"We have given each other grief for years, we have read the self-help books, and we have done the counseling. Do you really think we can ever make this work?" The rabbi is no prophet, but he may guide the couple to draw inspiration from none other than this week's reading of the parsha of Sotah, the laws of a wife who is accused of destroying the very family in which she may be very invested.
That is because the Torah does end the parsha on a happy note. The couple that survives the Sotah ordeal physically intact, unharmed by the Divinely charged water and thus acquitted from the accusations brought forth, is promised great growth and harmony. Thus, it emerges that a family whose mother stubbornly challenged her husband's request for greater modesty, violated the laws of yichud, and was accused publicly and unrelentingly of infidelity, can still somehow, after all is proven false, pull it all back together. If for that optimistic message alone to the many who step back from the abyss, we were to study this parsha annually, dayeinu!
However, I think Hashem also presents some tools in this parsha for the couple who has to rebuild a relationship that certainly has been shaken to its very core. Chazal stress the supreme value of shalom bayis by pointing out Hashem's directive to erase His written name, the heart of all sanctity in writing, in order to bring peace and harmony to a home. Clearly, Chazal understood that Hashem's name was not being destroyed to end a marriage but, rather, to help in salvaging a very troubled one. Perhaps the couple who watches the kohein erase the very record to which we would accord uncompromising respect and which is His representation in a physical world, learns that the success of their second chance will depend on their ability to sacrifice even precious self-defining dreams when necessary.
That is why I often cringe when I hear a chupa or sheva berachos drosho that encourages spouses to be vigilant about their individuality throughout their future together. I don't think that is the message of the optimism of the parsha. Rather, dream and define oneself as a team ready to sacrifice threatening aspects of one’s individuality, albeit very attuned to one's strengths and contributions.
A similar idea is quoted by Rashi as an introduction to the parsha of Sotah. Concerned about the juxtaposition between Parshas Sotah and the preceding parsha of appropriate gifting to kohanim, Rashi explains that one may well lead to the other. Here, the message is that if you hold back the trumah from kohanim, you may meet him in the Mikdash with your noncompliant spouse. It must be upsetting to suspect one's wife of infidelity and be told that this is happening to you because you held back on your charitable giving! Yet, here too, the Torah is suggesting that the separate routes that these spouses may have taken can still converge once again if they learn to give and give more and even enjoy it all the while.
RABBI YAAKOV NEUBERGER
