Frum and Foreboding

My friend has a problem – he’s psyched up about emuna and not everyone in his personal circle is on the same page, including the wife.  Sound familiar? Did it ever happen to you? You heard an amazing lecture about child-raising, or facing life’s difficulties and the minute you share it with your spouse you meet with little interest on their part? Welcome to the club, welcome to the stage of living your emuna under fire.

As a new immigrant in Israel, I went to a Yeshiva in Jerusalem called Machon Meir to prepare myself spiritually for entering the army. Day in and day out I was filled up with Torah learning. Ethics, law, and prayer were in my daily schedule for about 10 months. The transformation I had personally was amazing.  During this period of time my mind was filled up with very high spiritual concepts about the being Jewish and about the Jewish nation. I felt so spiritual and connected to Hashem.

Suddenly I headed for basic training and my life changed overnight. Whereas previously my mind was glued to the books, I now found myself learning how to tie my combat boots. Then I was learning how to load up a magazine filled with bullets and how to assemble and disassemble machine guns. The change was so shocking, it was literally two separate worlds. I was now dealing with the nitty gritty details of life on a moment to moment basis, and my heart yearned to be back in Yeshiva.

You don’t know the power of Torah until you taste it, and you don’t know its value until you can’t have it as much as you’d like. But that’s the point, sometimes Hashem is saying enough with the books… Live It my child! The only problem is that sometimes we don’t really believe that our lessening of book learning is actually a ‘gift’ from Hashem. Sometimes we doubt Hashem is doing everything for the good, especially when our Emuna is being tested and we feel less comfortable.

Take marriage for instance. In the beginning a couple can be so connected, so glowing, so suitable. Then later the husband and wife look at each other and realize they don’t share so much in common as they thought. He’s burning for Hashem and wants to keep taking on more, while his wife is taking things at her own slower pace. In this case the husband needs to be very cautious. As it says in Garden of Peace by Rabbi Shalom Arush, “don’t be wicked with your righteousness”, meaning, don’t be a jerk on your path to holiness, while making your wife feel unappreciated.  This is a common issue amongst many of us fellas and we need to glue ourselves to the teachings of truth, the teachings of Emuna.

I know someone who is literally capable of learning for at least 10 hours a day every day but can’t do to personal circumstances. His heart is burning to get closer to Hashem with his wife, but he doesn’t feel her on the same page. He blames her for blocking his progress to learning more and growing closer to G-d. The friend of mine is making some huge mistakes. But before we address them let’s look at his side, he’s trying to get closer to G-d, what’s the big deal, let him grow! Isn’t that the purpose of it all?

Well this dude is missing the point for a number of reasons. Let me explain. You see we are here to correct ourselves, to correct our bad character traits. Our dear friend that we mentioned wants things easy.  He wants his wife doing hitbodedut for an hour near the Shabbat candles, and going to Torah lectures, and making Challah for the poor and this and that, but she’s just not there. She still likes movies, Facebook, and junk food at times. The two couldn’t be more different, so what’s going on?

Despite the fact that she does do some things which are less attractive in his eyes, Hashem is giving him the biggest disguised gift he could ever dream of. What?!?! Wouldn’t that be learning all day? The answer is no. If he would be learning all day, he wouldn’t have to face her as often and thereby wouldn’t have to work on himself to make peace with his wife.  By having friction, Hashem invites us to call out to him in prayer to help smooth out our bad character and improve! She is a mirror of us, and as Rav Arush says, our spiritual level is only as high as the level of our marital bliss.

It starts with us fellas, we need to change our vision to Emuna Eyes. Let’s stop complaining about how much our wives are restricting us and instead get to work on our arrogance, insensitivity and finally work on truly becoming grateful and appreciative for the millions of things they do for us. Instead of being a frum and foreboding husband, let’s try love and a smile. If our Judaism doesn’t make us nicer and happier people and better husbands, we’ll never ever be able to influence anyone, much less our wives. We have work to do, guys…