Category Archives: Love, Dating and Marriage

The Divorce Vaccine – Second Dose: The Essence of an Amazing Marriage & TORCH Fundraiser (giveTORCH.org)

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Please support The This Jewish Life Podcast and the annual TORCH fundraiser at giveTORCH.org

Every donation will be TRIPLED!

Show your support for TORCH and The This Jewish Life Podcast and donate to the annual fundraiser at giveTORCH.org

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Adam and Eve did not exactly have an idyllic marriage. Eve gave Adam to eat from the forbidden fruit; Adam through Eve under the bus when confronted by God. It seems that this marital union had some fundamental flaws. Yet our Sages, and truthfully the Torah itself, portray their marriage as the one we should emulate. Why are Adam and Eve considered to be an ideal match? In the second dose of our divorce vaccine series, we explore what lies at the core of an amazing marriage. The marriage of Adam and Eve had its shortcomings, but it can teach us about what marriage ought to look like. Needless to say, the hollow version of marriage featured in Hollywood and popular culture is, unsurprisingly, monstrously off-target.

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Please support The This Jewish Life Podcast and the annual TORCH fundraiser at giveTORCH.org

Every donation will be TRIPLED!

Show your support for TORCH and The This Jewish Life Podcast and donate to the annual fundraiser at giveTORCH.org

The Divorce Vaccine – First Dose: How to Select the Right Spouse

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What do you are about to hear is a vaccine against divorce. This first dose is intended for single people, who have not yet decided who they want to spend the rest of their lives with. If you are already married, you’ve made your choice and this part of the vaccine is not relevant to you. You can still listen to it, but be aware that this aspect of the vaccine is not pertinent to you.

In this series, we are working with the assumption that divorce is an epidemic that is solvable with a vaccine. Our solution will be painful, like having a needle jabbed in your shoulder, but it is intended to prevent a much greater pain. Like a vaccine, we are not promising 100% efficacy, but we’ll get close.

Stay tuned for the second dose of the vaccine. We are going to release it in a couple of weeks, after there’s been enough time for the antibodies to get in. There will probably be also at least one booster shot as well.

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Rabbi Akiva’s Great Principle

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The great sage of the Mishnaic era, Rabbi Akiva, taught that the mitzvah of loving your fellow as yourself is a great principle of Torah. Can this mitzvah be understood that we are obligated to love everyone with the same degree of love that we have for ourselves or perhaps does loving your fellow as yourself refer to something much deeper? In this talk we seek to understand this mitzvah and its far reaching ramifications that span the length and breadth of all of Torah.

Mother’s Day Special: Lessons in Gratitude and Appreciation

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Unfortunately and ironically, we often appreciate the least the people to whom we owe the most. If a total stranger gave you $235,000 – the amount it costs parents to raise a child to the age of 18 – you would be eternally indebted to him/her. But our parents contribution to us extends far beyond the financial. Who woke up for us as babies; cleaned our messes; worried for us; attended PTA, soccer games and graduations? Our parents did so much for us – we ought to be eternally indebted to them as well.

Illuminating and Practical Ancient Wisdom that can save your Relationships

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While humans have seemingly progressed, improved and evolved in many areas of life, in the arena of relationships we are comparatively neanderthals, and we are regressing. Surprisingly, a 3300 year old document will succinctly instruct and guide us in four sentences more successfully than all the relationships and self help books in Barnes and Noble.

Breakneck through the Bible – Spouse Selection (Genesis Chapters 24-25)

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Spousal selection is a perplexing and vexing part of life for most people; at least if the rates of failure in marriage are indeed what they are reported to be. The average person does not now where to start, what to do, what to look out for and how not to make a grievous and costly mistake by making a poor selection. The result is a convergence of an enormously important decision and an utter lack of knowledge of how to go about making that decision. For guidance and direction in this area of life we turn to the Almighty’s book of life instructions (a good idea for any difficult situation) and analyze the Torah’s exhaustive description of the vetting and selection of a spouse for Isaac – focusing on the minutiae of all the small details – and attempt to draw insight and instruction that is as relevant today as ever.

The Three Loves

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Three times in the Torah we are commanded to experience the emotion of love:

“Thou shall love your fellow as yourself” (Leviticus 19, 18)
“Thou shall love the foreigner, for you were foreigners in the land of Egypt” (Deuteronomy 10, 19)
“Thou shall love Hashem your God with all your hearts, with all your soul and with all your resources” (Deuteronomy 6, 5)

These commandments are deeply troubling. How can God command us to have an emotion like love? You either love someone or something or you do not? Seemingly, it cannot reasonably be forced upon someone? It is also a deviation from the textual integrity to posit that the Torah is telling us to act to our fellow in a loving manner because the words cannot be clearer: Thou shall love your fellow. Likewise, the quantity of love appears to be impossible. How can I love anyone as much as I love myself? Listen and learn how the Torah is teaching us incredible lessons in what love is and how to achieve it.

The 5 C’s of every happy and harmonious marriage

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It is well documented that modern humans fail at marriage at alarming rates. In the United States for example, in any given year the amount of divorces are roughly half the amount of marriages pegging the divorce rate around 50%. Shockingly, 5 out of 10 couples who commit to stay married to each other “until death do us part” renege on their vow. This staggering percentage does not include all couples who are dissatisfied in their marriages. Some couples have miserable marriages but remain married because of the legal costs and hassles of divorce, or to avoid the religious or social stigma associated with divorce, or even to protect their children from the pain and suffering of a family torn apart. These couples, while technically married, may be permanently separated as is the case by 15 percent of separated couples who don’t divorce nor reconcile rather remain separated permanently, or they may even live together but have separate bedrooms, separate TVs, separate bank accounts and separate lives. Thus the true rate of failed marriages is significantly greater than the quantifiable divorce rate.

Can anything be done to ensure that our marriages succeed? The Torah outlines five principles of great marriages – each beginning with the letter C – all you need to do is follow the instruction laid out and you are guaranteed to have a wonderful marriage.

Adam and Eve: A Model Marriage?

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In several places in Jewish Literature and practice we present Adam and Eve as a prototype of a relationship worth emulating. There is only one slight problem with that – Adam and Eve did not seem to have a stable relationship, much less an idyllic and harmonious one. What could the Torah possibly mean when we are instructed to act like Adam and Eve in pursuit of positive long term relationships?