שידוך שההורים מתנגדים לו

00:00 Okay, this is Igris, and today we are talking about a, uh, a classic fairy tale scenario. Classic fantasy scenario, right? This is the, this is what drives, um, this is what drives popular literature. We have a boy and a girl, and they are madly in love and ready to get married, and their parents don't like each other. As if-- Is there an older and more tried plot point? Uh, people wrote to the Rebbe about this fairly often. Either one of the parents would write to the Rebbe, or one of the kids would write to the Rebbe saying that a shidduch is more or less ready to go, but the parents are not interested, the parents have a problem with it. Uh, the letter that we're looking at today is from exactly fifty years ago, Mar Chesvan of Tav Shin Lamed Dalet. The letter is Yud Tav Tav Reish, and here the Rebbe very strongly takes the side of the children, saying they should do what they want and that what the parents want really doesn't matter. Look up here, the Rebbe says, "Ki ein shepsaktin et haTorah Torah shemes." The psaktin in the Torah, which is the Torah of truth. "Shebnegueh l'shidduch ein l'daas ha'nah leha'hodim techeif negueh lachatz et haben v'al la'aseh kach la'aseh zeh ho yaichach sh'kein tzarch liyes v'teivu." The fact that the Torah, which is Torah shemes, the Torah of truth, has a rule that the par-- that the children do not have to listen to the parents when it comes

01:03 to making shidduchim. We'll look at that in a second inside. "Zeh ho yaichach sh'kein tzarch liyes v'teivu." This is proof that that's the way that it should be, and therefore, that it's good. A son does not have to listen to his parents if the parents don't like the shidduch. The Rebbe goes on and says, "V'timatz yiidim sheyasbiru kal zeh lemiddur sheyech v'tosef yashbir." You should find people who will explain this, close friends who can explain this with more explanation. "V'techeif mes navsheh" based on the, uh, measuring of his soul. "V'im efshar limtza yiidim sheyasbir al ha'hod hav shiyechiya." If possible, perhaps try to find some close friends who'll be able to have an effect on the parents and try to bring them around. "Ve'af al pi tetzar tachlit." Okay. And based on, uh, based on what the outcome is, you can make a firm decision. The Rebbe then says, "Askir al hatzian." So it sounds like the Rebbe wants us to try to win over the parents a little bit, maybe try to calm down the, uh, the parties a little bit. I confess, I'm not completely sure how to read some parts of this letter. So, uh, as you're looking, if you wanna tell me at the end if you have something to add to, uh, a, a, uh, a nuance to this letter that I missed. Definitely the overall idea of the letter is that children don't need to concern themselves too much with what their parents think when it c- when it

02:02 comes to a shidduch. A child doesn't have to give in to their parents when it comes to a shidduch. That is the halakha, as we'll look at in a moment. And there should be people who will help explain this to all the parties. Uh, the halakha that the Rebbe is talking about, the Igris was kind enough to me to tie into at the bottom. You see they quote a Rama, and they also quote a Shut Admah Ezuken, which we don't get to see very often together. Just opening up the Rama very quickly. We have Shulchan Aruch on your screen. This is in Yoreh De'ah, Reish Mem, under Kibbud Av v'Em. I'm making my screen a little smaller 'cause I can't see half of it 'cause your faces are in the way. Hang on. Okay. Oh, no, I lost everything. Here we go. Down to the bottom of Sif Chof He, the Rama says, "Vechein im ha'av meicha ven li'eseh isha she'yachpotz ba haben ein tzarch lishmoel el ha'av." If the father wants to pressure the son to marry or I guess also not marry a woman that he wants it, the father wants to get involved with the shidduchim of the kid, "ein tzarch lishmoel el ha'av," you don't have to listen to your father. This is one of the exceptions of Kibbud Av v'Em. Generally speaking, you have to listen to your father, not when he wants you to do something like this. There's a fascinating Pesach Teshuvah that I don't think we're gonna

02:59 have time to look at, but Pesach Teshuvah says that you can kind of split mitzvahs that you have to listen to your parents to against mitzvahs you don't have to listen to your parents to based on whether they are active mitzvahs or passive mitzvahs. But bottom line, a child al pi halakha is not obligated to listen to their parents' advice when it comes to making a shidduch. And so when the Rebbe says over here that since this is Torah and Torah shemes, uh, therefore, it is obviously the way it's supposed to be. And teivu, what the Rebbe means is that if the parents are pushing back and the son likes the shidduchim, the girl wants to get married too, and everything's in order, they don't have to let their parents stop that from happening. The letter here is also metayen to a Shut Admah Ezuken. That took a little more doing, but, uh, this is a fascinating shayel haTeshuvah. It's a fascinating Teshuvah from the Alter Rebbe printed in Shut Admah Ezuken. It's in Siman Mem Alef. Well, the question is whether somebody can opt into a Yibam or a Chalitza, and along the way, somewhere in the middle, the Alter Rebbe makes this point. I wish I'd highlighted it somewhere in the middle of the page. Uh, here we go. Just a moment. Down here. "U'vrach." So it's the, uh, third to last line begins, uh, "motir lisan." Go to the end of that line, "u'vrach." "U'vrach shezeh lisan isha shechapotz ba dever mitzvah

04:03 mikri." Marrying the woman that you want is considered a mitzvah. That's called dever mitzvah mikri. That's called a mitzvah. Marrying the woman that a man wants to marry is called a mitzvah. "Af ninui kibbud av v'eha'eiser." And this is such a big mitzvah that it even is a mitzvah relative to kibbud av v'eha'eiser, relative to the Torah commandment to honor your parents. "Me'ikahse ha'Ma'arik," and shareish kuf samech zayin, as Ma'arik writes, "Sha'av meicha hu kemitzvah aver al divrei Torah." So when a father, when a father objects, it is a mitzvah to be aver al divrei Torah. Uh, this is the Alter Rebbe rising this above n-not just a, uh, a, a moment where I guess Kibbud Av v'Em doesn't apply, but the Alter Rebbe reading this as a, as a mitzvah that knocks away the mitzvah of Kibbud Av v'Em, a mitzvah that supersedes it. So the mitzvah of a child choosing who they wanna marry and deciding who they wanna marry is such a great mitzvah. The way that the Alter Rebbe phrases it here in this Teshuvah is that it not just, uh, it's not just that it's within the mitzvah of Kibbud Av v'Em that there's an exception when it comes to somebody that you, uh, when it comes to who you wanna marry. It's that the great mitzvah of marrying who you wanna marry overrides the great mitzvah of Kibbud Av v'Em. So we seem to have a shihta from the Rebbe here, right? We have a letter that says very

05:04 clearly, "Parents, nose out." This is why it's dangerous to pull one Igris-- one, one section from Igris and not look at other letters. We have a letter here. This letter is from the year... Do I have the year printed? I don't remember the year. I just remember the... Oh, Tav Shin Lamed Alef. There it is. Tav Shin Lamed Alef. The letter is designated Yud Kuf Peh He, and here the Rebbe says the exact opposite. So case by case, right? Uh, it is definitely not the case that the Rebbe's straight shihta across the board is the kids should do whatever they want and ignore their parents. Uh, as we'll see here, it really depends on the circumstances, really depends on the parents, really depends on the kid. So here the letter is Yud Kuf Peh He, and the Rebbe's writing to a girl who wants to get married, but her parents don't like the guy. "Bracha v'Shalom," the Rebbe writes to her. "Memayim lemichtavim Yud Alef Tammuz." I'm responding to your letter from eleven Tammuz. "Ikra shenikra she'am pleimi." You've met up with pleimi. You met up with a certain guy that you're interested in. "Ve'sheles datim bekeshe le shidduch bezeh," and you wanna know my opinion on the shidduch. "Hineh bechalal ein me'anach ein be'atev le'asok l'yasod chayim mishpacha niged l'daas ha'hodim." It does not make sense in general to start off family life with In opposition to what your parents want. This isn't a way to build a home, to start off with the

06:04 parents not liking your decision. Parents put a lot of work and a lot of, uh, lot of effort into raising a-- into educating a daughter or a son. And they do this in the hope that they will get nachas from them. So parents put a lot into a kid, and they do it in the hope that they're going to get nachas from this. This is why the parents are objecting to your shidduch. They, based on what you're writing to me, uh, they op-they oppose the shidduch that you've chosen because they don't think that he's good for you, and they're very invested in you. So the Rebbe here is giving a, a lot of weight to what the parents think. The Rebbe says, "I wanna add here." If the bachur, excuse me, is a good guy and he's . The Rebbe adds, "If the boy is really as good a boy as you say he is, he doesn't want you fighting with your parents, so he'll step away." "And everything that I wrote above is very general, but let's talk about you specifically now." "You are the firstborn in your family," the Rebbe says to this girl. "A oldest child sets the stage for the younger children," says the Rebbe, "so it matters even more when it comes to you that you make sure you're not fighting with your parents over your shidduch because this could set up a situation where your siblings, your younger siblings, will end up doing the same thing." It should be

07:33 understood that i'm not telling you to make a sacrifice for your parents. I'm telling you it's just not good to start off your life with divisions, with, with, uh, with hearts, uh, dividing. I don't know a good English word for that. With, uh, with conflict in general. Specifically when it comes to children and parents. I'm telling you this is the wrong way to start off your marriage, start off your life. The Rebbe says, "Also, I know your parents. I've met your father many times. I met your mother once." Certainly and certainly they only want what's good for you. So i think this is an important point here. The Rebbe's siding with the parents, but it's for a couple reasons, and one of the big ones is the Rebbe knows the parents and trusts that they're making the right call here. Hashem should give you a uh, a good with all of the details. The Rebbe's essentially giving her a bracha for someone else. Especially since you wrote to me on the erev of which is the time of the time when the can bring down extra brachos for Yidden in general. Certainly when it certainly when it comes to i guess this person was involved in . There we go. She's a teacher at one of the schools, so she gets special brachos from the this time of year. So here the Rebbe says, "I'm giving you a ." But if you definitely-- the, the flavor of the letter here is nothing like the flavor

09:04 of our letter. Our letter was, uh, our letter was pretty firmly, uh, says that a child decides who they marry, not the parents. And according to parents need to nose out. And here we have a letter that has a completely different tone, which is that listen to your parents. Now, it's obviously not that black and white. There's a couple things that make this second letter very unique. Uh, first of all, the Rebbe seems to trust the parents when they say that the kid-- that this boy is not good for her. And that seems to be a major factor, is that there is-- that the Rebbe is not telling her that she has to listen. The Rebbe is saying that it would make a good i-- it would make good sense to listen. He's also saying that there's going to be an argument here, and you shouldn't start your marriage off with an argument. He's also talking to a girl, and that's an important note because in Yoreh De'ah the Rama says that a son doesn't have to honor his father on this, but i don't know if that's the din regarding a girl. So it might be the Rebbe is unwilling to step on the halakha when it comes to a boy, but he's willing to mo-maneuver around the spirit of it when it comes to a girl making the same request because this doesn't seem to be the same din. Possibly because based on what we saw in there's a mitzvah for a woman

10:01 to marry the guy she wants. There's an actual mitzvah for the, for the guy to marry the girl that he wants. that it overrides the . that would apply to a girl. That's also a possibility. Another possibility is that remember in this letter, the Rebbe is saying, the letter where he's saying to listen to the parents, he's saying, "You're the firstborn. I'm afraid you're gonna create a rebellion in your entire family." Uh, so we have a lot of reasons here why the Rebbe seems to be giving more weight to the parents in letter number two. But really what this casts the strongest light on is the thing that we talk about so many times in this shiur, which is that if you look at one letter all by itself and you don't have any let-letters around it, you can really develop a, uh, an, an incorrect shitah in the Rebbe. I have one more letter i wanna show you that, uh, that is much more parv, maybe a third approach that you find in the Rebbe's letters. These three are pretty much representative of the three kinds of responses you find in Igres. This is from . The letter is labeled and it's a short letter. You wrote to me about the shidduch. There seems to be an age difference. There's some things you're concerned about with it. Talk to the parents on both sides. Here the Rebbe says, "Consult with the parents." So we kind of have his three approaches. We have the approach

11:05 which is we ignore the parents. We have the approach which is we listen to the parents over the child, and we have the approach where we ask for the parents' advice. I think that it's very circumstantial that, uh, that generally speaking, if you were to, if you were to try to get a, a, uh, a shitah out of this, i think the shitah probably would be that if we have no legitimate, uh, problems in the shidduch, we don't have any reason to believe that the parents are, are calling out a, a serious issue and we can talk to the parents, that's also very important from the first letter the Rebbe said to try to explain to the parents and make peace so peace is possible, then it's time to tell the parents to sit down, and especially when it's a boy because there's such a-- there's a mitzvah for that. When it comes to a girl, specifically a girl where the parents know exactly what they're doing and where there's going to be a real fight for a long term, especially when she's a firstborn, we're seeing a push toward the parents. And in this third letter, we're seeing that in general, if we can get the advice of the parents, the advice of the parents is certainly welcome. We have a halakha that the parents aren't allowed to override the shidduch of a boy, but the Rebbe seems to use that very specifically in the case of parents trying to override a shidduch of

12:00 a boy. And in all other cases, it sounds like we want the parents' advice and maybe even take the parents' advice more seriously than the children's hearts. Okay. A little short, but, uh, time for talk. That's it. Unmute yourself, Cyrilli. Yeah, i just-- so my only question was the first one