understand how a person expects to enjoy a good, long, happy life with his wife. How can he expect true shalom bayit (peace in the home), Shechina (Divine Presence), blessings and good, and emotionally healthy children? Are you kidding me? Do you think that without training, study, work, prayers, and investment of time and energy one can achieve that? Just like there is no salary without training and no work conditions without experience, so too there is no shalom bayit without many years of study, hard work, and building. 

Devote at least one year, at least the first year, to this endeavor. Give your all, as the Torah commands: “He shall be free for his home for one year”. You have to be free from other concerns and concentrate completely on the central role of your life, which is to establish your home and place it on firm foundations. 

Two That Are One 

That is the foundation of the world and the building of the world. Man is the crown of creation, the purpose of the Creation of the World that we learn about in our parasha. And man’s perfection lies in “Male and female He created them, and He called their name Man.” When is man a man? Only when he fulfills what is written in the passuk, “Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and cling to his wife and they shall become one flesh.” Only if you leave all other matters, all other interests. There is nothing more important – not even your father and your mother! You are to focus on one thing only: being your wife’s best friend.  

Getting married? Forget everything. There is nothing else. You have no parents, and neither does she. Right now, the most important thing is to really connect. 

Rabbi Wosner zt”l said that that is the best segula for a stable and happy marriage that lasts – to observe the mitzvah of “He shall be free for his home for one year.” To do so with all one’s powers, all one’s heart, and invest in it, and do above and beyond, each according to his abilities. 

Think about this during the entire first year. Try to make each other happy, thinking what you can buy and how it is possible to make the other even happier; talk to each other and get to know and understand each other as much as possible. Whoever does so, says Rav Wosner, is sure to live with his wife in wealth and happiness until a hundred and twenty. 

A Strong Home – A Strong World 

The world is a complete structure. And the structure is built from building blocks. The foundation stone of the world consists of the homes and the families. When the home is in ruins, the stone is broken – the entire building is faulty. When there are many ruined homes, the building collapses. And so, as well, for the good: every strong home strengthens the entire world. 

We have so many sayings of Chazal about the importance of the wife’s happiness and shalom bayit, and the severity of divorce! 

But it takes work, investment. Do not think that if you get divorced, you’ll have a happy second marriage. Without working on it, you will not succeed in any marriage, and with work you will be successful with your present wife as well. But if you get divorced, you will lose doubly: you will suffer in your next marriage, and you will have lost the wife of your youth, which is something the Gemara says is priceless; the damage is irreversible. 

If the Torah says, “He will be free for his home,” that means that that is the way to have a successful marriage, as Sefer Hachinuch says explicitly about this mitzvah. One then is awarded not only a happy marriage, says Sefer Hachinuch, but also good and successful children.  

The first mitzvah in the Torah in our parasha is “Be fruitful and multiply.” Says Sefer Hachinuch: The intent is not only to bear children, whatever they will be like, but to bear accomplished, happy, and emotionally healthy children who have the potential to succeed in life and develop the world. That is the mitzvah and that is possible only in a home in which the parents are good friends! 

And that is what Rashi says about the passuk “and they shall become on flesh” – that is the offspring. Because the offspring is directly dependent on the close connection between the parents.  

Would you be willing to ruin your children? Of course not. So what do you think happens to them when you distress your wife, or when you scream at your husband? 

And for the good, even more so: If you invest, you are happy. You are the first to benefit. And your children will be happy and healthy, self-confident and accomplished. And so, you benefit many times over in terms of nachat and happiness. 

My Segula 

The Gemara tells of Rav Yehuda who told his son, Rav Yitzchak, that a man finds satisfaction only in his first wife. The son asked for an example, and Rav Yehuda replied, “Like your mother.” The Gemara then asks: How does this work out with a different incident relating to the same issue? Once, that same Rav Yehuda quoted to his son the passuk “And I find the woman more bitter than death.” And when Rav Yitzchak wanted an example, Rav Yehuda gave him the example of his mother.  

So, what was happening here? Was Rav Yehuda’s marriage more bitter than death, or was it filled with satisfaction? And in general, how could Rav Yehuda speak lashon hara (unfavorable speech) to his son about his wife? 

One of the tzaddikim explains, that Rav Yehuda was not speaking lashon hara; rather, he was trying to teach his son a lesson for life. You know that your mother can cause me much distress, to the point of making my life more bitter than death, but I – I do not bear her a grudge and I do not answer back; rather, the opposite: I love her and respect her endlessly, and therefore, in spite of everything, I enjoy much nachat and pleasure from my family life. 

Talmidei chachamim (scholars) are called “the builders of the world” (“Don’t say your “sons”, bonayich, but rather your “builders”, bonayich”). How do they build the world? By way of “increasing peace in the world”. They do their best to make peace in the homes of Jews, and that is tantamount to building the world. 

Heaven gave me the merit of making a small contribution to increasing peace in Yisrael and building the world with my book, The Garden of Peace, which has already saved many Jewish homes. Thousands of couples owe their shalom bayit, their happiness, and the success of their children to this book.  

Therefore, I will not hold back from adding another small segula of my own, but a tried and true one for real, long-lasting shalom bayit: Study this book and go over it again and again, and, mainly, do the practical work of prayers, hitbodedut and calling out to Hashem, asking that you will be able to fulfill everything, and, of course, do the practical work at home, and thanks to that you will enjoy a happy life, good children and the whole world will look and be better.