Home
In this issue
Nov. 20, 2009
Rabbi David Aaron: How to make every second of your life come first
Caroline B. Glick: Whither American Jewry
Nov. 19, 2009
Binyamin L. Jolkovsky: Please Listen to this Godcast (5 minutes)
Jonathan Tobin: ADL Crosses the Line with Report Bashing Obama Critics
Nov. 18, 2009
Rabbi Yonason Goldson: What Judaism has to say about the secret of the Mona Lisa's smile
JWisdom.com: The (Jewish) Dating Game with Rabbi Lawrence Hajioff (8 minutes)
Nov. 17, 2009
Steven Emerson: How Does the 4th Amendment Impact Terror Finance Investigations?
JWisdom.com: If Frank Sinatra married Edith Piaf with Rabbi Y.Y. Rubinstein (2 minutes) Life lessons from what would be regarded as the most inappropriate lyrics ever sung
Nov. 16, 2009
The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir : When borrowing is stealing
JWisdom.com: Deconstructing faith with Rabbi Warren Goldstein (9 minutes)
Nov. 13, 2009
JWisdom.com Sarah's subjective reality with Rabbi Sroy Levitansky ( 6 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick: Obama's failure, Netanyahu's opportunity
Nov. 12, 2009
The Kosher Gourmet By Marialisa Calta : A sweet sweet potato treat
JWisdom.com Does God get tired? with Rabbi Harvey Belovski ( 5 minutes)
Nov. 11, 2009
Rabbi Avi Shafran: Jews and money: When anti-Semitism isn't
JWisdom.com Marriages are not made in Heaven with Rabbi Lawrence Hajioff (VERY fast 15 minutes)
Nov. 10, 2009
Michael Doyle: Author of book exposing CAIR ordered to remove supporting documents from Web
JWisdom.com If the creation so loudly shouts the existence of the Creator, why aren't more people believers? with Rabbi Naftali Brawer (9 minutes)
Nov. 9, 2009
Mark Steyn: Shooter exposes hole in U.S. terror strategy
JWisdom.com It's never too late to have a happy childhood with Sarah Chana Radcliffe (5 minutes)
Nov. 6, 2009
Rabbi Berel Wein: Choosing to hear
JWisdom.com Zero to 1/60th: How to Empower An Hour with Gavriel Aryeh Sande (7 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick The mullahs' big week
Suzanne Fields A Fallen Wall for Fallen Man
Nov. 5, 2009
The Kosher Gourmet: Three scrumptious -- but simple -- butternut squash dishes
JWisdom.com Hidden Hints: Unlocking Faith & Prayer with Rabbi Jay Yaacov Schwartz (10 minutes)
Nov. 4, 2009
Tom Hamburger and Kim Geiger: Should prayers be covered?
JWisdom.com When God played peacemaker With Rabbi Sroy Levitansky (5 minutes)
Nov. 3, 2009
Martin Peretz: Beware, Barack. Beware, Rahm. Beware, Axelrod
JWisdom.com Are you are closet idolater? With Sara Yoheved Rigler (10 minutes)
Nov. 2, 2009
Paul Greenberg: The Holocaust is now on Facebook
JWisdom.com Abraham's Strange Change With Rabbi Yitzchok Fingerer (5 minutes)
Oct. 29, 2003
Mortimer B. Zuckerman: Graffiti On History's Walls (MUST-READ!)

Jewish World Review May 25, 2004 /5 Sivan, 5764

Shavuos: The eternal vow

By Rabbi Yonason Goldson

Printer Friendly Version

Email this article


http://www.jewishworldreview.com | What is marriage?


To the romantic, it is the consummation of true love. To the pragmatist, it is a contract for mutual responsibility and procreation. To the gold-digger, it is the key to the vault. To the philanderer, it is a legal fiction. To the seven-year-old, it is unimaginable.


In today's world of moral relativism, we have redefined marriage as whatever we wish it to be. But not so very long ago people shared a common view of marriage as an institution built upon foundational vows of mutual commitment "for as long as you both shall live." Divorce existed, but only as an option of last resort, not the likely conclusion of every second marriage.


What happened to commitment? What happened to vows? When did the definition of marriage become so random and so negotiable?


The Talmud describes Passover and the Exodus from Egypt as the betrothal of the Almighty and the Jewish people. But while Passover remains the most widely observed of all Jewish holidays, it is Shavuos, perhaps the most neglected Jewish holiday, which the Talmud compares to the marriage between the Jews and their Redeemer. It is sad but not surprising, therefore, that the declining attention to the holiday of Shavuos mirrors society's devaluation of the institution of marriage.


The kesuvah — the wedding contract — for this metaphysical union was engraved both upon hearts of the Jewish people and upon two hewn tablets. They were not called the "Ten Suggestions." In truth, they were not even called the "Ten Commandments." They were the Aseres HaDibros, the "Ten Statements" defining the relationship between the bride — the Jewish nation — and her Groom on high. They comprised the commitments, the responsibilities, and the obligations, as well as the affection, the privilege, and the intimacy of the relationship.


They defined the ultimate marriage as eternal and immutable. They made no allowances for annulment, no-fault divorce, "open-marriage," or renegotiation of pre-nupts. They were, both literally and figuratively, carved in stone.

Donate to JWR


After 3,316 years, a portion of the Jewish people still regard those vows as sacrosanct. Jews who live in the modern world of computers and cell phones and transatlantic flight and cyberspace still define their relationship with the Divine according to its original terms. They find nothing outdated, nothing unfashionable, nothing anachronistic in the generations-old dictates of those original "Ten Statements." Just the opposite, the vows their ancestors swore and the ethereal marriage those vows protect provide a safe harbor for the modern Jew against the ceaseless winds of social fad and the relentless tide of moral anarchy.


Tragically, there are other Jews who have either abandoned or reinterpreted the original vows of Sinai, who discard the moral clarity of their own eternal heritage in favor of the conventional wisdom of a society that defines exhibitionism as entertainment, pornography as art, and partial-birth abortion as the "right to choose." For them, marriage means no more than a contract of mutual gratification, to be brokered or broken at the whim of either partner. Their vision of relationship is blurred by their investment in an amoral culture where everything must be accepted and no judgments are allowed.


To them, everything may be sanctified, since nothing contains intrinsic sanctity.


Similar ideologies have sprouted like weeds through the cracks of time. But they have never lasted long, and have certainly not outlasted the original vows of Sinai, the same vows that have preserved the Jews and their Judaism, that have safeguarded the relationship between Jewish man and wife, as well as the relationship between the Jews and their Creator.


The Egyptians, the Persians, the Greeks, and the Romans not only sanctified every corruption of human morality but sought to impose their own "morality" upon the Jews who lived among them. Some Jews embraced those nations and joined them on their path to oblivion. Indeed, nothing remains of the Hellenists, the Saducees, and the Karaites except a lesson that others like them refuse to learn: that spiritual revisionism leads only to spiritual extinction.


But some Jews have kept their vows and survived, cherishing the values and the commitments of their ancestors. And so shall it be until the final renewal of our vows at the end of days.

Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.

JWR contributor Rabbi Yonason Goldson teaches at Block Yeshiva High School and Aish HaTorah in St. Louis. Comment by clicking here.

© 2004, Rabbi Yonason Goldson