“Sarah you look terrific tonight ” comments Shmuel to his wife as they prepare to leave for the wedding. “Oh I look terrible ” replies Sarah “Those extra five pounds I put on over Pesach refuse to come off. It makes this dress so unflattering!”

What’s wrong with this scenario?

Shmuel wants to give his wife a gift of his attention and admiration yet Sarah refuses the gift making her husband feel foolish in the process.

This vignette illustrates an essential concept in Torah marriages. We all aspire to become givers. Learning to give effectively in our relationships not only helps us to create the bond so essential to love (as Rav Dessler teaches in his “Essay on Loving-Kindness”) it also helps us fulfill our goal of emulating our Creator for there is no greater Giver than He.

However becoming a successful giver is only one side of the picture. In order for giving to be meaningful and impactful there needs to be a receiver. Let’s explore how accepting and receiving in marriage impacts the dynamic between husband and wife and contributes to our shalom bayis.

Rav Moshe Cordovero in his classic Tomer Devorah (Chapter 9) describes the flow of blessing both physical and spiritual from Above. He teaches that a man is poised in this world between two feminine forces; the Shechinah (Divine Presence) above which wants to give to him from the wellspring of good that He has for each person; and his wife here below who is waiting to receive from him all that he obligated himself to provide her in their kesubah. Hashem is the source the husband is the conduit through which the blessing flows and the wife is the vessel that receives and contains that blessing.

The cycle repeats itself constantly. At any point that the dynamic is disrupted— whether by his unwillingness to give or her unwillingness to receive from him — the surge of all good and blessing from Above is interrupted.

As the cycle flows — Hashem husband wife — the wife then completes the circle by taking the spiritual and physical blessings that her husband brings and using them to build herself and her home in a way that reflects Hashem’s will. She is in effect taking all the resources that she is given and improving them by elevating them. Consider the example of making challah for Shabbos. The raw ingredients are comparable to the bounty that her husband brings. She takes them and combines the disparate elements into a unified whole that is sustainable and can sustain others — bread.

The Art of Receiving

It’s interesting to note that Jewish women who seem to give so naturally are called upon in marriage to develop their ability to receive. The ability to receive from a spouse on a surface level may not seem difficult yet it often requires much effort.

Sometimes it’s because what he wants to give is not what you want or feel you need at the moment. He may want to be helpful in some household task and even though you know that he genuinely wants to give you feel like you can do it better or faster. He may want to give you time affection or even a vacation with him and you may feel busy not in the mood or you may allow your other obligations to override his need. When we realize that allowing our husbands to give to us and our being the willing receivers activates a positive flow from Shamayim into our homes we may reconsider our approach.

In order to create the completed home in which husband wife and children are most likely to actualize their potential a wife must be willing to turn towards her husband with faith that through him her world both spiritual and material will be built. There is an old chassidic tale of a guest who visits the home of an older impoverished couple. He finds the man joyful and his wife in tears. When the visitor asks what’s going on the man replies “I am doing well because I need only to rely on the Creator of the World. My wife unfortunately is not doing so well as she relies only on me.”

This tale misses the mark. When a woman depends on her husband for the blessing that will come into her home whether it is livelihood good children etc. she will then be worthy of becoming that vessel that can contain all the blessing that Hashem bestows.

Full Faith

In today’s milieu in which many men learn Torah while their wives work or the husband and wife both work yet she earns more than him how does this concept play out? A woman who is working hard and earning well may come to disdain her husband whether he is learning working or looking for a job unless she understands this critical component. Her ability to see brachah from her own efforts and abilities is directly dependent on the spiritual flow from Shamayim through her husband to her. With our understanding from Tomer Devorah we realize that it makes no difference whose name is on the paycheck. The physical world mirrors spiritual reality; spiritual flow translates into physical events. It is the connection between husband and wife that creates the flow not what he does or doesn’t do. When she embraces this concept she is able to strengthen the idea of the partnership between them and feel more positive regarding each of their contributions.

Being able to see your husband as the spiritual source of blessing in your life means that you don’t need to hide your needs from him — either physical or spiritual. The mishnah in Maseches Temurah states that when a woman has no wheat in the house she immediately calls out to her husband. Since the act of receiving in marriage is a Torah value then the idea of turning towards your husband for whatever you need is meritorious. It is not demeaning or helpless. Rather it’s a way of allowing him to channel towards her the supplies necessary to build her home physically emotionally and spiritually.

Her willingness to turn toward and then receive what he is able to bring gives her husband both motivation and the sense of being needed. There is nothing that makes a husband feels quite so successful as the satisfaction of knowing he can make his wife happy. Conversely asking for that which she know is beyond his ability to give whether because of personality or financial constraints insures that her husband will feel like failure.

When we allow our husband to fulfill his role as the mashpia the one who bestows by allowing ourselves to become the mekablos the receivers we are effectively allowing our spouses to have an impact on us. This may not seem so significant but it’s crucial.

Each person in a marriage needs to feel that they can make a difference to the other. If I can’t receive anything from you it is tantamount to saying you can’t make a difference in my life. The message is that there is nothing that you have to offer that I consider valuable. This thwarts one of the fundamental goals of marriage which is to achieve shleimus maximum spiritual development through closeness and the ability of each to grow from the other

I have seen situations in which this is very subtle. A woman is angry or unhappy about something in her marriage. Instead of dealing with the issues she withdraws emotionally and makes herself like a wall impenetrable. It becomes a way of saying “You have no effect on me ” and this furthers the distance between them. I have seen women withdraw by wrapping themselves up in their homemaking and child rearing all the while feeling virtuous when they refuse their husbands’ offers of time and attention.

A woman who longs to receive from her husband causes movement. The wise woman understands that her willingness to extend herself that way contributes to her husband becoming an adam shaleim and to her home becoming a bayis shaleim a place for the Divine Presence to dwell.