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Wednesday, January 25, 2017

Can You Relate?

"Because our relationship with Hashem is understood via the various relationships we have in this world, do we have a different responsibility in our relationship with G-d as a someone who isn't married yet?" 

Thus was the question that was posed in a Shir HaShirim class that I attend. Superficially it's a good question, really, but if you think about it just a little, it falls apart. Every relationship in this world is in a ways a means to help us understand how we are meant to relate to Hashem, but just because someone is married, does that mean s/he understands what marriage is about? Just because someone isn't married, does that mean s/he doesn't understand what marriage is about?

Rabbi Ilan Feldman, in a talk about why this generation is so uninspired and what we can do about it, talked about how there's a difference between the guy who is taking out the trash to survive in his relationship and the guy who is taking out the trash to make his marriage thrive. He compared it to how we approach our Yiddishkeit. It was a good speech and he had many good points, but that's beyond the scope of our immediate topic. The idea here is that you don't need to be married to understand his analogy.

How many people are married and don't have a good relationship with their spouse? How many people don't feel connected to/communicate with/unconditionally love their spouse, ie. recognize that it's a relationship –– a "we," not a separate me and you, and I'm engaged and I "love" you, not because really I love me/how you make me feel? 

How many people aren't married and have an understanding of what marriage is/what it's supposed to be? I'm sure there are aspects that people who are not married can't fully grasp, no matter how many serious relationships they've been in, but this is the same way that someone who is in a bad marriage doesn't get it either. 

Does someone who doesn't have parents relate differently to G-d? (Perhaps s/he does. I'm honestly curious about that.) However, do we not understand how to relate to Hashem as our Melech, because we don't have absolute monarchies nowadays? 

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