Which comes first, love or marriage?
Table for Five: Chayei Sarah
In partnership with the Jewish Journal of Los Angeles
Edited by Nina Litvak & Salvador Litvak, the Accidental Talmudist
Isaac then brought her into the tent of his mother Sarah, and he took Rebekah as his wife. Isaac loved her, and thus found comfort after his mother’s death. – Genesis 24:67
Rabbi Shaul Rosenblatt
Executive Director, Better World Charity
There is a classical idea here that commitment comes before love. Isaac married Rebecca, and only then are we told that he loved her. I don’t necessarily mean chronologically. With children, for example, commitment and love arrive together. I mean that without commitment as a foundation, love cannot be sustained. My Rabbi, R Noach Weinberg, defined love as ‘the pleasure you get when you see virtue in another and identify them with that virtue.” Love means seeing the virtues when you see the person. The challenge is that every human being, without exception, has plenty of faults alongside those virtues. And in an ongoing relationship, those faults get regularly rubbed in our faces.
Without commitment, our resolve to look beyond those faults will slowly (or even quickly) be whittled away. I’m not suggesting that commitment must mean the extreme of marriage, I believe in love without marriage. But commitment does need to be serious. And there is one particular commitment that I believe makes lasting love possible: the commitment to get over yourself. Not to become fixated on the behaviour and traits that frustrate you. Not to reconsider the person in the heat of irritation. But to allow your mood to settle before you judge.
From a settled place, we will always see another’s virtues. From an agitated place, we usually cannot, even with those we deeply love.
Commitment to love means refusing to let a passing state of mind determine how we see someone who is precious to us.
Judy Gruen
Author, “Bylines and Blessings”
When I was newly married, I was shocked to hear a casual male friend recall that before he and his wife were married, she had asked him, “Do you love me?” He told her, “I’m fond of you now, but I know I will grow to love you over time.” Good thing she married him anyway, because this couple has been married for more than 40 years and has raised a beautiful family filled with love, which radiated out from their love for one another. My husband and I believed we loved each other when we married, but it cannot compare to the depth of love we have after decades of shared life together.
It is notable that Isaac did not choose his own wife—his father outsourced that job to his servant, Eliezer, who recognized that Rebecca had the spiritual and personal qualities to be a worthy successor to Sarah as a future Jewish matriarch and suitable wife for Isaac, and a woman whom Isaac would grow to love.
Judaism understands that love grows over time. Unlike secular society, which often celebrates the elastic feeling of romance as reason enough to marry, Jews understand that true, deep, abiding love results from commitment, shared values, giving, paying attention, and daily acts of caring. It means that even after many years and possibly some battle scars, each day you know you would choose to marry them all over again.
Sara Rigler
Author of 8 books, gives weekly marriage webinar for women
This verse turns the modern Western view of marriage upside down. First Yitzchak married Rivka; then he loved her. Love is not the cause of marriage, but rather its result. How does this work? The great Mussar master Rav Eliyahu Dessler taught that the more you give, the more you love. This is counter intuitive. I thought that the more I receive from you, the more I love you. Rav Dessler asserts that the more I give to you, the more I love you. That’s why, he says, parents love their children more than children love their parents.
Giving produces love. The Mussar masters point out that all human beings are born selfish. The process of spiritual maturation entails becoming more and more a giver. The greatest opportunity to give, even when we don’t feel like it, is marriage. That’s why Judaism considers marriage to be the highest spiritual path, unlike Christianity, Hinduism, and Buddhism, which consider celibacy to be the highest path. Gautama Buddha, the historical Buddha, left his wife and child to seek enlightenment. Years later, his wife joined him as a nun in the incipient Buddhist Order.
The Jewish formula is: Marriage produces giving; giving produces love; love produces a spiritually evolved person.
Sari Abrams
Early Childhood and Parenting Educator
In explaining this verse, the Midrash teaches that while Sarah was alive, a light was perpetually lit in her tent; the light went out upon Sarah’s death, but rekindled when Rebekah arrived.
The perpetual light of a parent-child relationship such as Sarah and Isaac’s serves two functions. It serves as a guiding light and as a lighthouse beacon. A parent illuminates and guides a path as a child explores their world, learns who they are, and discovers their unique talents, hopes, and dreams. Then, when the outside world becomes scary or overwhelming, the parent becomes the beacon, guiding the child back home to their parent’s reassuring embrace, where they will receive the emotional reinforcement that will spark their courage to set out and explore once again. This repeated cycle of exploration and return is the foundation for the ever-evolving parent-child attachment relationship, and it becomes the blueprint for all the future relationships that the child forges.
When Sarah dies, the light of attachment is extinguished. Sarah’s death leaves Isaac bereft, but he’s comforted upon marrying Rebekah, and the light’s rekindled. Naturally, the meaning is not that the attachment relationship to a parent is replicated in a spousal relationship, rather that this light of parental attachment has now generated and matured into an adult emotional connection. Isaac and Rebekah can continue to each develop and grow, as they illuminate pathways and understanding through which their spouse can dream and aspire in new ways, and also each support the other when what they need is the beacon in the lighthouse.
Batsheva Frankel
Director of Jewish Family Learning, BJE- Builders of Jewish Education
Like so many women growing up, I loved romantic movies, TV shows and books. I admit, I still do. Even though I acknowledge my predilection for the realistically-challenged plot lines, I also know that they can cause very real confusion and expectations about love. Because most stories culminate in the couple finally getting together, we just assume that “they lived happily ever after.” Even my most favorite author, Jane Austen, the original Rom-Com queen, ends her stories with the marriage.
The Torah, on the other hand, teaches that marriage is just the beginning of real love. One need only look at the order of our verse – first, Yitzhak marries Rivka. Then, it says he loves her. Only after that, is he comforted by Rivka after losing his beloved, exceptional mother, Sarah.
They don’t fall madly in love at first sight (Although technically Rivka does fall off her camel when she first sees Yitzhak). They each realize that the other is a righteous person. When Yitzhak brings his prospective wife to his mother’s tent, Rashi describes how the miracles that had surrounded Sarah when she was alive, now manifest for Rivka. She, too, is on a very holy level. The comfort that Rivka provides Yitzhak is the reassurance that she’s the right partner in the continuing mission of the Jewish people. Imagine if every couple’s ever-after included partnering on such a mission. While their love story might not make a great Netflix watch, it is a great model for real life.
With thanks to Rabbi Shaul Rosenblatt, Judy Gruen, Sara Rigler, Sari Abrams, and Batsheva Frankel.
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