A yeshivah bochur who had just become a chassan was discussing marriage with me. I asked Do you think you are ready to get married? I think so. I have learned all the halachos am very familiar with taharas hamishpachah know all the dinnim. Anything else? I asked. What else is there? I learned all the halachos. Fine halachos are crucial but there is more to a successful marriage than a knowledge of halachah. And I proceeded to discuss issues that transcend the Shulchan Aruch.
During our conversation I had the unmistakable sense that as frum and as learned as he was (the proverbial “best boy in Yeshivas ________”) he wanted to get married for all the wrong reasons: It meant getting out of the dormitory into a decent apartment; that he would now be acquiring a cook a cleaning maid a servant and a pleasant roommate. It all seemed to revolve around himself and not around the person he was marrying. I tried to impress upon him that marriage involves two people and that if he wants smooth sailing he could not expect to continue his regular single-man routine.
We reviewed the last two of the seven brachos recited under the chuppah. The penultimate one ends with “mesamei’ach chassan v’kallah He makes happy the chassan and the kallah (the “and” connoting two separate creatures). But the climactic closing brachah says: “mesamei’ach chassan im hakallah He makes happy the chassan with the kallah ” (the “with” suggesting two separate creatures becoming one) fulfilling the Torah’s “V’hayu l’basar echad — man and wife shall be one flesh.” Or as in the title of the book published by Feldheim about halachic marriage: One Plus One Equals One. (Full disclosure: I wrote the book.)
This conversation brought to mind a recent study mentioned in my last column which indicates that marriage rates in the United States have fallen precipitously in the last 40 years. Concomitant with this is an astonishing drop in the American birthrate which today is half of what it was in 1960 and tilting below replacement level — as is incidentally the non-Orthodox Jewish birthrate. Not unrelated is this week’s Harris poll in which Americans believing in G-d dropped almost 25 percent from 2009 to today and in which 23 percent say they are not religious at all almost double the 12 percent of 2007.
A number of factors contribute to the striking decline in marriage: economic reasons an academia that subjects normative family life to scathing critiques and entertainment media that romanticizes the single life and denigrates marriage and family.
What the experts do not mention is that marriage rates have plummeted at the precise time that emphasis on the Me has reached new heights. A coincidence? Hardly. We live in a time of taking without earning of entitlement without responsibility where the ubiquitous “like” is the sole criterion of the good life where entire lives are spent in search of ephemeral pleasures in a shallow world obsessed with the Now and the immediate and where hedonism is king.
When obsession with the self is on the rise marriage rates (and belief in G-d) will inevitably fall. As one goes up the other goes down. No surprise. Because the primary by-product of marriage is the new realization that there is no longer an independent Me; now there is a We. Married I can no longer do exactly what I want when I want to. Married occasionally I must say no to my personal wishes. Marriage and family create the pathway leading from in-reach to outreach from taking to giving. This journey from Me-ness to We-ness is not an easy one. Result: lower marriage and higher divorce rates.
Not surprisingly Orthodox Jews have the highest marriage rate and the lowest divorce rate within the Jewish community and one of the best rates in America — and chareidim even more so. But lest we think that the Orthodox are immune to the influences of society the slowly rising divorce rate among the Orthodox and among chareidim should give us pause. No one no matter how insulated and isolated is unaffected by the environment. A cursory glance at the advertisements geared towards chareidim —
as evidenced by this and other chareidi publications — puts the quietus on any simplistic notions that chareidim are appreciably less materially oriented than others. Atmospherics have a way of penetrating even the most hermetic structures.
I pray that my young friend’s notions are not endemic in the yeshivah world. “What else is there?” he had asked. To preclude such naïve questions perhaps chassan teachers (and kallah classes) should spend as much time on nontextual matters as they do on the Yoreh Dei’ah of marriage. As indispensable as the Shulchan Aruch is to our lives there is much more “else” to marriage than is found in any text. —