Guidance for a Wedding - Rabbi Asher Eisenbach shlita

00:02 Speaker 1 You’re listening to “Lema’an Yishme’u,” a podcast from Machon Halacha Chabad.

00:09 Speaker 2 Hello. Today we’re going to talk about guidance for grooms. Why does a groom need to learn from an instructor instead of learning on his own from books? First, a thought on the weekly parsha, Parshas Terumah: “They shall make Me a sanctuary, and I will dwell among them.” “They shall make” is plural, and “among them” is plural, but “a sanctuary” is singular. The Rebbe explains that “among them” means within each and every person: when we make a sanctuary, the Shechinah dwells within each of us. In truth, every Jewish home is a sanctuary. “They shall make Me a sanctuary, and I will dwell among them”—within each and every one of them. As the Gemara says, “If they merit, the Shechinah dwells between them.” A Jewish home is a Beis Hamikdash. And as people say, everything done in the home is like what was done in the Beis Hamikdash. So the first thing we find in the Beis Hamikdash is: “They shall make an ark of acacia wood, two and a half cubits long, a cubit and a half wide, and a cubit and a half high.” Then there are the cover, the keruvim, and the poles. People point out that the first thing is “They shall make an ark.” The ark is the only item described here in the plural; afterward, the wording is singular. The first thing is the ark. The first thing in a Jewish home is an ark—an ability to contain. A person has to approach marriage ready to make room for another person. What will the ark contain? The entire Torah. And the ark is simple, made of acacia wood, then covered with gold inside and out. Gold. Make it beautiful and pleasant. And make keruvim over it. The keruvim have the faces of children—a boy and a girl, representing the husband and wife. The first thing is to look one another in the face, to look at each other and see what the other person wants. Look at the other person’s face: What do they want? What are they expressing? What do they need? What are they capable of? And spread your wings—give to one another. Then Hakadosh Boruch Hu dwells between the two keruvim. Hakadosh Boruch Hu speaks there. So there is a revelation of

03:08 Speaker 2 the Shechinah: “They shall make Me a sanctuary, and I will dwell among them.” Another important thing is the poles. Why are the poles needed? The Sefer HaChinuch explains that they make it possible to take the ark anywhere if there is a war, and the poles must never be removed from the ark. The ark must not be fixed in just one place; it must be able to go wherever it is needed, to a place of war and so on. In married life, that means not being set in your ways. You must always be able to move from one place to another. That is a fundamental principle. This is really the foundation of the home: making room for one another, giving to one another, and not being set in your ways. After that come the other things—the table, the menorahs, livelihood, the children. But beyond all that, with all these things, there is “two and a half cubits long.” Everything includes a half; everything is approached with humility. That is the foundation of the Jewish home. That is what we build on, and that is “They shall make Me a sanctuary, and I will dwell among them.” Why do you need an instructor for grooms? Why can’t I learn on my own from books? There are so many books. And another question: Forty or fifty years ago, there were no instructors for grooms, and there were good homes without them. Why, in our generation, must every groom and bride go to an instructor? The answer is very simple: our generation is different from previous generations. In earlier generations, people always grew up with hardship. The whole world was difficult. You had to bring water from the well. You had to bake bread, grind grain, do laundry. Everything was hard; nothing was readily available. At night it was dark—you had candles. People lived with hardship, so when difficulties arose, they knew how to manage. But ours is a generation of abundance, a generation before the revelation of King Moshiach. It is a generation in which everything comes easily.

05:59 Speaker 2 The water is in the house; the food is in the house. A child grows up without any difficulties. He has what he needs, and not just what he needs. He has every treat—Bissli, all the chocolates, everything he could want. Everything is there; life is easy. So when difficulties come, people don’t know how to deal with them. And when people get married, there are usually challenges because they are different people. So you can’t do what was done in the past, when an instructor would meet with a groom for an hour, a day before the wedding, teach him for an hour, and that was it. In effect, they taught nothing beyond matters between husband and wife on the first night and the nights that followed. But in our generation, guidance for grooms addresses the whole way you think, so you know how to relate to the other person. It addresses your whole mindset. And that’s not all: when people read books, they don’t always understand them correctly. So you need an instructor to guide you in how to behave toward a wife or a husband. Everyone understands that if I want to enter a profession, I have to study it. I can’t be a sofer without learning the craft. I can’t be a driver without learning from someone who teaches driving. If I drive without that, G-d forbid, I could cause an accident. We have to realize that marriage is not just a profession. All of life is one great profession. Marriage is complex, something you practice day by day, hour by hour, with challenges all the time—starting with the first year, then with children, then bar mitzvahs, weddings, old age. It all brings challenges. To face those challenges, you have to learn. It’s a profession. And I truly believe a time will come when this, too, will be taught in yeshivos.

08:48 Speaker 2 How to get married—there are a thousand and one things involved, and that, seemingly, is why guidance for grooms is needed. If you go into it without guidance, there can be many challenges and difficulties. But when you have guidance, a good, experienced instructor whom you can always call—even in the middle of the night, and even after a year or five years—that is guidance for grooms and brides. It is both a privilege and an obligation for every groom and bride to go and learn from instructors. And why aren’t books enough? Books also say how to behave when there are conflicts between husband and wife, or other conflicts in life. Why do you need an instructor? First of all, the Gemara says, “Women are a people unto themselves.” Could I imagine going to another country, to another people, without knowing their language, and living with them in peace? No. I wouldn’t know how to say “bread”; I wouldn’t know how to say “food.” I couldn’t speak to them. My needs wouldn’t be met, they wouldn’t understand me, and they would look at me as though I were strange. A husband and wife are two different kinds of people, with different feelings and different expectations. Nothing is quite the same for a husband and a wife. In general, we may share the same commitment and outlook on what we want. We want to be Chabad chassidim; we want to be [unclear]; we want certain things. But how do we approach it? How do we approach each and every issue? These are two kinds of people, each thinking, understanding, and feeling differently. To get along, we need to hear from people, in detail, what works and what doesn’t. Especially since each person also comes from a different home. One comes from a chassidic home, another from a less chassidic home. One comes from an orderly home, another from a less orderly one. One comes from a very clean home, and another comes

11:44 Speaker 2 From a home that isn’t quite as clean or as orderly. All these things—two people who have lived for twenty years in different homes, in different ways, with different feelings, different food, and different habits—create conflicts if they don’t know how to handle them, if they haven’t received guidance on how to deal with these matters. So that’s another reason to go to someone. When you come to an instructor, the instructor holds up a mirror to how you behave, how you eat, how you— It lets you see how someone else looks at you. So even when it comes to ordinary behavior, to the way you conduct yourself, you need guidance. In addition, there are the halachos. There are so many halachos: the halachos of niddah, the halachos governing relations between husband and wife, and all kinds of halachos that come up in life, such as those concerning childbirth and bar mitzvah. That comes later. You also need to learn the halachos from an instructor. Why? Because as yeshivah students or as young women, we look at everything from within our own world, and we don’t understand how the halachos work in real life. We have all sorts of mistaken ideas. We may have learned a little in the Rambam about certain halachos, but we haven’t studied them with someone. After all, these are generally not things one studies with other people, and that isn’t the time to study them, either. So we have all kinds of mistaken ideas about the halachos governing relations between husband and wife. That makes it all the more essential to go and learn, so there won’t be mistakes, so we’ll understand the truth and know how to manage. Besides, when it comes to learning the halachos, not everyone understands things in the same way. You can’t teach all the young men the halachos in exactly the same way. It depends on their level of Chassidus, and on their level in other respects. Each person is different; not everyone is equally able to take in

14:42 Speaker 2 everything. Of course, everyone needs to know and learn the basic Shulchan Aruch, but there are different levels to this. You need to know that not everything is appropriate for everyone. So that’s another reason to go to a groom’s instructor. Take, for example, learning the halachos of niddah. There’s a lot involved. There’s the basic question of what niddah is and how a woman becomes a niddah. A young man and woman may not know exactly what it is. Perhaps they know that it exists; perhaps young women know more about it. But how do you approach it? How does halacha approach it? What is niddah? What is a Torah prohibition, what is a rabbinic prohibition, and what is a case of doubt? Even if you study the halachos on your own, you don’t always fully absorb these things. Beyond that, when you learn with someone, you generally also learn through stories and actual cases, which makes it practical. How do you deal with it? How do you deal with the difficulties? Because when this comes up, there are difficulties for both the husband and the wife. When you learn with someone, the instructor—particularly for young men, for whom this is, to some extent, a test—offers various suggestions for meeting the challenge. Beyond that, the young man may not know exactly what niddah is physically, and the instructor teaches him precisely what happens physically. When you understand it, you understand what the woman is going through, so you treat her differently. The atmosphere becomes more pleasant, and she feels less stressed despite the distance they must keep from each other. So learning with an instructor who explains why this happens once a month, how it begins, and how it ends makes you aware. You don’t find yourself in a situation where you have no idea what’s going on and are simply told, “Do this, do that.” Beyond that, a groom’s instructor also explains what pregnancy is and how it happens. I’m not talking about marital intimacy; I’ll discuss that later. But simply understanding why niddah occurs every month, why it doesn’t occur, and why it doesn’t occur during pregnancy—that’s very important to hear from someone knowledgeable about the subject. Likewise, there are halachos called vestos, times when there is concern that niddah may begin. Working out how to observe those times so as not to transgress the prohibition of niddah is very complicated. An instructor helps you put it in order in your mind: how to understand it, how to handle all the complexities of vestos, and how to calculate the times so you don’t make mistakes and transgress. Marital intimacy is a very sensitive, complex subject. In general, there are times when it is a mitzvah and an obligation. You can’t simply say, “I don’t want to.” Young men, for example, have all kinds of ideas and imaginings because they don’t know exactly what it is. It’s all theoretical. Even if they’ve been exposed to things they shouldn’t have seen, real life is entirely different. So there are times when it’s an obligation. A husband can’t say, “I don’t want to; I don’t want marital intimacy.” There are times when it’s a mitzvah, though not exactly an obligation. And then there are questions of what’s permitted in these matters and what is chassidish. Sometimes something is what’s called “a scoundrel within the bounds of the Torah”: it’s permitted, but it isn’t chassidish. The truth is that all of this also depends on who the young man and woman are, what level they’re at, what kind of home they want to build, and what spiritual level

17:10 Speaker 2 they want in their home. [unclear] On the one hand, there’s that. On the other hand, we know that the Gemara says, “A groom descends a level”—he comes down from his previous level. Why? Because until now he was a yeshivah student, occupied only with spiritual matters. He struggled with the yetzer hara over thoughts that weren’t so good; he struggled to daven, to learn, to have kabbolas ol, and not to look at things he shouldn’t. Now “a groom descends a level”: he comes down into the world. What was forbidden then is now a mitzvah. What was forbidden then is now sometimes something he’s told not to abstain from, something he needs. It’s like food. That’s what “a groom descends a level” means. You can’t know on your own where to come down and where not to. True, you can look in books, but even when you do, you can’t know what’s appropriate for you and what isn’t—what to do and what not to do. I had a groom who had all kinds of difficulties with these matters, and I didn’t understand why. Until one day he said to me, “What am I supposed to do? The Alter Rebbe writes in the siddur that when putting on tefillin, one must subjugate the mind and heart, and he concludes there: [unclear] ‘and diminish his pleasures.’” He told me, “The Alter Rebbe says to diminish one’s pleasures.” So he was always looking for ways to suppress his enjoyment and did all kinds of things that had the opposite effect on shalom bayis. What we wanted was shalom bayis, for them to have a good, happy life—a proper way of life, as the Rebbe said. On the one hand, he knew that “a groom descends a level,” but on the other hand, he still thought of himself as a yeshivah student. He remained a yeshivah student. No. When a man marries a woman, he needs to know what it means to be married to her, what “a groom descends a level” means, how far to come down and how to do it—while, on the other hand, not

19:35 Speaker 2 becoming too immersed in the physical. He should engage in physical life as Hakadosh Boruch Hu wants him to; that is a mitzvah. But at the same time, he shouldn’t become overly absorbed in it. So those are the reasons, it would seem, why grooms need guidance. There’s something called abstinence. Some people want to abstain; they don’t want [unclear]. What is that? As we said earlier, “diminish his pleasures.” The Rebbe was very strongly opposed to this in his letters. Although the Tanya says that marital intimacy is very coarsening, nevertheless, the Rebbe opposed abstinence. And we know that for people who abstain, the yetzer hara becomes overly active. There’s the idea of having “bread in one’s basket”: when you have food, [unclear] what you eat. As the Torah describes it, marital intimacy is compared to food. When a person eats, he isn’t hungry; he doesn’t go looking elsewhere. When there’s good, healthy food at home, people don’t go out to eat at restaurants. But without guidance, a person may sometimes do things that only bring him down in other ways. That is why, in general, the Rebbe was very much against abstinence; one should do what is required. Some grooms and brides are fortunate enough to have grown up in a healthy home. What is a healthy home? It’s a home where the father and mother get along, there is love in the home, and the atmosphere isn’t tense. Even at busy times, such as Shabbos and holidays, things move at an unhurried pace and there’s no pressure. The parents also have a good relationship with the children. That’s a healthy home. But unfortunately, many, many homes aren’t like that. Part of the reason is that previous generations faced material pressures. Some people are naturally tense. Sometimes there are debts or difficulties earning a living that create pressure, or, G-d forbid, health problems that create pressure. For example, there may be a young man who comes from a tense home, and a young woman

21:59 Speaker 2 …to become too immersed in the physical. We should engage with physical life as Hakadosh Boruch Hu wants us to, and that is a mitzvah. But at the same time, we shouldn’t become too immersed in it. So those are, apparently, the reasons why a chosson needs guidance. There is something called abstinence. Some people want to abstain. They don’t want Torah. What does that mean? As we said earlier, they want to mortify themselves. In his letters, the Rebbe is very strongly opposed to this. Although the Tanya says that marital intimacy can make a person very immersed in the physical, the Rebbe was nevertheless opposed to abstinence. And we know that when people abstain, the yetzer hara works on them all the more. It’s a matter of “bread in one’s basket”: when you have food, you have something to eat. As the Torah describes it, marital intimacy is like food. When a person eats, he isn’t hungry; he doesn’t go looking elsewhere. When there’s good, healthy food at home, you don’t go out to eat at restaurants. But when a person doesn’t have guidance, he may sometimes do things that will only bring him down. So, in general, the Rebbe was very much against abstinence; rather, a person should do what is incumbent upon him. Some chassanim and kallahs are fortunate to have grown up in a healthy home. What does a healthy home mean? It means that the father and mother get along, there is love in the home, and the household isn’t tense. Even at busy times, such as Shabbos and Yom Tov, everything moves at an easy pace, without pressure. And the parents also have a good relationship with their children. That’s a healthy home. But unfortunately, many, many homes aren’t like that. Part of the reason is that earlier generations faced material pressures. Some people are also tense by nature, and sometimes there are debts or difficulties making a living that create stress, or, chas veshalom, health problems that create stress. For example, there may be a young man who comes from a tense home, and a young woman…

24:48 Speaker 2 Who came from a calm home. A young man who came from a pressured home gets to Friday, two hours before Shabbos, and he’s already stressed. Why isn’t the house ready for Shabbos yet? His wife, who came from a calm home, isn’t in a hurry. There are still two hours until Shabbos. And then he starts saying, “Come on, why…?” Arguments begin, all sorts of issues. It isn’t only about—this also applies to raising children. That’s why this really requires guidance. The chosson and kallah also need someone to explain the differences between a husband and wife, between a man and a woman: the differences in feelings, the differences in expectations. It’s very complex. And they need guidance, because otherwise he doesn’t understand why she’s crying, and she doesn’t understand why he’s so cold. They simply don’t understand. Each one thinks differently, sees things differently, speaks differently. In general, young men and women have a lot of imagined ideas. A young man may think that the main thing in life is marital intimacy. He doesn’t know how it works or how often it happens, and he has all sorts of expectations. He thinks that’s the main thing in life. She may think the same, but sometimes they can miss the point. That isn’t the main thing in life. The main thing is what the verse says: “Enjoy life with the wife whom you love.” It’s to love one another, to love one another, to become truly loving. Every chosson and kallah, while they’re a chosson and kallah, experience what’s called being in love. There’s love, and there’s being in love. Those are two different things. Between a father and son, it’s love. Between a husband and wife, it begins with being in love, and if you know how to nurture it, it becomes love. The difference is this: being in love is an attraction to physical things and the like. That’s being in love, and it can be very, very powerful. Love means the other person is part of me. I’m not just in love with their good qualities,

27:52 Speaker 2 but I truly love them, like a parent loves a child. Parents love their children despite their shortcomings. So a husband and wife also need to make time to think and reflect on how to love one another. Not just how to be in love, but how to love. You do that by seeing the other person’s good qualities. Everyone has good qualities, and everyone has shortcomings. Focus on the good qualities. This is a very important part of guiding chassanim and kallahs. In the Alter Rebbe’s Sefer Meah Shearim, a collection of the Alter Rebbe’s maamarim printed in Jerusalem more than a hundred years ago, he cites a Midrash. A noblewoman asked one of the Tannaim: “Hakadosh Boruch Hu created the world. What has He been doing from then until now?” He told her, “He sits and arranges matches.” She said, “I can do that too.” She took a thousand male servants and a thousand female servants and put them in rooms. Presumably she also matched them according to their mazalos. But the next day, they had been fighting with one another; most of them couldn’t get along. Then she understood what it meant. But there’s a deeper meaning here. “He sits and arranges matches” means that Hakadosh Boruch Hu sees to it that a husband and wife will love one another. He brings them together so that they’ll be compatible despite their differences. I once heard an explanation of the saying, “Making a match is as difficult as splitting the sea.” Why? Because the Tanya says that a strong east wind blew all night before the sea split. If Hakadosh Boruch Hu had not sent that strong east wind all night, the sea would not have split. In the same way, Hakadosh Boruch Hu is constantly doing all sorts of things to bring a couple together, so that they can live with one another despite their differences. On the contrary, their differences are

30:17 Speaker 2 what make it possible for their life together to continue, for them to build an everlasting home. It says, “If they merit it, the Shechinah dwells between them.” The Rebbe says, by way of a lighthearted interpretation, that this is one of the reasons there needs to be a space between a husband and wife’s beds: because the Shechinah is in the middle. But I once heard a question. We said, “They shall make Me a sanctuary, and I will dwell within them.” So why do we say, “If they merit it, the Shechinah dwells between them”? Why not “dwells within them”? What does “between them” mean? The point is that they merit the Shechinah dwelling between them when, despite their differences—he likes things one way, she likes them another—they manage to get along. That is where the Shechinah dwells. As the Gemara says, the Hebrew word for “man” is “fire” with a yud, and the word for “woman” is “fire” with a hei. There are feelings and warmth, but fire can also burn. If they merit to bring the yud and hei into the middle, they build an everlasting home. Beyond the matter of children, an everlasting home means living together with a wife who does what is hers to do, while I do what is mine to do. Together we live happy lives, lives of Torah and prayer, and make a dwelling for G-d in the lower realms. The Gemara says they asked Rabbi Zeira, “What did you do to merit a long life?” He answered, “I never became angry in my home.” It has been said in the Rebbe’s name: Where can you see whether a person is truly a chossid? In how he behaves toward his wife. And the same is true the other way around. Because living with another person for seventy years, seven days a week, twenty-four hours a day, when that person behaves differently from me and has different feelings from mine—and living with them pleasantly, so that you can say, “I never became angry”—that is the long life. That is Rabbi Zeira, who lived many years, and that is really the measure: Am I serving Hashem, or am I serving myself? It’s very hard, and we all struggle with it. When a husband and wife receive good guidance, then little

32:49 Speaker 2 by little, over the years, they become less particular with one another. They get along better; they become more easygoing. It also depends on the home you came from. I know a young married man who’s been married for over ten years, and his wife says, “My husband has never raised his voice at home and has never gotten angry.” Why? Because his father was the same way. I know his father too. His father taught him that you don’t raise your voice at home. He didn’t tell him that; it was his behavior. He never saw his father raise his voice at home toward his mother, or even toward the children. Unfortunately, most of us fall short in this, but it’s an example of good shalom bayis. “I never became angry in my home.” When you learn with a guide, the guide tells you where to look, which books to consult, and what to work on. We have an example from the Rebbe and the Rebbetzin of what a pleasant atmosphere means. We know that in 5738, when the Rebbe was unwell and the doctors said he had to be taken to the hospital because his condition was very serious, the Rebbe did not agree. So they went to the Rebbetzin to ask her to tell the Rebbe to go to the hospital. The Rebbetzin said, “I have never told my husband what to do.” Almost fifty years after their wedding, she had never told the Rebbe what to do. That respect is something special. Or we know the story of a time on Erev Yom Kippur when the Rebbetzin forgot to make kreplach. The Rebbe asked them to bring the meat before the soup—I don’t know exactly. In any case, he took a piece of meat, put it inside a slice of dough, and said, “There, we have kreplach.” That’s what it means to smooth over a situation. He didn’t say to her, “Why did you forget to make kreplach?” Or we know that once, on Erev Yom Kippur, the Rebbe wanted to go home to eat together with the Rebbetzin, and he

35:05 Speaker 2 He didn’t know whether the food was ready, so he asked that someone gently ask her if it was ready yet. And I’m not even talking about what the Rebbe told Dr. Weiss—that he had that hour every day. The Rebbe would make a special trip every afternoon to have a cup of tea with the Rebbetzin. Creating the right atmosphere between husband and wife is a very great part of serving Hashem, and for ordinary people it involves many difficulties and challenges. There’s another important thing called coordinating expectations. One reason arguments happen is that each person thinks differently, and they don’t talk to each other. But when expectations are coordinated—for example, before Shabbos, you talk about what food you want, or where you’re going to eat, at whose parents’ home—you sit down and talk about everything. A husband and wife need to talk about everything. Usually the wife talks more, but don’t respond with, “Why is it like that?” Instead of “why,” say, “Happy is the people for whom it is thus.” Don’t come with complaints or demands. When you coordinate expectations, there are fewer arguments and the atmosphere is better. It also helps to live in an orderly way: when you go to sleep, when you get up—and to talk about everything. If there are difficulties, don’t argue; look for opportunities to discuss those subjects. Livelihood—how to earn a living, when to work; staying in touch while you’re at work; not leaving home without letting your spouse know, and letting them know if you’re delayed. And I’m not just talking about the first year and “he shall make his wife happy.” What does “he shall make his wife happy” mean? There’s a joke that some people observe “he shall make his wife happy” for the first year, some observe it their whole lives, and some, Heaven forbid, observe it only on the first night. True, it says “the first year,” but that first year can last

37:31 Speaker 2 a lifetime. In other words, simply put, you need to go to a good chosson teacher to receive guidance, and you should stay in touch with him after the wedding, too. There are good teachers whom people still ask questions about marriage and other matters years later. When you have a good teacher and turn to him, life is different. Every so often you hear, “I always remember you. I had an argument with my wife, or I faced a dilemma, but I remembered what you told me during my chosson lessons.” So may Hakadosh Boruch Hu help us, as chosson teachers, know how to guide people well and give them the tools we have at our disposal. And you, as chassanim, go to good teachers. Chosson lessons can be individual, one-on-one; some people learn together. Each approach has its advantages. Some lessons, on matters between husband and wife, must be taught individually. Other lessons can be taught together—and learning together can actually help, because people ask questions and learn from one another. In any case, we need to know that chosson lessons are very important, so that we merit to do as we should in making a dwelling for Hashem in this world, [unclear], with children and grandchildren who study Torah and Chassidus, making every home a chassidic home, a Chabad house, and a sanctuary in which Hakadosh Boruch Hu dwells.