CHAPTER FOUR - The Question of Marriage

A: BACKGROUND

4. Judaism and Christianity – A Study in Opposites

The contrast with Christianity is revealing: Christianity tends to view marriage not as a desirable state per se but, rather, as a necessary compromise with reality. Celibacy and a life devoted to G-d are seen as the ideal for those who can reach it; sexuality is generally considered a negative force that should, ideally, be transcended, with the impulse to sexual behaviour being invested in the uncontested worship of G-d. This is evident in Jesus’ own statements, as reported in the Gospels.

Jesus said… “I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for marital unfaithfulness, and marries another woman, commits adultery.”
The disciples said to him, “If this is the situation between a husband and a wife it were better not to marry”.
Jesus replied, “Not everyone can accept this teaching, but only those to whom it has been given…[Some] have renounced marriage because of the kingdom of Heaven. The one who can accept this should accept this”.
The Gospel of Matthew 19:8-12

The same approach is amplified most clearly in the words of Paul of Tarsus:

Now to the unmarried and the widows I say, it is good for them to stay unmarried as I am. But if they cannot control themselves, they should marry because it is better to marry than to burn with passion…I would like you to be free from concern. An unmarried man is concerned about the Lord’s affairs – how he can please the Lord. But a married man is concerned about the affairs of this world – how he can please his wife – and his interests are divided...I am saying this for your own good, not to restrict you, but that you may live in a right way in undivided devotion to G-d.
Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians :8-9, 32-35

This is the absolute antithesis of the Jewish ethos, which not only considers marriage natural, but also views it as a holy act - part of the attempt to invest everyday life with holiness and to make of the act of marriage a sacred tie - a positive and desirable part of the worship of G-d, and G-d’s world. The term for the first part of the marriage process and ceremony is the Hebrew word [Kiddushin] which comes from the word [kaddosh, meaning holy]. The act of marriage is considered a holy act, which conforms to G-d’s plan for the world and is viewed as an act of sanctification of the name of G-d.

• Jewish sources are full of references that praise marriage:

• For example, G-d is depicted in the Midrash as presiding over the glorious first wedding in all history, that of Adam and Eve, making all the preparations, dressing and adorning the bride and conducting the ceremony to the accompaniment of a choir of angels.
• Shabbat, in another famous example, is described as a bride.
• Moreover, the Hebrew Bible constantly uses the metaphor of love and marriage to describe the relationship between G-d and the Jewish People.
  G-d is depicted as the husband of the Jewish People and G-d’s demand for exclusivity in monotheistic worship is invariably pictured as the natural demand of the husband for faithfulness and exclusivity from a legal wife.

It is the prophetic books that emphasise and develop this metaphorical view of the human-Divine relationship, as seen in an example from the Book of Jeremiah. Jeremiah lived in the sixth century B.C.E., after the destruction of the northern Jewish kingdom, Israel, and in the last days of the southern Jewish kingdom, Judah. In this excerpt, he uses this metaphor to point out the fate of the northern kingdom - which has proved itself to be an unfaithful wife - and to warn Judah that if it does not mend its ways, its fate will be the same as its “elder sister, Israel”: a fate of divorce by the angry husband, G-d.

The Lord said to me…

“Have you seen what faithless Israel has done? She has gone up on every high mountain and under every green tree and there she has played the harlot. And I [G-d] said: After she has done all of these things, she will return to Me. But she did not return. And her treacherous sister Judah saw it. I gave faithless Israel her writ of divorce and sent her away because of her adulteries. Yet I saw that her unfaithful sister Judah had no fear. She also went out and committed adultery… In spite of this, her unfaithful sister Judah did not return to me with all her heart, but only in pretence.”
Jeremiah 3:6-10

There is even one entire prophetic book, Hosea, almost wholly constructed around this marriage metaphor.

On another level, the relationship - not of marriage, but of human love - is considered the essential key for interpreting the beautiful biblical book of Shir HaShirim, the Song of Songs. This beautiful book about what appears to be human and natural love, has been interpreted in Jewish tradition as a metaphorical text, in which the Jewish People and G-d reveal their deep love for each other.

The effect of this interpretation should not be underestimated: if the intention of the Rabbis was to humanise the idea of people’s love for the Divine, they simultaneously – and perhaps inadvertently – elevated the idea of human, earthly love to an almost Divine status.