Jekyll and Hyde

 

 

Rabbi Shimon the son of Chalafta taught “The vessel for blessings is peace, for it says, (Psalms 29) ‘Hashem will give strength unto His nation, Hashem will bless His nation with peace’” (Midrash Rabba 21).

 

Only someone who has peace in his home can truly succeed in life. Hashem’s blessings, the source of all success, both physical and spiritual, including income, health, children’s education, comfort, joy, wisdom and understanding, require a vessel of peace. In other words, these blessings can be maintained only in an environment of a peaceful home.

 

True peace starts at home by living peacefully with one’s wife. A man who doesn’t strive for peace with his wife, the person closest to him in the world, can’t say that he lives peacefully with other people.

 

Many make a mistake in thinking that they have peace with everyone, but their home life is a different story. They even use this fact to justify themselves – since they get along fine with everyone everywhere else, their wife must certainly be responsible for their problems at home.

 

If a person lives in peace with strangers but not with his own wife shows, then he is the culprit. If he’s honest with himself, he’ll see that he’s kind to those who really deserve nothing. Casual acquaintances who haven’t given him a thousandth of the kindnesses that his wife has, yet with them he’s patient, polite, considerate, compromising and all smiles, even when he’s not in a good mood. But when he comes home to his wife – the closest person to him in the world, who does incessant loving-kindnesses for him, and with whom he has the greatest obligation to live in peace – his behavior is far from loving and considerate.

 

He has little patience for her. He’s too tired to talk to her or to listen to her. He doesn’t smile if he’s not in the mood and makes no effort to make her happy or to give her a good feeling about herself. He’s less willing to compromise with her than he is with a stranger, and demands that she should show him proper respect. If he’d behave with her like he behaves with other people, he’d enjoy a peaceful relationship with her too and she’d be happy as a lark.

 

A man without peace at home can’t boast that he has peace outside the home. On the contrary, he should be ashamed, for this indicates that he is a flatterer and a hypocrite. The peaceful person that he appears to be outside the home is just a ploy to obtain approval and honor. It has nothing to do with him being a truly peaceful person, and certainly doesn’t qualify him as a vessel worthy of Divine blessings.

 

 

The true measure of a person’s character is how he behaves at home with his wife. The home is the primary place for the fulfillment of all the commandments between ourselves and our fellow man: “Love your neighbor as yourself,” to judge others favorably, to empathize, to be considerate, to make others happy, and to concede one’s own wishes for the sake of peace, and so on.

 

Only someone who merits peaces at home merits the “peace” that is the spiritual vessel for all blessings.

 

A home without peace is a home without blessings. During the time we wrote this chapter, a rich couple came to me for counseling. Both husband and wife earned high salaries, and from a superficial glance, it seemed like they had everything. The wife began to relate her long saga of suffering. Her well-liked and well-respected husband was an entirely different person behind closed doors. He constantly belittled her and tormented her, so much that she felt she could die from the suffering. Their big income was just an illusion. They were both deeply in debt, and whatever they earned simply disappeared.

 

 

The wife begged me in tears, “Help me, help me… I have no one to turn to, to tell the truth to. My husband is well known and well respected. People won’t believe that my husband, with his ‘wonderful character’ behaves at home like he does. I can’t live like this. We have no blessings. Every day something else goes wrong – one day the car, then the refrigerator. All our money gets spent on repairmen and medical bills…”

 

Despite their huge income, the couple was in debt and miserable, simply because the husband didn’t treat his wife properly. They lacked the thing they needed most – the vessel for containing blessings – peace.

 

When a husband treats his wife properly and lives peacefully with her, then he will see blessing in whatever he does and will not lack for anything.

 

Our Sages say that “A man must always be careful with his wife’s honor, since blessing in a man’s home is only because of his wife.” (Yalkut Shimoni, Lech-Lecha). Even though the quote brought at the beginning of the chapter says that peace is the only vessel for blessings, there is no contradiction. The peace that is the vessel for blessings is the peace between a man and his wife.