Shalom Bayit as in Gan Eden
The Holy One, blessed be He, revealed Himself to Adam HaRishon and commanded him: “From every tree of the garden you may surely eat. But from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, you shall not eat from it, for on the day you eat from it, you shall surely die” (Bereishit 2:16–17).
Adam went to his wife and told her: “We may eat from all the trees, but there is one tree with which we may have no connection at all — not by eating from it, and not even by touching it. I therefore ask you to be careful not even to touch it.”9
Thus they began their shared life with unity and honor. The ministering angels would roast meat for them and strain wine for them.
That wondrous hour, when Adam and his wife lived together with wholesome shalom bayit, remains for us as a source of longing — a model we hope to merit and reach.
This is why our holy Sages instituted (Ketubot 8a) that at the time of the marriage of a bride and groom, we bless them that they should merit this very state. As the blessing reads: “Gladden the beloved companions as You gladdened Your creatures in Gan Eden of old. Blessed are You, Hashem, Who gladdens the groom and bride.”
As we know, the Holy One, blessed be He, commanded us in 613 mitzvot, and our holy Sages revealed many more mitzvot through which a person can reach the very highest closeness to G-d. Yet regarding none of them do we find the term Gan Eden mentioned in this way.
Only with regard to shalom bayit do we find Gan Eden invoked, as our Sages embedded it in the blessing: “as You gladdened Your creature in Gan Eden.”
With this blessing we bless the young couple that their shalom bayit will resemble the peace that reigned in Gan Eden. For when there is true peace in the home, it is a form of Heaven on earth.
Measure for Measure
No sooner had this bliss taken root than the first jealous creature in the world — the serpent — appeared.
He saw the shalom bayit between Adam and his wife and envied them. He approached the woman and began speaking with her at length, until he ultimately succeeded in causing her to eat from the tree and to give her husband to eat as well.
As a result of the sin, the Holy One, blessed be He, expelled Adam and his wife from Gan Eden. With that expulsion, the shalom bayit between them was broken apart, as the holy Gemara states (Eruvin 18b):
“Rabbi Meir says: Adam HaRishon was exceedingly pious. When he saw that death had been decreed through him, he sat in fasting, separated from his wife, and wore belts of fig leaves on his flesh for one hundred and thirty years.”
For one hundred and thirty consecutive years, Adam and Chavah did not meet at all.
The holy power of the Name Yud-Hei ceased to shine, and the cord that joined and bound the two worlds together was torn apart, and the world sank into darkness.
In those generations, the very concept of shalom bayit was absent. Therefore, in those generations, the word “his wife” is not mentioned at all, nor is the name of a wife recorded.
The sacred value called “home” became cheapened, as the verse states: “They took wives for themselves from whomever they chose” (Bereishit 6:2).
Since they blemished the Name Yud-Hei, their punishment too came through the Name Yud-Hei.
As the Kli Yakar writes (ibid., v. 15):
The primary beginning of the waters of the Flood came because of immorality, as it says, “They took wives for themselves from whomever they chose.” Through immorality they desecrated the sanctity of the Name Yud-Hei, which mediates between husband and wife. When the yud and hei are removed from them, what remains is fire that “consumes until destruction” (Iyov 31:12).
This is what our Sages meant when they said (Sanhedrin 108b): “With heat they corrupted, and with boiling water they were judged” — for they themselves had ignited the fire.
For this reason, we find the number fifteen in the punishment of the Flood — fifteen being the numerical value of Yud-Hei — appearing in units, tens, thousands, and tens of thousands. In units, the Torah says: “Fifteen cubits upward did the waters prevail, and the mountains were covered” (Bereishit 7:20). In tens, it says: “The waters prevailed upon the earth for one hundred and fifty days” (ibid., v. 24). In thousands, the Torah says: “This is how you shall make it: the ark shall be three hundred cubits long, fifty cubits wide, and thirty cubits high” (ibid. 6:15). When the ark’s length, three hundred cubits, is multiplied by its width, fifty cubits, the result is fifteen thousand square cubits. And in tens of thousands, the height of the ark was thirty cubits; each of the three levels was ten cubits high. The volume of each level was therefore one hundred and fifty thousand cubic cubits.
The number fifteen that appears so often indicates that although the generations’ decree was sealed because of theft, the original root was immorality and the desecration of the Name Yud-Hei, whose numerical value is fifteen.10
But eventually, the punishment ended, and Noach and his sons emerged from the ark, and a new spirit began to blow through the world.
9 Avot DeRabbi Natan 1:5.
10 The Kli Yakar continues that this idea also explains the severity of Chizkiyahu’s punishment when he refrained from engaging in procreation. The prophet told him, “Command your household, for you shall die and not live” (II Melachim 20:1). Chazal explain: “You shall die” in this world, “and not live” in the World to Come (Berachot 10a). The Kli Yakar explains the reason why the punishment for neglecting procreation is so severe, affecting both this world and the World to Come: The verse says, “For with Yud-Hei, Hashem formed worlds” (Yeshayah 26:4), from which the Gemara teaches that this world was created with the letter Hei, and the World to Come with the letter Yud (Menachot 29b). When a person refrains from building a home and continuing life, he causes, as it were, the Name Yud-Hei to withdraw from the union of husband and wife. This is considered as though he had damaged the very Name upon which both worlds depend. For this reason, his punishment is to be driven from both worlds.
