Getting to Know Your Home - 005 Marriage and Completion

Creation and Man

Of Adam HaRishon and his wife Chavah, the Torah writes, “Man and woman they are created; and He [Hashem] blessed them, and He called their name as man.”

We know that there are four kinds of organisms: non-living things (i.e. rocks), growing organisms (plants), living beings (animals), and social creatures (people). Non-living things, plants, and animals are not on the level of people; only a social creature can be a person.

This is the simple perspective, and it is correct. As proof, if we destroy a rock or a plant, or even an animal, it is not called killing. It is prohibited by the Torah of course to destroy things (bal tashchis), but it is not murder. Murder is only applicable to people.

However, from a deeper perspective, all of Creation forms man. This concept is elaborated upon in sefer Nefesh HaChaim. In fact, there is nothing in Creation except for the formation of man.

Let us now explain this concept to apply it to our own level, as much as our souls can understand.

The ‘Puzzle Pieces’ That Comprise the Makeup of Man

If we view Creation superficially, we see ‘many’ things: many people, many animals, many plants, and many rocks. It seems that there is nothing to learn from a rock, and that a rock is just a rock and nothing more. Maybe it has some beneficial uses, but there is nothing to learn from it. That’s how it seems – superficially.

But if we reflect a bit, we can examine the properties that are present in a rock, or in a plant, and in all living things, and learn human lessons from them. Chazal say that had the Torah not been given, we could learn certain good traits from animals, like modesty from observing a cat.

If we look even more deeply into things, we can see that the entire Creation is a formation of man. Anything in Creation can teach us about what the ideal man is supposed to look like.

There is a deep point about life contained in this concept. We will provide an example. If a person is learning about computers, can we say that he is learning about mankind? If he is learning about architecture or carpentry, is he learning about man? It seems that he is learning about whatever field he is studying, and that this has nothing to do with learning about man.

We think that the only people who study mankind are doctors, who deal with the human body, and psychologists, who study the human soul. Besides for those professions, it seems that there is nobody else who is studying mankind. All others are learning about things that are perhaps helpful to mankind, but none of them are studying about man himself.

For this reason, most people are living with a viewpoint towards life that is very disparate, thinking that each of the subjects are independent studies of each other: mankind, the human body, the soul and all its layers; and in our personal life, there is marriage, and what we do outside of our homes.

It seems that the rest of Creation is here to serve and help man. But it is actually more than that. From a deeper perspective, all of Creation is really shaping the makeup of man (tzuras adam).

This can be compared to the following parable: if a person’s hand is severed, G-d forbid, and we look at the severed hand as being nothing but a body part, we do not see it as a part of a person. It is no different to us than animal flesh. If it decays, it is nothing more than a bone. But that is only when we are not aware that it was once a human hand. Once we realize that it was a part of a person, it is viewed differently: it is part of the makeup of man, and it is not some random part laying around.

In essence, everything in Creation are parts of man, but the parts have become spread apart, and that is why the original form has become lost. We can compare this to a table that is cut into many pieces and its parts are scattered all over the world. All of those parts used to make up a table, but we cannot recognize this, because all of the pieces are now separate.

In a puzzle, you can see how the pieces connect. One piece in the puzzle can be perfectly aligned with another piece, and you see the picture slowly starting to form. But Creation is a more complex kind of puzzle, and you can’t see how all of the puzzle pieces become aligned. We see each thing as separate, therefore we do not know how to connect the pieces of Creation together. Even more so, we usually cannot see how all of the pieces in Creation are related to man.

Compare this to a person who is holding puzzle pieces in his hand, and he thinks that he is holding a puzzle that forms the picture of a scenic view, such as a forest, or a sea; while in reality, the picture is really something else entirely. It will be very hard for him to put all of the pieces together and connect them, because he does not know what picture he is supposed to be forming.

Married Life: Pieces of A Puzzle

It is written, “Man and woman He created them.” Husband and wife are a puzzle! By becoming aligned with each other, a certain picture of life is formed.

The question is, what are those ‘puzzle pieces’ which we must connect together on This World? What is the perspective which we need to form towards our life on This World?

We know that marriage does not end with husband and wife alone. Husband and wife are just the beginning, for there is more that comes after that. We have to worry about finding an apartment and we need to buy clothes. When we have children, Baruch Hashem, there are more things to buy for the home. The children need various things, and they need proper schooling and education, along with endless other details.

What does all of this have to do with “Man and woman He created them”? It seems as if all the above-mentioned details involved in the home have nothing do with this possuk. It seems that all of the responsibilities in running the home just “happen” to come along with marriage. But from a deeper perspective, it is possible to see how it’s all part of the picture that forms tzuras adam.

Most people do not know what they are missing if they are not aware of this concept. When a person lives superficially, he sees everything as face value, and he never sees the depth in anything. He comes across much knowledge in life, many events, many images, and he sees them all as separate and random.

Conceptualizing The Ideal Man

Now that we have understood that what lies behind all of the details in Creation is one form alone – tzuras adam – we need to conceptualize this in a real way, and see it in front of us. It is hard to express this concept in words.

If an artist wants to paint a lifelike picture of what he wants to draw, he will sit next to the real-life scene and paint there, so that he can fully analyze the details. He has the image in front of him, which gives him the best possible picture. So too, when it comes to envisioning the ideal design which man is supposed to look like, we need to see it in front of our eyes, so that we can conceptualize it best.

It is written, “There is no rock like Hashem,” and Chazal expound this to mean, “There is no artist like Hashem.” We are commanded to emulate Hashem’s ways, therefore, it is also upon us to be like an “artist”, forming our image, and thereby come to resemble Hashem. There is a higher and perfected form of man which we need to conceptualize before us, so that we can align ourselves with the ideal design of man, as much as we can.

For this, we will need to place a vision before us to strive for, in which we can see what the ideal kind of man is supposed to look like. We are not referring to a painting. Rather, we can see a puzzle picture of it, by seeing how all of the ‘pieces of the puzzle’ can connect to form the picture of the ideal man. In order to connect together all of the pieces in Creation and see how it comes together to form the picture of the complete man, we need to have that vision of the ideal man in the first place.

As we said, this does not mean to draw a picture of that ideal man and then try to imitate what we see in the picture. What we mean is as follows. The makeup of man (tzuras adam) is a certain structure. To illustrate, in the medical field, the human body is studied, in all its detail. A picture of the human body is laid out in front of them and studied, to see how it is built and designed. The point of studying the body is to see how it is designed, not just to see how it looks.

So too, if we want to have a picture in our minds of what our tzuras adam is supposed to look like, we need to know what the perfected kind of man looks like, and then we can align the ‘lower’ picture to the ‘higher’ picture. However, as we said, in order to do this, we need the higher form of man to be in front of us, so that we can strive towards it.

We need to have a design in front of us in order to know where we are heading and what we are trying to build. Hashem revealed all of the heavens at Har Sinai, to show us how it is all designed, so that we can know the design of what we want to achieve. Without having a real picture in front of us of what we would like to achieve, we will have no idea how to get there. We need to have the picture first.

There are artists who draw images of things that no one can ever see, such as a scene of the angels coming to greet Avraham Avinu, or how Eliyahu HaNavi went up to Heaven in a fiery chariot. But these are all images based on imagination. One of these artists was once asked, “Have you ever seen an angel?” He answered, “No, I didn’t.” Of course he never saw an angel. (If he would have seen an angel, he wouldn’t be painting.)

People are drawing pictures of things they have never seen; they have no actual picture in front of them, and they are just working with what they imagine. There’s no doubt in the world that any drawing of an angel does not come close to how an angel actually looks like. The reason is simple – angels are spiritual, while a painting is physical. But even if a person were to draw a painting of something on this world that he never saw, it still wouldn’t come close to how it looks in real life. This is because one needs to have the real picture in front of him.

Why is it that ignorance of this concept does not bother most people? It is because most people do not realize that life is really all forming a certain picture, and are used to seeing everything in life as random, disparate parts. People are doing what they have to do and are fine with that: Get up in the morning, daven, eat breakfast, bentch, and then off to what he has to take care of. Life is not being seen as a certain picture; rather, it is being experienced as a bunch of random details.

When we realize that Creation was meant for man to come to resemble Hashem, we know that there is a higher image of ourselves, of man, that we must try to conceptualize and strive for. Then we will be able to understand why it is necessary to have that picture in front of our eyes.

Reb Yeruchem Levovitz zt”l once said that the idea of evolutionism – the idea that people originate from gorillas - can only be considered by a person who never saw a ‘person’ in his entire life. If a person would see even one ‘person’ in his life, he never would have conceived any notion that people evolved from gorillas.

What did he mean? Do we not see people all the time? Don’t people see themselves in the mirror all the time? But what he meant was, that the only people who could think of evolution are people who have never seen what a true tzuras adam is.

In anything a person sees – whether it is various material pursuits, business, or to become famous, or even to become a kinder person – these are all parts of the picture that is life. One has to see the bigger picture of it all. The bigger picture is, that everything in life are pieces of the puzzle that form the picture of tzuras adam.

It is a very big issue of how a person views life: either he just sees the details of life, or he sees the larger picture that the details form.

This perspective, to understand that all of life is forming a picture of our tzuras adam, is necessary for marriage. Without this perspective, it is most difficult for a person to realize the meaning of the possuk, “Man and woman He created them, and He called them man.” He can only understand it when he is looking to put together his ‘puzzle’.

Seeing The General Structure Vs. Knowing Random Details

Soon we will explain, with Hashem’s help, how we can actualize this concept. Firstly, though, we need to make sure that we have understood the root of this matter.

There’s a very big difference between someone who is smart and brainy, with someone who is wise. A smart person can amass tons of information in his head, and he knows an impressive amount of information, but he does not see how it all connects to form tzuras adam. A wise person, by contrast, sees how all of the information connects, to form tzuras adam.

There are in fact people who know a lot and have acquired much wisdom, but in their actual life, they are no different than those who know little. A person can know a lot, yet that doesn’t mean he knows how to connect all of the information. His brain might be able to process lots of information, and he can have a great memory too, and he might even be able to answer any question you ask him. But that still does not mean that he has acquired inner wisdom, which would allow him to combine all of the details and see the big picture of it all – tzuras adam.

Of course, lacking the information in the first place will prevent a person from reaching any inner perspectives. But the point is that true and inner wisdom is not acquired through amassing knowledge alone. Wisdom is to see the structure and inner workings of all the details, and then to align himself with the structure he has seen.

To illustrate further, today there are doctors who are experts in one part of the body, but not in other parts of the body. When a patient comes to such a doctor, he might be prescribed a pill that helps the part of his body which is suffering, but it can end up harming the other parts of the body. This is because the doctor does not know the entire body – he only specializes in one part of the body, so he is unaware of how it will affect the rest of the body; he does not see the big picture.

Learning About The Soul

Now we will explain the simple outcome of these concepts, which is more relevant in our daily life.

All people have a nefesh, a human soul, which we must learn about. Learning about the soul is to study the makeup of man, the tzuras adam. First a person needs to learn about his own soul, and then he needs to learn about the soul of his spouse, and then they can unify their souls. This completes his tzuras adam.

Some people, when learning about their soul, begin to encounter problems with themselves when they come to a certain point. They discover parts about themselves which they do not understand, and they become overwhelmed, because they don’t have the emotional strength to deal what they find out about themselves. Indeed, not every person is cut off for this kind of study, which includes both a journey of self-knowledge as well as knowing how to deal with the weaknesses that he discovers in himself.

However, this should not turn one away from studying his soul. Some people are born with a natural inner sense for what they learn about, while others are not born with this inner sense. Those who are not born with an inner sense for learning about the soul will have to work harder at knowing the soul.

We can see this as well from the business world. Some people focus their energies on one particular profession, while others are multi-talented, even though they have never been educated about their particular jobs. How do we explain this? It is because there are certain people who are born with a natural inner sense for being good at certain things.

In fact, usually the ones who are very successful at what they do are people who did not go through the usual system. How can this be? It’s because those who had to be educated about their professions were missing an inner sense for what they did, whereas those born with the inner sense for their professions didn’t have to be educated about it. The ones who have a natural sense for what they do are the most successful.

If one does not have a natural inner sense for learning about the soul, this does not exempt him from studying it. He will just have to work harder at understanding it. [However, there are some people who should not be learning this kind of study at all].

Experiencing The Knowledge About The Soul

The question is: how much should a person study his own soul? Should he learn about it for 20% or 30% of his life? The answer is: For 100% of his life! Life is understood based upon recognizing our soul. The purpose of life is to recognize the Creator, and the way to reach Him is through understanding oneself.

A person should not become extreme with this, though, and put a hold on his whole life so he can learn about the soul, refraining from eating, drinking, and from going anywhere. Rather, a person should understand his soul as he is conducting his daily activities. Only experience gives you actual wisdom about life – “There is no one as wise as one who has experience.” Without actually experiencing these matters in our daily life, the wisdom about the soul cannot be acquired.

There is a story told of the Vilna Gaon that he once told his student, Rav Chaim Volozhiner, that he exiled himself for two years, to identify with the pain of the Shechinah in exile. Rav Chaim Volozhiner asked him, “Should I, too, exile myself?” The Vilna Gaon said to him, “No. I tried to do it, and it ended up being detrimental to me.” Rav Chaim Volozhiner said, “If so, I also want to go into exile and see how it will be detrimental to me.”

What was depth behind Rav Chaim Volozhiner’s answer? If his teacher had told him that it will be unsuccessful if he does it, why did he still wish to do it? It was because he wanted to discover this knowledge himself, from his own experiences. He didn’t want to rely on the fact that he knew about it; he wanted to experience it himself, which would give him a whole different level of awareness.

In order to understand the soul, a person cannot try to do this by closing himself in a room and deeply reflecting about his soul. Doing so might enable him to understand certain parts about himself, but he won’t be able to get to the general structure of the soul, being that he hasn’t actually utilized the abilities of the soul yet.

In essence, the entire Torah is built to reveal the tzuras adam of man. The tzuras adam is not only revealed through learning the mystical teachings of the Torah which are entirely devoted to the study of tzuras adam. It can be revealed, in both its inner and outer layers, throughout all of the 613 mitzvos, which are parallel to the 613 limbs and sinews in man.

The Torah is entirely a study of tzuras adam. The Torah contains the 613 mitzvos, parallel to the 613 limbs and sinews of man, thus the Torah is entirely the study of the human makeup. But there is a way to learn about the soul through learning the wisdom of it, and there is a way to learn the soul by utilizing its potential in day-to-day life.

The wisdom about the soul is the root of learning about the soul, whereas the branches of this wisdom lie in carrying out all of the mitzvos. So when a person fulfills the mitzvos, he is really learning about his soul. What is he learning about? He is learning about the tzuras adam. He is slowly getting the picture of what it means to come to resemble the Creator, whom man is commanded to emulate.

Awareness When We Do The Mitzvos

But what usually happens? People look at life as a bunch of various details, so they don’t see how their Torah learning and mitzvos connect to build the tzuras adam of man.

A person puts on Tefillin on his head, but he isn’t thinking that the mitzvah is doing something for his head. He puts on Tefillin on his arm, but he’s not thinking that the mitzvah is sanctifying his arm. He can do all of the mitzvos, and each of them are parallel to a different part of the body, as our Rabbis teach, yet, he does not see these acts as contributing to his growth. He sees all the mitzvos as random acts that he does, not as pieces that come together to build him. If he wants to understand his soul, he goes to a psychologist….

What results from this? When he gets married, he has never yet learned about tzuras adam yet, so he is not aware that marriage is another step in the building of tzuras adam. In essence, all of the mitzvos are meant to build the person, but the root mitzvah that builds a person in marriage, for marriage is what completes the person: “Man and woman He created them, and He called their names “Man.”

But if a person hasn’t yet learned how he can reveal his tzuras adam, he surely won’t come to reveal it; something cannot be revealed if it hasn’t been learned about.

The Goal of Marriage

When a person gets married, what should he be trying to build?

A superficial answer is, “Shalom Bayis” (marital peace). This is not incorrect; if there is no peace, there cannot be a home. It would be a destruction of a home, if there is no peace in the home, just as the Beis HaMikdash was no longer a bayis after it was destroyed. But what is the inner perspective one needs to build through marriage?

It is the possuk, “And He called their names ‘man’” – to build one’s tzuras adam. However, we will repeat and emphasize as we have done in the past, that marriage is only a part of this. It is not a goal unto itself.

When one is aware of the concept of tzuras adam, he can view marriage as another step in the process of building his tzuras adam. But if he has a scattered perspective towards life, in which he does not see how doing the mitzvos contributes to his tzuras adam, marriage will be no different for him; he will not see it as a goal that leads towards tzuras adam. He might have other goals in his marriage, whether it is concern for his own needs or even for his spouse, but he will be missing the true goal of marriage. With such a perspective, he will never reach the intended goal of marriage.

There must be a goal to something, or else it cannot withstand. If we have a true goal in marriage, there is hope that the home will be built properly. If our goal in marriage is not the true goal to have in marriage, there is no hope for such a home to be built properly.

All of life contributes to building our tzuras adam, and marriage is the central goal which can help us get there. But if we are not that interesting in building our tzuras adam, marriage will not either help us get there. We would be missing a quarter of the “puzzle.”

Usually, the problems in marriage are because a person doesn’t have a goal in his marriage. People therefore look for “tips” on marriage and what to do l’maaseh (down-to-earth, practical instructions), but not beyond that.

Compare this to someone hiring a contractor to build an apartment, and he doesn’t tell the contractor if it will have one floor or two floors, and if it’s a one-family apartment or a two-family apartment. The contractor has no idea what to build, because the plans have not been told to him. If a person does not know what he wants to build and he has no plan, no clear goal, then even if he has the best workers and the biggest experts at his side, he cannot build the home that he wants.

Marriage: Two Complicating Beings Coming Together

Earlier, we explained at length that marriage is a conglomerate of two bodies and two souls coming together, including Hashem in the process. That was just a general description, and now we will analyze this matter more in detail.

When it comes to the soul union between husband and wife, this will include all of the layers of their souls coming together: their Nefesh HaBehaimis (the ‘animal’ layer in soul), the Nefesh Elokis[1], the Ruach, the Neshamah, the Chayah, and the Yechidah.[2]

If one did not recognize his own soul before he got married, is it possible for him to build a true marriage? The answer, clearly, is no. If one does not know himself and his spouse, there is no way to ever succeed in marriage. Before a man is married, he is called palga d’gufa, “half a body”, as the Zohar states. But if he gets married without any self-recognition, it can be said of him that does not even have that half! Knowing oneself is at least half a home. If one did not build his own self yet, there is no way for his soul and the soul of his spouse to bond with each other.

Compare this to the business world. If two businesses are joining together, it is it possible for this to happen if each of the businesses are not familiar with their own goals, or at least with a large percentage of the details involved in each business? You can imagine all of the lawsuits that will come out of this. Of course, they can’t know all of the details, but they need to know most of what is involved, if they wish to succeed.

Thus, the first step is for one to realize that all of life is supposed to contribute towards the building of his tzuras adam, and he must be aware of this before he gets married – and that he cannot complete it before he is married. Marriage is what gives a person the opportunity to complete his tzuras adam.

The Growth Process of Marriage

However, this does not mean that as soon as a person gets married, he is now complete. If that would be true, a person has reached the pinnacle of life as soon as he gets married, as if he’s at the end of his life (Baruch Dayan Emes!). We know this is not true. A person goes on to live many years after he is married, for his avodah is not yet complete. It is just that now that he has gotten married, he has received the tools with which he can be enabled to reach his completion.

Marriage is a great step in the process of building one’s tzuras adam, but it is not the end. It is like an investment, in which you only see the results a few years later. One has to go take the money out of the bank at the time when he is allowed to take out the money, or else his investment was all for nothing, no matter how much money he made. So too, marriage is a great investment, and it is worth a lot, but after marriage, a person must utilize the potential that lies in his marriage, or else his great investment is for naught.

In marriage, each of the spouses will need to learn about their own selves, and the soul of their spouse, as an ongoing learning process. It will take an entire lifetime, until their last day on earth, and even then, that doesn’t mean they’ve arrived at the end of knowing themselves enough. This is because the human soul is the deepest thing possible.

The outer layer of the marital bond is the physical layer, while the emotions of the soul are the more inner layer. There are even more layers to the soul that are beyond the emotions. In order to harmonize with each other and build their marriage, each of the spouse must try to recognize his\her soul, then the soul of the spouse, and after that they will be able to bond with each other and build the home.

The Soul Keeps Changing

Another point about this, which is no less important, is as follows.

A person does not stay the same his whole life. When we are young, we use various energies, which utilize parts of the soul. When we get older and more mature, there are changes, and as we go through life, there are more changes. Chazal list all the different stages of life: At 30 years we are energetic, at 40 we are understanding, etc.

That being the case, even if one has worked to understand certain parts about himself, it’s very possible that two years later, he has become a whole different person in the interim. Sometimes a person goes through trauma, or he has worked on himself in a methodical manner, step-by-step. Either way, anyone who knows himself a little is aware that he is not the same person anymore as he used to be.

Compare yourself now to how you were 10 years ago. The things that interested you then were different, and now there are entirely different things that occupy your mind.  Your entire way of thinking, and the way you process information, can be entirely different altogether, than how you were 10 years ago. Of course, your actual essence does not change. But the outer layers of your soul definitely go through changes. They can go through deep, massive changes.

The more a person has worked on himself internally, the bigger internal changes he has gone through. The less a person has done inner work with himself, he will only know of superficial and external kinds of changes that he has gone through.

The various aspects of the personality in the soul, even after they are discovered by the person, can undergo changes. Anyone married for 20 years is not the same person he was when he got married, and neither is his spouse. There is a well-known statement of Rav Shimon Shkop zt”l that marriage is being renewed every moment. The spouses can almost claim that they each married the wrong person…! They are totally different many years down the line. They are not the same people they were when they got married – both in body and in soul. Everything has changed. It is just that they don’t always realize this.

The Changes In Children

When it comes to the relationship between parents and children, this concept is very obvious. Often the parents cannot digest the fact that their little children have gotten older and are now adults; they continue to relate to their children as when they were a baby in the crib.

Here are some examples: The parent is still giving orders to his 17-year old teenager as if he’s a 5-year old: “I said, don’t go there!!” or “When are you coming back already?!” The parent thinks that the child is still in his jurisdiction. He remembers the child as he was when he was a little baby, and he is so used to that image in his head that he cannot stomach it when he realizes that his child has ‘suddenly’ become so independent, and he feels, “He’s running away from me!” But it’s not that he has run away. He has simply grown up.

The soul is never staying the same; it is one of the most fluctuating things there are in existence. Marriage is surely more of a fluctuating situation, being that their situations are always changing with time.

In Summary

Thus, we have laid out two reasons of why it is necessary for one to learn about his soul, as a lifelong task:

1) Being that the soul is so deep, it takes a long time until one can get to its innermost layers, and this is true even if the soul would stay the same his entire life.

2)Even if after you have greatly understood your soul, your previous knowledge of the soul can no longer be enough, because you have gone through different experiences since then that have reshaped you. So you need to keep learning about the soul.

The True Way To Prepare For Marriage

Therefore, let’s understand that searching for various ‘tips of advice’ in marriage, is not a plan.

Compare this to the following. If a person does not own a business, and he is not sure if he should open up a new business, there is no one who can decide for him if he should do this or not. It is his decision alone, because there is no business here to be given advice about. But if someone already has an active business, and something comes up in which he needs to ask advice about, he is someone who can seek advice in his business, because there is what to give advice about.

When a person says, “I’m looking for advice about marriage”, this is an empty statement. What is a home, anyway? Is it a place where a bunch of beams are put up, then a floor and a roof? When a couple gets married and they are “setting up their home”, and they run into problems with each other, so they seek advice on how to have “Shalom Bayis” – is that what it means to build a home together? Such a marriage is possible even between two animals!

A person who acknowledges his soul understands that in order to have a “home”, he must build it. The proper ‘material’ must go into it and everything needs to be molded properly.

As it was explained in the previous chapter, we can’t start anything from the middle of the way. When it comes to preparing for marriage, we can’t prepare for it before we are 13 years of age, because a child cannot be married. At age 18 and on, a man is eligible to get married, as Chazal teach in the Mishnah in Avos. It is because a person needs a certain maturity to get married, and this requires 18 years of developing the soul. If those 18 years of development are missing, he is not ready for marriage.

To our chagrin, many people are mature only with regards to physical growth, such as being of proper height. At age 18, if a boy is tall, he is considered by onlookers to be “mature”. But this has nothing to do with spiritual maturity.

What is the true view? Marriage must be seen as the middle of our way, not the beginning. Life begins [for a boy] with bris milah, not with marriage. Perhaps it begins a new step in life, but it is essentially the middle of a path that began before it. We had at least 18 years of preparation for it – the time of life when we are not yet married.

When a man and woman get married, it is the culmination of at least 18 years of development in their own personal lives. If he developed his soul in the 18 years that came before marriage, and if she developed her soul during those 18 years, they are ready to unify, and it would then be a true union of man and woman coming together in marriage, completing each other. But if the husband and wife make the mistake of thinking that maturity in life begins with marriage, then they are each like two little children getting married to each other! Mazal Tov.Nothing will ever come of such a marriage.

In marriage, each of the spouses really has a two-fold job: each of them must know his\her own soul, and each of them must then include the other in this process, so that they can unify. Only when they understand that life is about building man, and through learning about their souls, and then through unifying their souls with each other – only then, does the marriage truly “begin”.

Of course, anyone can get married, as long as he\she is of age, according to Halacha, and be called a “couple”. The wife would still have a Halachic status of being a married woman. But this alone does not define the marriage as being that of two people coming together to build a home.

Marriage – A Course Worth Studying!

Whenever we are about to become involved in any practice, we know that first we must learn about it for a few years. Anyone who wants to become skilled and familiar in any given topic needs to first learn about it, and it can span several years.

When it comes to marriage, people are taking crash courses right before they get married and learn about marriage. This is better than nothing, but it will not be nearly enough. Getting married means you are going to be involved in a career that can span several decades. It is a career which must be learned about like any other. For some reason, when it comes to marriage, most people think that they are intelligent enough to know what it’s all about. When people go into marriage trusting this mindset, the chances of divorce are very high.

We need to see marriage as a step in life which has an earlier stage to it. Marriage is the next step to take in life – the next step that we take towards reaching self-perfection.

Firstly, we need to conceptualize for ourselves what the ideal kind of man should look like, and strive for that as our goal that we are heading towards. In order to reach it, we need to put in effort into learning about the human soul, as Reb Yisrael Salanter, the Alter of Kelm, Reb Yeruchem Levovitz, the Alter of Salobodka, and other Gedolim did. All of their understandings were reached through deeply understanding the human soul.

Talking About The Soul – With Your Spouse

The next step is for one to bring the soul dimension into marriage. If a couple does not speak together about matters of the soul, there is no way for the home to be a good home, and good manners alone will not do it.

But one cannot talk about things with his spouse which he has no idea about. If one does not consider the soul to be a major topic of life, it will be very hard to speak about it with his spouse. The words will come out confusing, and talking about the soul will then not serve to unify them. This is clear and simple/

If a person is working on himself and he is becoming aware of himself, and he lives clearly with his soul – he considers the soul to be a topic of interest to him, like anything else he is learning about to know, and he is someone who will find it easier to talk with his spouse at it.

Most conversations that a couple has are superficial: what to buy and what not to buy, are we going away for Shabbos or not, etc. If they are a bit deeper than this, they mainly discuss what bothers each other. But before they know what bothers each other, they need to learn about the soul in them which gets bothered!

Understanding the soul is the roots of building the home. After they work to understand their souls they can understand deeper and deeper things.

What does a wife really want from her husband? That he should buy all her groceries for her? No. She wants his soul. If the husband does not recognize what his soul is then he has nothing to give to her. The same is true vice versa – if she does not know her own soul, she cannot give of it to him.

A marriage is successfully built on each of them knowing their own souls, and the ability to harmonize with each other, as they talk about self-knowledge together; through talking about self-knowledge together, they get to understand themselves better. Of course, this is not all they should talk about together. But is should be a very prominent topic in their conversations.

It should be noted, however, that there are some people who are the type to get very confused when they learn about self-knowledge, because they do not have the mental capacity to understand the soul. They only get more confused with the more it is explained to them. For such people, it is better if they avoid getting into conversations about self-knowledge. But with many people (it is not possible to say the exact percentages, but it is a very prominent amount), the topic of self-knowledge is vital to their life to speak about.

Learn How To Build The Home

It is our hope that the words here have caused you to gain a new perspective towards ‘problems’ in the home. Most of the ‘problems’ are not really ‘problems’ per se.

Compare this to a street which has not yet been paved yet. A car cannot drive on it. When you walk on unpaved ground, you are not walking on a street – you are walking on a rocky road.

In most marriages, the issues are not the ‘problems’ in the marriage. To put it in deeper terms: it’s not that there are problems – rather, there is no home there! After there is a home set up there can be problems that come up; after all, there are always problems in any undertaking. But what we must first understand is that what is often missing is not marital guidance, nor should it be blamed on a lack of good intentions or on not knowing the proper advice. It is the very ‘home’ which is often missing.

This happens as a result of knowing how to build the home. When we try to pass through our life and we don’t know how to build it properly, this is like a child trying to get across the street so that he can go to the store. He knows a little how to cross the street. If we merely know how to get across life, this does not build.

With the help of Hashem, we hope to explain the root perspective of what a home is, and then we can get to recognize this matters deeply, being willing to invest in studying these matters. From there, we can apply the matters practically, and merit to build a bayis neeman b’Yisrael.