MEANING IN MITZVOT by Rabbi Asher Meir Each week we discuss one familiar halakhic practice and try to show its beauty and meaning. The columns are based on the commentary “Meaning in Mitzvot” on the Kitzur Shulchan Arukh, which is serialized on Yeshivat Har Etzion’s “Virtual Beit Midrash”, www.vbm-torah.org. Engagements during the Three Weeks Even though we are not allowed to make any kind of celebration during the first days of Av, we are allowed to finalize an engagement then. (SA OC 551:2.) Indeed, the Yerushalmi (Taanit 1:8) rules that an engagement may be made even on Tisha B’Av itself! The rationale for this special dispensation is “lest someone else precede him” - perhaps the prospective fiance/fiancee will change his or her mind and agree in the meantime to marry someone else. The Talmud (Yerushalmi cited above, also Moed Katan 18b) then objects, aren’t our life partners a decree from heaven? If these two partners are genuinely destined for each other, how could anyone else succeed in foiling their match? Rather, someone else may “precede him in prayer”, may succeed in “reversing” the decree - though the Talmud informs us that the new match will not be successful. The best thing is to arrange the engagement right away. One explanation of this “decree” is that HaShem arranges that for each man and each woman there is a prospective spouse who is especially compatible, and He provides them an opportunity to meet. Once the couple are willing to get engaged, they are convinced that they have found their “beshert”, their specially compatible partnership. Even so, the ultimate decision to get married still depends on the couple, who have free will. So prayer and pressure can still convince one side to change their mind. But such influence “reverses the decree”, by creating a match which is based on external considerations, and not on the natural, mutual compatibility of the couple, which HaShem specially created. (Based on Tashbetz II:1.) The gemara says that in such a case one spouse is likely to die. In addition to the literal meaning of this statement, we can well understand that someone pressured into marrying an unsuitable spouse may feel that they are dying inside. (Of course this explanation does not at all imply that people should rush into engagements, before they are certain of compatibility. It only indicates that once the couple are sure that they are made for each other, they needn’t put off their decision due to purely external circumstances like the Three Weeks.) Some people in our autonomy-obsessed generation might ask, doesn’t rushing to seal the match actually show a lack of concern for the partner? If a better match really does come along, don’t we want our beloved to be able to benefit from it? This line of thinking ignores a basic though paradoxical axiom of human nature and particularly of married life: one of the greatest human needs is the need to be needed! While spouses should take care not to make unnecessary impositions on each other, the worst thing we can do is suggest to our partners that they are unneeded, that we can manage without them. Family life is strengthened by the consciousness that each family member is totally dependent on the others, that we really can not manage without our loved ones. Delaying an engagement to actually create an opportunity for someone else, supposedly to show that our beloved’s happiness is more important to us than our own, actually denies the loved one an essential ingredient in his or her own happiness: the feeling of being truly needed. Rabbi Meir is in the process of writing a monumental companion to Kitzur Shulchan Aruch which beautifully presents the meanings in our mitzvot and halacha. Rabbi Meir is now directing the Jewish Business Response Forum at the Center for Business Ethics and Social Responsibility, Jerusalem College of Technology - Machon Lev. The forum aims to help business people run their firms according to Torah, by obtaining prompt, relevant responses to their questions. He has taught at the Israel Center, and IY"H will again do so. [The Matot-Mas'ei
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