Based on the verse, “God sets the solitary in a home, He frees those who are bound with chains,” the sages draw a parallel between marriage (“sets the solitary in a home”) and the Exodus from Egypt (“frees those who are bound with chains”). Before being married and joined with his or her spouse, every individual is likened to a person imprisoned within himself and in his environment. They are unable to reveal the infinite power within them (expressed through the fulfillment of the commandment to “Be fruitful and multiply”). Only through married life can the individual be released from the limitations imposed on him or her by their situation.
Before the Exodus from Egypt, God mentions four idioms of redemption, I will therefore free you from the burdens of Egypt, and I will save you from their bondage, and I will redeem you with an outstretched arm, and with great judgments. I will take you to me for a people, and I will be your God. Corresponding to these four expressions, we drink four cups on the Seder night.
Just as the Exodus from Egypt involved these four idioms of redemption so, in married life, there are four levels of connection between the spouses. These four levels are alluded to in the four terms of endearment the groom uses to describe his bride, “My sister, my beloved, my dove, my perfect one” (יִתָּמַי תִתָנֹי יוִתָיְעַי רִתֹחֲא). We can thus draw a correspondence between the groom’s endearments for his bride and the four idioms of redemption found in the Exodus.
A NATURAL BOND
“My sister” refers to the natural bond between the couple and to the fulfillment of “I will bring you out from under the burdens of Egypt,” which describes an escape from the enslavement to the limiting view of Nature held by the Egyptians to a more rectified conception of Nature. “The burdens of Egypt” represent the difficulties of exile, also described as “the seething waters” that threaten to drown us and disrupt and interfere with the individual’s natural and rectified flow of life.
By escaping these waters of strife, one merits the natural level of love flowing between a man and his wife. This type of love is described in Chasidut as “love that resembles water.” It can be compared to the natural and constant affinity and chemistry that exists between siblings. At this level, love remains an experience confined to Nature and to the natural aspects of the soul, but of course without the limitations and difficulties experienced when Nature is viewed from an Egyptian perspective. Thus, it is explained that the idiom, “I will therefore free you from the burdens of Egypt” refers to the annulment of the enslavement to limitations even before the plagues are brought upon Egypt and before the actual Exodus from Egypt.
AN EmOTIONAL BOND
When ascending to the emotional connection of “my beloved,” the corresponding idiom of redemption “I will save you from their bondage” is also fulfilled. When a person is enslaved to the Egyptian mentality, all his work and actions are devoted to himself and satisfying his own egotistic needs. This is what it means to be trapped within the boundaries of one’s own self. Only in marriage are we saved from such purposeless labor, and we are privileged to work for a worthy purpose, to feed and sustain another person whose needs we are happy to fulfill.
The practical goal of the Exodus from Egypt was to set free the relationship between the Congregation of Israel and the Almighty, a relationship in which through service of God, the Congregation of Israel becomes “My spouse” who, as it were, sustains God. Similarly, when it comes to a wedded couple, only once the foundation of natural affinity is in place can they escape from the limitations of nature and advance towards a more worthy purpose of developing a relationship based on giving to each other.
The emotional connection provides the couple with “love that is likened to fire.” When we attain the holy fire of rectified love, we are saved from the danger of foreign fires or cravings such as anger and lust, which stem from pride and being preoccupied solely with one’s own needs and their satisfaction.
AN INTELLECTUAL BOND
At the level of the intellectual bond, we find the expression “my dove” and the idiom of redemption, “I will redeem you with an outstretched arm, and with great judgments.” The first part of the idiom of redemption, “I will redeem you” refers to the God saving the Israelites from the Egyptians when they were pursuing them into the Red Sea. It is there that the Israelites attained a perfection in God’s eyes that is described as, “your eyes are as [the eyes of ] doves.”
Indeed, the rectification of our eyesight is the direct result of the Splitting of the Red Sea. The sages tell us that “a maidservant saw [through prophecy] what Ezekiel and all the other prophets could not see.” So, on the one hand, we gained a prophetic eye at the Red Sea. In addition, the Splitting of the Red Sea promises us protection from improper use of our eyesight. It was there that Moses promised us, “just as you have seen Egypt today, you shall never see them again, forever.”
The infinite love that manifests through the feeling of “your eyes are as [the eyes of ] doves,” and the insatiable urge that a couple have to look at one another, is akin to the inspired outlook that can save a person from being enslaved to the limited egotistic scheme of life (the Egyptian-centered mind). Incidentally, freedom from the egotistic mindset also frees the mind from the larger scope of sciences and knowledge that highlight the limited, present, and perishable aspects of Nature, but remain unable to see “eye to eye” with the Divine that is hidden within Nature.
In the language of Kabbalah, redemption is referred to as “the World of Freedom” (עלמא דחירו). This is a reality associated with the sefirah of understanding, the world of the Supernal Mother. It is in this state that the Supernal Mother looks eye to eye at her husband, the Supernal Father, to see the revelation of “the true One,” which shines in the latter’s eyes because of his state of nullification before God. When we translate this state of the World of Freedom to the relationship between a husband and wife, it becomes the ability to rise above merely contemplating the virtues and uniqueness of one’s spouse and being able to see the Divine “nothingness” (אין) that lies at their core. Contemplating the virtues of the spouse arouses love that resembles fire, which was discussed in the previous level known as “my spouse.” But seeing the Divine nothingness within one’s spouse allows us to see in them a constant renewal, and thereby experience an unceasing and ever-fresh love towards him or her.
[Indeed, of all the stages of the Exodus from Egypt, the sages specifically compared matchmaking to the splitting of the Red Sea (“I will redeem you”), explaining that the first time a person gets married, the matchmaking is relatively easy, as it relies on the foreshadowing voice that went out forty days before the creation of a child. The statement that “matchmaking is as difficult as the splitting of the Red Sea” applies specifically to the matchmaking needed for a second marriage. In light of what has been explained here, we can say that the “first match” unites the levels of “my sister” and “my spouse” (corresponding to the unification of the final two letters of God’s essential Name, Havayah, the vav and the hei), which is based on natural love and a good life based on shared values and goals. In contrast, the “second match” reflects a higher unification within the level referred to as “my dove,” which represents an ascent to the concealed level also referred to as the sea of the soul, the concealed world, which was revealed with the splitting of the Red Sea and its transformation into dry land.]
THE SUPERCONSCIOUS BOND
The ultimate purpose of the Exodus from Egypt was, “I will take you to me for a people,” which was fulfilled at the Giving of the Torah. In marriage, we achieve this when we reach the level of “my perfect one” (יִתָּמַת). The redemptive idiom, “I will take you” is distinct and does not appear in the same verse as the other three idioms. Similarly, “my perfect one” represents a level of bond and love that is set apart from the three levels that precede it. “My sister, my spouse, my dove” all belong to the conscious and inner realms of the soul (known as nefesh-ruach-neshamah), whereas “my perfect one” refers to a supra-rational connection between husband and wife belonging to the superconscious realm of the soul (the soul of the soul). The Giving of the Torah occurred in the month of Sivan, whose astrological sign is Gemini, meaning “twins,” which was expressed in the twin Tablets of the Covenant, and of course, in marriage, in the feeling that husband and wife are like twins—two halves that fit together perfectly. Indeed, the Hebrew word for “my perfect one” (יִתָּמַת) can be rendered as “my twin” (יִתָמֹאוּת).
With the stage of redemption described as, “I will take you to me for a people,” the equal stature of the souls of Israel and God is revealed, as described by the sages, “my twin, as it were, because I am not greater than her, nor is she greater than Me.” This expression of this equal stature is found in God’s consulting with the souls of Israel regarding the entire process of Creation, even asking them, as it were, whether to create the world in the first place as found in the statement of the sages on the verse, “It is they who are the potters who dwelt in Neta’im and Gederah [alternately: It is they who are the creators who presided over the gardening], who were together with the king in his toil.” The sages interpret this as: “Who did He [God] consult with? With the souls of the righteous,” and all Jewish souls are righteous, as the verse states, “And your people are all righteous.”
This is the level of the marital bond where the couple is united in their will and in their thoughts, i.e., they share the mission to which their lives are dedicated as one, which in a generic manner is, “rectifying reality with the kingdom of the Almighty.”
The numerical allusion that consummately captures the entire correspondence we have made between these two 4-part models is that, the sum of their elements: “my sister, my spouse, my dove, my perfect one” (יִתָּמַי תִתָנֹי יוִתָיְעַי רִתֹחֲא) and “I will free you, I will save you, I will redeem you, I will take you” (יִּתְלַּצִהְי וִאתֵצֹהוְו יִּתְחַקָלְי וִּתְלַאָגְו) is 4498, which is the product of “love” (הָבֲהַא), 13 and “will” (ןֹצוָר), 346.
(from Yayin Mesame’ach vol. 4, pp. 62-66)
