Beth Shalom
Oceanside Jewish Center

Marriages are more Than Love
November 2, 2002  -  27 Cheshvan 5763
Parshat Hayye Sarah

By Rabbi Mark B. Greenspan

Wanted: Three rings: engagement, wedding and teething. New York City man is good looking, cute 5' 11" warm, real, educated, down to earth, stylish, and passionate, with great sense of humor. Loves romance, nature, laughter, and music. Non-religious but Jewish oriented. Seeking pretty, sexy, and feminine partner for life.

Wanted -- 27 year old attractive woman is an avid follower of politics, lover of books, Jewish studies major. Seeks 27-34 year old Jewish man who is deeply religious, mature reflective, kind, attractive, and interested in raising an observant Jewish family. Willing to relocate if it is a workable relationship.

Glancing at the want ads which appear in the Jewish press each week for people who are searching for their "beshert," their destined partner in life, it occurred to me the other day that the Talmud is correct - making matches is "as hard as splitting the Red Sea." Given the number of ads which appear on a weekly basis in Jewish newspapers around the country as well as the rising popularity of on-line match making services (Such as J-date and others) it seems to me that there are lots of people out there who are desperately and not always successfully searching for a life partner. Is it really harder today than it was a generation ago to find a match? Apparently, it is.

I feel that I've become something of an expert in these matters. If all else fails in life maybe in my next career I'll become a Shadchan. In the course of the year I perform dozens of marriages - more than the average Rabbi - and I have the opportunity to ask a lot of couples how they met. The stories that they tell me are as varied as the people I interview.

The truth is, there is no simple formula for finding a mate. I've talked to couples who have met everywhere from the local bar to the wedding party of a mutual friend. I even performed a wedding recently for a couple that grew up across the street from each other - she was literally the girl next store - but such stories are rare these days. We used to make fun of women who went off to college to get their "Mrs." degree, but the truth is if you don't meet a potential partner in school, it gets progressively harder afterwards. And there are just as many men who are unhappily single as there are women these days.

There are a growing number of single Jews these days who very much want to meet someone, but find this difficult if not impossible in today's world. Focused on education and career, too many of our young people put romance on the back burner so that they can get ahead both financially and professionally in life. We are victims of our own assertiveness.

Besides, in an age of freedom and liberation, we are in no rush to marry. Why should a person bother getting married when being single is so much fun? Still, people do want to find a life partner, though the couples I generally meet seem to be growing older and older when they finally approach the Huppah. And that creates its own problems.

More than half of today's Torah portion, Hayye Sarah is devoted to finding an appropriate match for our forefather, Isaac. As Abraham approaches the end of his life, he becomes anxious about making sure his son will find not only a life partner, but a wife with whom he can carry on his covenant with God. Sending his trusty servant back to the old country, Abraham instructs Eliezer not to return home without a wife for Isaac.

In a book that's usually sparse and economical in its choice of words, the Torah devotes a very long passage to Eliezer's pursuit of a mate for Isaac. Arriving at the local watering hole, Abraham's faithful servant invokes God's assistance in finding a proper mate for master's son. He asks God to give him a sign when the right girl comes along. In the end, however, Eliezer bases his choice on practical criteria. Rebecca is both beautiful and she's extremely hospitable and kind. When she offers water not only to Eliezer, a complete stranger, but to his camels, Eliezer assumes this is the sign for which he's looking. Abraham's servant was looking for a spouse who shared the same values and ideals as his master. Just as Abraham was known for his hospitality, Rebecca was also hospitable.

One wonders where Isaac is during all of these efforts on his behalf. It's not until Eliezer returns from Haran that Isaac has anything to do with the choice of a wife. And then it's almost an afterthought. In describing the first meeting between Isaac and Rebecca, the Torah tells us: "Isaac took her to the tent of his mother, Sarah, and took Rebecca as his wife. Isaac loved her and found comfort after his mother's death."

No doubt a Freudian Psychologist would have a field day with this verse which links Isaac's choice of a mate with his love for his mother. But what fascinates me most about the final words in this passage is the role that love plays in it. In fact, this is the first time in the Bible that anyone is described as loving their spouse. The Torah never tells us that Adam loved Eve, or whether Abraham loved Sarah. Here, however, love is placed at the end of a long process. First he meets Rebecca, then he introduces her to his most basic values (Sarah's tent symbolized the values with which Isaac has grown up - no doubt if Sarah had still been alive he would have taken her home to Mom!), then Isaac marries her, and finally - only then - the Torah tells us that Isaac loved Rebecca. Whatever happened to "first comes love, then comes marriage?"

It seems to me that there's an important lesson to be learned from this passage. Much as we live in a world in which we say, "All you need is love," and "love will triumph over all," the Torah seems to suggest the opposite. True marriage doesn't begin with love. A real marriage leads to love.

That flies in the face of the conventional wisdom by which we conduct our lives. Just consider how many movies, books and songs celebrate romantic love. What the Torah suggests is that if there are common values and a similar world view, then a couple can learn to love one another. And if there aren't common values then all the love in the world won't make a difference.

Of course a marriage can't survive without love either. There are many examples of romantic love in the Bible, beginning with Jacob who falls passionately in love with Rachel and is forced to work for seven years in order to marry her. In the end the years of hard work seemed like only a few days because he was so much in love with Rachel. The most significant example of romantic love in the Bible is the beautiful poetry in Song of Songs. In the end, however, we need to balance our desire for romance with the recognition that it takes more than chemistry for a marriage to work.

Looking back at my own marriage, it's striking to me that much as Marilyn and I thought we were in love almost 26 years ago, the truth is we really didn't know what love really was. Or maybe I should say that I didn't know what love was. It takes time, experience, wisdom, and hard work for a couple to learn that they truly love each other.

And yet we leave marriage to pure chance. We send our kids out into the world with the hope that they'll bring a good spouse home. It seems to me that that's just plain foolish. Maybe we ought to take a closer look at those segments of the Jewish community who still turn to the Shadchan to arrange a marriage. Or we should at least put love on the back burner as we try to figure out if we are a good match.

To our two couples who are celebrating their aufruf this morning, all I can say is that the best is yet to come. If you pay close attention to Isaac and Rebecca's love, I believe you will learn that love is a product of what we contribute to our marriage and not just a chance meeting.

My blessing to you is that like Isaac and Rebecca you will continue to grow together and be able to say, years from now, we love one another. That is the true blessing of marriage. That is what we must each strive for.

Shabbat Shalom