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Parashat Behar
Essays and Articles:
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A Period of Courtship
The First Part of Awareness
Translated from Hebrew by S. NAthan l'ilui nishmat Esther bat mordechai
Mah inyan shmita etsel har Sinai? What does shmita have to do with Mount Sinai? i.e. Where is the connection? The Ramban applies this expression to the second luhot: “For at the beginning of the first forty days of the first luhot, Moshe wrote in the Book of the Covenant all the words of God, and all of the words of law that were said there, and he threw the blood of the covenant on the people (Shmot 24:8) and when they sinned with the Calf and the luhot were broken, it was as if the covenant had been cancelled on God’s part, and when God consented to Moshe with the second luhot, He commanded him by a new covenant, as is said (ibid) ‘Behold I shall seal a covenant…’and he reiterated there the strict commandments that had been given in the parasha of ‘ve’eleh hamishpatim’in the first covenant…and God wished to be more strict with them in this second covenant, that it should be binding on them with oaths and with curses.”
According to Ramban, the ritual of throwing half the blood from the vessels would not be adequate in the second covenant, because God wanted now a personal consent, based on investing personal effort and initiative.
Here begins the stage of the new approach: Personal involvement and initiative – which is called itaruta dilitata (“awakening by the lower one” – man awakening to seek God) without which itaruta dili’aila (“awakening by the higher One” – Heaven awakening to seek man) will not activate.
In the words of the Or HaHaim: Because when the lower ones turn away from the path of good, heaven’s bounty removes itself, and the pillar of sanctity (the pillar created by the vertical encounter between heaven and earth) grows meager, because the main part is dependent on the lower ones.”
What expression is required of man to waken himself to receive Torah and mitsot? Sefira, counting the omer, is the period of courtship. Its function is to awaken need, aspiration, longing, yearning for the thing one is about to receive. If one receives a thing without preparation, then one has not first created a container to receive it, and one will not know how to appreciate what one has received.
Without a courtship period, personal involvement with what one is receiving never takes place. What one receives never penetrates to the innermost essence of the self. The desire to receive is only the first half of preparation. The second half of the goal is to be as thoroughly acquainted as possible with what one wants to receive.
The parallel drawn by the Torah between matan Torah and marriage shows that one must learn about the relationship between Jew and Torah from the relationship between man and woman, and vice versa.
A period of courtship is a vital need among animals as well, and among the winged song creatures – to teach you that it is a basic need throughout nature. Nevertheless, within Jewish society it was not accepted, and we need to understand why. The Gemara in Kidushin states that one is forbidden to marry a woman unless one has seen her, lest she may be ugly in his eyes, and he will rid himself of her. Here we learn that there is a need to know the other side before the connection is made. If so, how has Jewish society ignored an explicit prohibition in the Gemara?
Its opponents claim that courtship does not assist in recognizing the other side, but rather the contrary, because there is no naturalness in the courtship encounter, and the woman knows full well how to hide what she is interested in the man not knowing; even if he is wiser than she, in this area her cleverness surpasses his. Courtship is unable to reflect the situation as it really is.
Therefore, Judaism has transferred courtship, has moved it into the marriage itself, and it is within marriage that the courtship period takes place – on a continuous basis, two weeks out of every month, and thus the courtship completes and merges with the knowledge of the other side.
The vital investigation process, Judaism gives over to the hands of parents and matchmaker. The differences in approach find that among the proponents of pre-marital courtship, love reaches its peak prior to marriage, and declines gradually with marriage. In contrast, for those who oppose pre-marital courtship, love is only in its beginning stages when marriage takes place. It is then given continuous monthly reinforcement throughout the marriage period, and is perpetually on the rise.
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