Ladies and gentlemen, I have solved our fundraising challenges once and for all. I came up with an idea so good that we will never ask you for money again.
I present to you- 
A strikingly similar piece of art was sold by Sotheby’s this past week for 6.2 million dollars.
Do we have an opening bid??
Maurizio Cattelan is the creator of this piece. Apparently, it took him years to come up with this. It took Hindy five minutes to put it together.
Maurizio, in one interview, explained that the meaning behind this masterpiece was to highlight the absurdity of our subjective likes and dislikes. In other words, why does one piece of clothing sell for hundreds and a similar piece of clothing, made of the same material, sell for less? Why were pleated pants and shoulder pads seen as out of style a few years ago and now are the height of fashion? It’s absurd.
As an annoying father, I sometimes challenge my daughters to explain why they think this or that skirt or dress looks cool, or “preppy” in their parlance, or why they would not be caught dead wearing browns two years ago, but now browns are in.
Our taste is more than subjective; it’s fickle. It’s easily manipulated by a myriad of psychological and social forces.
His observation, in my opinion, is not worth 6.2 million, it’s priceless.
Let me explain:
There is a major debate among the medieval commentators about the existence of a bashert, what some would translate as a soulmate. A Gemara in Sotah teaches us that 40 days before a person is born, a voice rings out from the heavens stating, “This boy will marry that girl,” – they are meant to be. According to this approach, dating is about finding your destiny. If you find him or her, you will live the most blissful life. If you don’t, good luck. Being single just got a whole lot more stressful.
Then there are others, like the Rambam (Shmoneh Perakim) and Meiri (Sotah), who, based on other Talmudic passages, rejects this out of hand. There is no one person you are destined to marry. There is no such thing as a bashert.
Now it’s not my place to weigh in on a debate between Torah luminaries. But if I was forced to choose, I would tell you that the opinion of the Rambam, that we do not have a bashert, is far healthier to live by. And that’s because those who subscribe to the bashert view will invariably wake up one day, maybe after a week-long fight, and say, my wife or my husband is not feeling very bashert-like right now. I think I chose the wrong person.
But if you subscribe to the I-could-have-married-almost-anyone-in-the-world view, this was never THE ONE. It was simply the person you committed to come what may.
Our feelings are fickle; they come and go. If this piece of garbage could sell for 6.2 million dollars, what does that tell you about our feelings of love and attraction towards a significant other? Bashert today; bozo tomorrow.
But maybe marriage is more than a feeling? Maybe marriage is not about two people falling in love – or about finding their other half? It’s about two people committing to stay and stand in love.
Tish Harrison Warren, an Anglican priest and a very thoughtful writer, once wrote about the challenges she and her husband faced in their marriage. She then went on to describe how society’s view of divorce has changed over time:
“There was a time, not long ago, when getting a divorce in America was prohibitively difficult. That left individuals — usually women — stuck with philandering husbands and in abusive and dangerous marriages. Divorce is at times a tragic necessity. I’m very glad it is available.”
So am I.
“But,” she continues, “now the pendulum has swung so far that surrendering personal happiness to remain in an unfulfilling marriage seems somehow shameful or cowardly, perhaps even wrong.
We hear stories of people leaving a marriage as an act of self-love, to embark on a personal, spiritual … journey of self-discovery. … In contrast, the story of someone staying in a disappointing marriage for the kids or because of a religious commitment or for some other similarly pedestrian reason is, at best, boring. Worse, it seems inauthentic and uncreative, lacking in boldness and a zest for life.”
For Warren, this commitment to staying married even when it seemed to make no sense, eventually bore fruit as he and her husband now share an imperfect but beautiful relationship.
Our parsha highlights a most imperfect union. Yitzchak and Rivkah could not be more poorly matched (see Netziv); he was old, she was young. He was intense, she was meek. She was born to idolators, he was born to the first Monotheist. And yet, “vaye’e’haveha,” he loved her, and she loved him. It was a commitment and a choice that would override all the tension that existed between them and would keep them together through all the challenges they faced. Love is a verb; we don’t passively fall into love – certainly not the lasting type. True love, lasting love, is born out of a commitment to stay committed even when we don’t feel it.
And I must add, what is true for a relationship with a spouse is true for our relationship with Hashem. How often do I hear someone tell me how they are just not feeling it; they are waiting to be lovestruck, they are waiting to be inspired by Judaism, they are waiting until they feel close to G-d. And until that time, they ask me, why should they bother praying? It feels so inauthentic.
Let me share with you something I learned over the past few decades. I grew up in a home in which we did not say, I love you. It wasn’t that we didn’t love each other, we did, it just wasn’t a phrase that we used.
My wife, on the other hand, grew up in a home in which they always said I love you. Like most things in my home, we defer to Hindy. And so, we always say, I love you. Before the kids go to sleep, I love you. When we get off a call, I love you.
Growing up, I remember there being times when I felt like I wanted to convey the fact that I loved my parent or sibling but I just did not have the words; it was incredibly awkward for me to use that phrase.
And now, as someone who says, I love you, to my children, do you think I only say when I mean it? Of course not! Sometimes I mean it, and sometimes what I really mean is, you are being so obnoxious right now, and I need to get off this call, I love you. But I still say it, because I’m committed to them.
Do I feel like praying every day? No. Do I feel connected to Hashem every time I stand before Him? I wish I did. But I’m in a relationship with Him, and so whether I feel it I not, I show up.
And just like a daily I love you, my daily prayer builds and maintains a bridge, so that my love and my relationship has somewhere to live and flourish. (H/T to Dr. Rivka Press Schwartz)
There was a couple I once met with; they were going through a very difficult patch, including infidelity. We fell out of touch and when I saw them again a few years later, the husband told me that their relationship was flourishing.
I remembered being so frustrated talking to them; nothing seemed to get through. The husband had decided that he made a terrible mistake. What happened, I asked him.
He sheepishly smiled: “I made a choice.”
“I chose to be attracted. I chose to see the good. I chose to be more thoughtful and understanding.”
This does not mean that if you are single you should go to kiddush today, find the first person you see, and propose. This most certainly does not mean that if you are in an abusive relationship or even a relationship that you have invested in endlessly with no reciprocity that you should stay put. Divorce exists for a reason.
What it does mean is that all of us who are blessed to be in a relationship should perhaps stop getting so caught up in our feelings; they come and go; this banana will be spoiled by tomorrow. Instead, we can all choose, and we can all commit to working a little harder.