How to speak to your significant other TB Shabbat 34

How to speak to your signifiicant other TB Shabbat 34

Judy and I come from different backgrounds. Her father Max Diamond z”l was an Orthodox Jew. Her mother Ada z”l grew up in the local Paterson, NJ Conservative synagogue. Although she was a traditional Jew in her own right, Max drove her so crazy with his observance especially around Passover that she kiddingly advised Judy not to marry a religious Jew. I thank God that she didn’t listen to her mother with this advice. Judy grew up in a shomer Shabbat and kashruth house. Me on the other hand grew up in a non observant Conservative home. I didn’t become observant until the summer I went away to college.

Even though I have been an observant Jew for 50 years and a rabbi for 42 years now, I still have some of the same urgency when observing Jewish law as a new ba’al teshuvah. Every week I remind Judy that “Now is the time to light the Shabbes candles.” One time she became exasperated with me. She told me in no uncertain terms that she knows what to do since she has been lighting candles all her life.

I told her that I was just doing what Thursday’s daf TB Shabbat 34 said I should be doing.

“MISHNA: There are three things a person must say in his home on Shabbat eve at nightfall and not before. The mishna elaborates: He should ask the members of his household, have you tithed the crop that required tithing? Have you placed the eiruv for joining the courtyards and joining the Shabbat borders? If you have done so, light the lamp in honor of Shabbat.” (Sefaria.org translation)

She has pointed out that the Gemara never records the wife’s response. I think it did indirectly for “Rabba bar Rav Huna said: Although the Sages said that there are three things a person should, indeed he is required to, say in his home on Shabbat eve at nightfall, one must say them calmly so that the members of his household will accept them from him. If he says them harshly, his family members may mislead him and cause him to sin. Rav Ashi said: I did not hear this halakha of Rabba bar Rav Huna, but I fulfilled it based on my own reasoning.” (Sefaria.org translation)

Espcially during these days of self-sheltering, we should live by the advice of these two sages when we speak to our significant others..