{"id":13951,"date":"2011-08-23T17:00:50","date_gmt":"2011-08-23T17:00:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/production.ou.org\/life\/other\/marriage_enrichment_-_an_eductors_perspective\/"},"modified":"2016-12-01T05:38:22","modified_gmt":"2016-12-01T10:38:22","slug":"marriage_enrichment_-_an_eductors_perspective","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ou.org\/life\/relationships\/marriage\/marriage_enrichment_-_an_eductors_perspective\/","title":{"rendered":"Marriage Enrichment: An Educators’ Perspective"},"content":{"rendered":"

The OU\u2019s JLIC (Jewish Learning Initiative on Campus)<\/a> program places Orthodox Rabbinic couples to serve as Torah educators on local college campuses in conjunction with Hillel. Now on fifteen campuses in North America, JLIC educators strive to enhance the learning opportunities available to students, and also bolster an infrastructure for Orthodox life to flourish. Educators offer weekly shiurim, classes, guest speakers and campus events as well as enabling the meaningful observance of kashrut, chagim and shabbat.<\/em><\/p>\n

As the OU\u2019s JLIC educators at Brooklyn College, we believe one of our top priorities is to help students and alumni move on to their next stage in life. Not only do we give shiurim, organize chavrusas, and coordinate events, we are also involved in establishing programs that create an opportunity for our students to meet and socialize via shabbos meals, matchmaking websites, and old fashioned shidduchim. This, however, is just the beginning. We then help our students prepare for marriage by laying the educational groundwork: teaching the laws of Taharat Hamishpacha (family purity) as well as communication\/conflict resolution strategies and other relationship navigational techniques.<\/p>\n

Acting as teachers and role models in this capacity can be extremely satisfying as a professional challenge, but it also carries the weight of tremendous personal responsibility. The underlying assumption is that we \u201cpractice what we preach\u201d. For this reason, my wife and I felt very privileged to attend the OU\u2019s Marriage Enrichment Retreat (July 15-17). The word \u201cenrichment\u201d is a key adjective; the weekend provided a welcome and wonderful opportunity to work on our marriage, spend some quality quiet time together, and of course, to build our skills in service of our own relationship and the community of students we mentor.<\/p>\n

Needless to say, the meals were sumptuous and the tearoom was a rare treat (not being Pesach resort vacationers, this was a special experience for us). But, the real meat came from the many exciting classes that we attended.<\/p>\n

The sessions were enlightening and incredibly relevant, particularly the session led by Dr.Pelcovitz on coping with financial crisis, which was especially apt given current economic conditions. Dr. Pelcovitz didn\u2019t merely present research and statistics; he also offered vignettes along with specific coping mechanisms. Equipping our students, as a whole, to deal with financial hardship and bumps on the road of life is necessary on an individual basis, but it becomes crucial within the context of life partnerships.<\/p>\n

We then attended a class with Dr. Bailey, who opened with the Gemara\u2019s explanation regarding the laws of Taharas Hamishpacha – a spiritual growth strategy that creates both physical and emotional ways for a marriage to renew itself. The need for renewal is essential in all points of life, but to look for opportunities to do so within an established relationship often becomes difficult within the context of busy lives. Dr Bailey gave us practical tips on keeping the honeymoon-like feeling throughout a couple\u2019s years together.<\/p>\n

It was a fascinating revelation to hear Rachel Pill LCSW explain, \u201cWhat happens during the day affects what does or doesn\u2019t happen at night\u201d. This allowed us to consider framing lessons for our students in the early stages of exploring intimacy as a solid basis for helping to establish a variety of aspects in their relationships. She also coined one of our favorite phrases of the conference, \u201cWell, do you want to be right or do you want to be happy?\u201d This is a vital approach in working with couples where one partner always needs to be right, or believes that conversation is a competitive sport.<\/p>\n

Rabbi Weil spoke in depth about the results of the OU\u2019s groundbreaking Marriage Satisfaction Survey<\/a> and the areas that routinely cause tension in our marriages. Boruch Hashem, the survey showed that the overall review of marriages within the Jewish community\u2019s mindset are seen as positive, but we need to strengthen areas of communication, time management, boundaries with in-laws, issues of intimacy and resolution of religious differences. As premarital educators, we strive to address these aspects of relationships with our students on a regular basis<\/p>\n

We found Lauren Roth\u2019s sage advice regarding the need for both trust and vulnerability in a relationship particularly significant for today\u2019s young adults, who often come to marriage at a later age and with a prior history of disappointing dating or relationship experiences.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you allow yourself to be real during your marriage, if you allow yourself to implicitly trust the person you\u2019re trying to make a relationship work with, you might get your heart broken, and you\u2019ll probably get hurt. But you\u2019re also giving yourself\u2014and your spouse\u2014a chance at finding true, deep love. This is especially hard for anyone who\u2019s been hurt by loved ones before. And, of course, that\u2019s all of us. We\u2019ve ALL been hurt before, by our parent, or parents, by our sibling, or siblings, by our friend, or friends, by our spouses. So this ‘BE VULNERABLE TO YOUR SPOUSE’ prescription is a tough one to follow. But, if we can bite the bullet and bear the pain, it\u2019s one that will produce tremendous rewards of love and connection to our husband or wife.\u201d<\/p>\n

As it happened, we were counseling a certain couple shortly after the conference weekend, and the kallah admitted her fear of allowing her chatan to have the last word. She thought that if she did, he would walk all over her, similar to the situation she\u2019d observed in the relationship between her parents.<\/p>\n

Relying on what we\u2019d so recently learned during the Marriage Enrichment Retreat, we began discussing one\u2019s ability to trust, and the difficulty of exposing vulnerability to one\u2019s partner. We then shared some of the strategies, techniques and exercises we had acquired during the previous weekend. We hope to continue sharing our knowledge and wish to express many thanks to Frank Buchweitz, his team at OU\u2019s Department of Community Services<\/a>, and the presenters for an \u201cEnriching\u201d Shabbos!!<\/p>\n

\n

Rabbi Reuven Boshnack is the OU\/Jewish Learning Initiative on Campus (JLIC)<\/a> educator at Brooklyn College Campus and a Mental Health Counselor (limited permit).\u00a0Shira Boshnack is the\u00a0OU\/JLIC educator at Brooklyn College Campus<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The OU\u2019s JLIC (Jewish Learning Initiative on Campus) program places Orthodox Rabbinic couples to serve as Torah educators on local college campuses in conjunction with Hillel. Now on fifteen campuses in North America, JLIC educators strive to enhance the learning opportunities available to students, and also bolster an infrastructure for Orthodox life to flourish. Educators<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":466,"featured_media":14342,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13951","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-marriage"],"yoast_head":"\nMarriage Enrichment: An Educators' Perspective - OU Life<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"As JLIC educators one of our priorities is to help students & alumni move to the next stage in life so we recently attended the Marriage Enrichment Retreat\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.ou.org\/life\/relationships\/marriage\/marriage_enrichment_-_an_eductors_perspective\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Marriage Enrichment: An Educators' Perspective - 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