Deeper Insights into Marital Relations

The Kabbala of Male and Female

We will now enter a Kabbalistic study of male and female, and the teachings of the Ari z”l and Reb Moshe Chaim Lutsato, known as Ramchal, a very great Kabbalist.

Let us take a look at Shir HaShirim, Solomon’s Song of Songs. The work is very hidden. We know however that it is about love of a man and a woman. The second passage is “Let him kiss me from the kissing of his mouth.” Strangely, we have no idea who “him” is. He has not been introduced.

Passage three “The scent of your good oils, your name is poured oil. That is why the young lasses love you.” This is very strange. A woman who seems to be in love with a man tells him that the young lasses love him. Why should she, a woman in love, tell her lover of others who love him?

Perhaps we could answer that “The scent of your good oils” is an ordinary thing, because oil is supposed to give off a lovely scent. But “your name is poured oil” is something else. A name is poured oil? What does poured oil off have to do with a name? But the woman in love tells her lover that his power is such that his name itself arouses strong feelings in all of the young lasses. Furthermore, she tells this to him without fear that he will leave her and find a young lass. Her love is strong and his love is strong, so there is no fear of either one looking for another person to love. But the woman arouses her husband’s love for her by letting him realize that her love is perfect because his love is perfect, and that his level is so elevated in that regard that young ladies swoon at the mention of his name. This is surely a wonderful love for any man. But to have his female partner mention this tells us something special.

The fifth and sixth passage have the woman describe herself as black, and various shades of black. That is, passage 5 has the woman describing herself as black. Passage six has her calling herself extremely black, and she calls out, “Do not see me as I am extremely black, for the sun has blackened me…”  She begins a complaint about how “the sons of my mother caused this to me, and they made me guard the vineyards but my vineyard I did not guard.” Can it be that a mother would allow one of her children to be blackened and disgraced? And those who did this to blacken a sister, do they have no feelings for a sister?

Note that a mother is a female. The black lady is a female. Those who created the blackness are men. The men make sure that they have a slave, the daughter of the mother. So powerful are the men children of the mother that the mother can do nothing to protect her daughter from turning black with the slavery imposed by the sons of the mother.

The next passage, 7, introduces the male, the lover of the female who is black. He ignores her problems and speaks lovingly to her. He begins his remarks, “Tell me, she who loves my soul, how do you pasture, where do you crouch in the afternoon, because why should I be as one who goes from place to place to the flocks of your fellows?” There is no trace of anything but love. There is no trace of anything negative. What happened to the travail of blackness?

Who is this male? Why does he ask her for her address so that he doesn’t have to travel all over to find her? Doesn’t he know where she lives already if he is greatly in love with her?

See the commentary of the Ari z”l on the second passage in Shir HaShirim, “Let him kiss me from the kisses of his mouth.”  It seems that the Shir HaShirim is a story of the love of HaShem and the Schechina, which is the love of HaShem and Klal Yisroel. And yes, the Schechina suffers “blackness” and other things, and yet, this does not disrupt the love of HaShem and the Schechina, nor does it disrupt the love between HaShem and the Jews. Furthermore, just as the Schechina in this song of Solomon suffers blackness and other suffering, so do the Jews. They are a people of suffering. But the Shechina suffering and Klal Yisroel suffering are still united closely with HaShem, with all of the pain they endure.

The Schechina is a divine property, very close to HaShem, higher than any mortal can be. And yet, the female level of divinity suffers terribly. We discussed before her cries that she is black and even very black. Understand it or not, she is Schechina and suffers. The Jews are also a holy people very close to HaShem, and they, the holiest nation, suffer more than other nations. It seems that the female level of high holiness and the Schechina, and also the Jewish people, have a role in great holiness but that role is somehow connected to suffering. We turn now to the Kabbala teachings of Rabbi Moshe Chaim Lutsato.

Rabbi Moshe Chaim Lutsato is not only one of the greatest Kabbalists, but his book on simple improvements to our behavior is a very famous classic that is owned by nearly every Torah Jew. This is what he says about our topic, the fact that a holy female Sefira seems to have much suffering. See in his Kabbala classic Adir Bamorom (in my volume it is on page 119) he writes, “You must know that all things found in this world must have a source in the Sefirose, and even the deeds of mortals, otherwise they could not exist.” If so, if this world is comprised of male and female, and there are male and female Sefirose, we assume that one is rooted in the other. Thus, if the female Sefira of Schechina is the source of females in this world, both of them likely share how women relate to men. We know in this world men seem to be the powerful and famous gender and the women are weaker and tend to suffer more than men, and this matches exactly what we see in Shir HaShirim about the misery of the Schechina who is blackened and complains bitterly.

Having said that, we must continue with the Shir HaShirim and its passages about the male and female Sefrose, or sacred worlds that relate directly to the male and female of this world. The Kabbalistic female is the lowest world or the Sefira of MALCHUSE. The Kabbalistic male are the holy worlds above MALCHUSE.

Passage seven in Shir HaShirim is the end of the many passages of the problems of the female and her relation to the one she loves. Now the male talks and he knows nothing about her problems and her blackness, only love for her. It seems he can’t locate her and wants her to tell him where she is, otherwise, he will have to skip and jump here and there to find her. Now, if the male is a sefira, which is a very holy even divine property, why can’t it locate the Schechina or MALCHUSE who is also a divine property?

Here we see a very important revelation about the heavenly and this world relationship between male and female. Even in heaven, in the realm of holy Sefirose, the male suffers because his love, the Schechina, is somewhere he cannot locate. He needs her to tell him where she is. Does she call him up or send him a telegram? It doesn’t tell us that. But for our purposes, we have established the suffering of the higher sefirose as both male and female. And as Rav Moshe Chaim Lutsato already told us, that what happens in this world and what happens in the Sefirose are similar, because this world cannot exist without the forces that come to it from the sefirose. Thus, this world and the sefirose are similar. The female of the Kabbala as a Sefira called MALCHUSE suffers and so do women in this world.

Now we are at a point where we must know exactly what the situation is with the male and female in the higher world of sefirose, because they are the source for what happens in this world. We turn once more to the work of Rav Moshe Chaim Lutsato, Adir Bamorome, on the same page we are previously, page 119 in my edition.

We come to an incredible teaching. We know that there are ten stages in Kabbala. The highest level is KESER and the lowest level is MALCHUSE or Schechina. There are also ten Sefirose. There are higher and lower levels in both. We assume that number 10 comes first and is next to level 9, which is close to level 8, down to the bottom. If so, Malchuse or Schechina is at the bottom of the count, the farthest from the highest worlds. But Rav Moshe Chaim Lutsato turns everything upside down. He says that Malchuse, the bottom female level, is quite close to KESER the highest level. Keser is such a holy level so close to HaShem that we are not allowed to describe it and we cannot understand it at all. How could such a super holy sefira be very close to Malchuse?

The problem is worse than that. It seems that KESER number 10 is remote from Chochmo father, number 9, because father is afraid of Keser. But it seems that the bottom level which is Malchuse is not at all afraid of KESER. See on page 3 of Adir Bamorome an explanation of this: “HaShem wanted a connection between the higher lights and people in this world. So that the deeds of people can reach to the higher worlds. And for this to take place HaShem created the MALCHUSE with the power to rise and fall according to the deeds of people.”

Thus, if we assume as before that mortal women of this world and the female of higher worlds are similar, and we accept that MALCHUSE was designed to be a conveyor of mortal deeds to the higher sefirose, even to KESER, we see that MALCHUSE and KESER are together. This is stated clearly on page 119 of Adir Bamorome, namely that there is a deep relationship between KESER and MALCHUSE. He writes, “The MALCHUSE rises to the high KESER, and the secret of the matter is that KESER is only the higher lights that rests upon the lower…and behold, the connection for KESER is with the MALCHUSE, and this is a great secret with the covert statement of ‘I am first and I am last.” (Yeshayeh 44:6) …The power of the higher lights to rest upon the lower creations is with the hidden power of MALCHUSE. And this begins with the very beginning of reality. Afterwards is revealed that which is necessary to sustain the MALCHUSE. And when Malchuse comes down she is the secret of KESER itself. For from her goes forth all of the rest [which is necessary for the lower worlds]. And the hidden level of this is KESER MALCHUSE.”

This means as follows: The MALCHUSE receives the deeds of mortals, good and bad. It sends them to the higher world and to KESER. At that point, the very highest world of AIN SOFE is aroused and pours down into the lower holy worlds and this finite world a response to those forces sent earlier to the higher worlds above MALCHUSE.

We conclude our study of male and female with the following:

1)    The Talmud and the Written Torah make it clear that women historically, in biblical times, were superior to men. We explained this above, such as the Rashi that says clearly that Soro the wife of Avrohom was superior to him in prophecy.

2)    The Talmud makes it clear that greater is the trust of women in HaShem than the trust of men. This is also discussed above with the source Berochose 17.

3)    In our Kabbalistic study we find that the female level of Schechina was designed to have all of the deeds of mortals organized to be shot up to the higher holier worlds. They reach to Keser and beyond, to the world higher than Keser which is AIN SOFE. The AIN SOFE then takes the deeds of mortals, the good and the bad, and sends them down to the bottom of the Sefirose, or MALCHUSE. From MALCHUSE the purified deeds are distributed to this world. 

4)    The female MALCHUSE has much evil in it because it is where the deeds of people good and bad are deposited and then shot up to the higher worlds. The MALCHUSE has evil and suffering, and this is the “blackness” of Shir HaShirim, among other sufferings mentioned there.

5)    Since the levels of this world and the levels of the higher worlds are equal, when women suffer in Kabbala in the higher worlds, as MALCHUSE or SCHECHINA do suffer, we must therefore understand that women in this world also suffer. And just as MALCHUSE suffers and yet because of her suffering she ends up shooting the affairs of this world to KESER and above KESER to AIN SOFE, and because AIN SOFE shoots these lights back down to MALCHUSE, we see the greatness of the female in this world and the next. We do not find that the male levels such as Father or the six levels above MALCHUSE are close to KESER. Only MALCHUSE is. Thus, the female suffers but this brings her to a level higher than the male, as the gemora says, “Greater is HaShem’s trust and confidence in women than that of men.” They belong in the highest worlds, not the men. This is based upon the reality that women are DIN or justice and men are CHESED or kindness. DIN has suffering but CHESED or kindness is the opposite of suffering.

GOAL TWO-Part Two – Marital Relations

Marital Relations

By Rabbi Dovid E. Eidensohn

The gemora in Nedarim 20A brings four kinds of damaged children born from parents whose marital relations lacked modesty. The gemora on the next page 20b reverses this by saying that “a person may do with his wife whatever he chooses.”

The problem is that the previous gemora that blamed immodest marital behavior for producing four kinds of very sick children claimed that the rabbis who said this were “administering angels” the highest form of angels, who were much greater than human beings. If so, the rabbis who argued with these holy rabbis were less than they were, and the law is surely not like those rabbis, but rather, we would accept the thoughts of the rabbis whose holiness made them to be as the administering angels. Furthermore, rabbis so holy as to be as wise as administering angels surely knew more about the formation of children than the rabbis who were less knowledgeable, who had no title to know angelic matters.

Furthermore, the idea that a rabbi who prized marital modesty would make such a bold statement as “a person may do with his wife whatever he chooses” is amazing. And to believe that a person who speaks this way is greater than rabbis who are so holy that they resemble administering angels, is incredible. Yes, the rabbis who disagree with the rabbis who were as administering angels were the greatest rabbis of the Talmud, Rebbe and Rav, but still, their bold statement of turning people loose to do in marital intimacy whatever they want to do is incredible, especially as the gemora quoting them strongly blocks this idea by advising people to abstain from a lot of marital relations. Something is missing here, something very important. This is reinforced by the fact that ladies complained to these great rabbis about the way they were mistreated by their husbands, and the rabbis replied, “What is the difference between you and a fish?” meaning that just as a person may eat a fish with any style of cooking it, the same applies to one’s wife. That is astonishing in the extreme.

Let us return to the statement of the rabbis who disagreed with the rabbis who were as the administering angels. “Anything that a man wants to do with his wife, let him do it. This is similar to a piece of meat that comes from the butcher store. If he wants, he eats it with salt, or fried, or cooked, and the same applies to buying a fish.” But are the greatest rabbis of the Talmud saying that treating a wife is like cooking a fish or a piece of meat? Is it not incredible to insult women like this? We can infer that rabbis even great ones have absolutely no respect for women, or else, we can be honest and say that such a statement requires some serious study, because the Talmud clearly honors women greatly. Let us first establish this, and then, only then, can we attempt to answer our problem with this gemora.

How do we know that the Talmud greatly honors women? First of all, there is a gemora in Berochose, the first volume of the Talmud, that says as follows:[1] “Greater is the trust that HaShem has trusted women more than his trust for men, as it is said, ‘Hear my Voice women of trust, hearken to My words.’”

One of the great classics of the Talmud in Medrash, or studies of the biblical text, is the Tanchuma. We find there in the Torah portion of Pinchas where five women petitioned Moses, the assembled Jewish leaders and senior rabbis, in front of the entire assemblage of Israel, to give them the land owned by their father, because he died and left no sons. G‑d responded to this and ordered that they be given the father’s possessions. This is stated clearly in the Torah[2].

The Medrash Tanchuma then states, “In that generation (of Moses) the women were strong in believing in G‑d, but the men were sinners. We find that Aharon, when pressed by the Egyptian sorcerers among the Israelites at Sinai, who, together with the Jewish Israelite men, were sure that Moses had gone to heaven after the Giving of the Torah by G‑d and died there. Therefore, the sorcerers pressured Aharon to take gold from their hands, because they knew that if he did, it could turn into a Golden Calf that could talk, and inform the Jews that it was the new god for the Jews. When a prominent Jew opposed this, they killed him. And no Jewish men stood up to this idolatry. The men, as a matter of fact, gave huge sums of golden material for the idol, but the women refused to give anything. They had trust in G‑d and did not believe the sorcerers that Moses was dead and it was time to seek a new god. THE WOMEN DID NOTHING TO MAKE THE GOLDEN CALF.”

The Medrash continues, “We find the same difference between men and women regarding the disaster of the senior Jewish princes of the twelve tribes of Israel, who went to Israel to spy it out and returned saying that HaShem cannot bring the Jews to Israel because of the strength of the gentile nations that lived there. But the women trusted in G‑d that He was stronger than those nations, as they had seen, that Moses had personally killed the great giants who protected several of these nations, and had destroyed their armies and divided their conquered territories among the Jews coming into Israel. The women believed what they saw and defied the men by not joining the masses of men who called for the Jews to defy G‑d by returning to Egypt and forgetting about ever going to live in Israel. Rather the women demanded a portion in Israel after the Jews would succeed in conquering it, something they were sure would happen, unlike the men who rebelled against G‑d.”

The Medrash continues, “Therefore, this portion [about the piety of the five ladies] is written in the Torah right after the death of the prophetess Miriam. She saved Moses when he was cast into the river by the Egyptians. From that we see that the men rebelled against G‑d and the women trusted in Him.” The Medrash is not clear in how Miriam was involved in this, but it is indicated in the story of the Jews leaving Egypt and crossing the sea miraculously, where the men stood and sang a song of praise to G‑d, but Miriam gathered all of the women who took musical instruments they had brought with them from Egypt, formed a huge circle, and danced to celebrate the miracle of salvation from the destroyed Egyptian army. The key to that victory was the Jewish women’s faith in G‑d. The men did not bring musical instruments from Egypt, but rather swords. They did not believe that G‑d would save the Jews, but only that the Jews would save themselves with their swords. And when G‑d wiped out the Egyptian army, the Jewish men without any musical instruments, and with no dancing or song, only recited some praise for the divine miracle, but nothing compared to what Miriam did with the women, who danced and sang in a great circle playing the musical instruments they had brought from Egypt, because they trusted in G‑d to save them from the Egyptians. From this we see that the women were superior to the men in their trust in G‑d, as taught in the gemora above and the Medrash we quoted.

All of this is very nice and completely correct, but actually, it makes our problem with the above gemoras even more problematic. How, after all of this, did the men have the right to do what they wanted with their wives, when the wives protested this as insulting or painful? Does not the Torah and the gemora command men “let him make his wife rejoice” meaning, a man must sacrifice his own happiness to make his wife happy[3]. If so, how could men insult women who did not want them to do certain things that could be quite painful? This is a major problem.

We could explain this by quoting the entire passage there about one who must make his wife happy. It says, “When a man takes a new wife, he should not go out with the army, no duty should befall him for any reason. For one year he should be completely bound up with his house, and he should make the wife that he took rejoice.” Note that the entire passage tells us a behavior for the first year of marriage, not anything afterwards. If so, we could say that just as the passage tells us to bring joy to the wife, and as Rashi and the Zohar explain, it means he must make his wife rejoice, not together with him, but separately, even if he is not happy by making her happy. The key is to make the wife, not himself, happy, for the first year. If so, we can say that the passage in Rambam and Shulchan Aruch that a man can do whatever he wants in marital relations with his wife, does not apply to the first year, because then his whole concern is to make her rejoice, and causing her unhappiness with certain marital experiences is surely not to be done the first year. But subsequently, after the first year, if the husband has already shown the wife his great love for her that cancels his own needs, even if he has to spend money on her that he needed for himself, as Rashis Chochmo explains, then the husband may have whatever marital pleasures he really needs with his wife, less he be tempted to sleep with a strange woman. And the wife, realizing this, suffers somewhat and she may go to great rabbis to protest, but the husband must protect himself from going to strange women, even if he has to, after the first year, do things to her that she doesn’t like.

To explain this, we have to go to the source of the statement of that gemora, and quote the entire piece. We find it in the Shulchan Aruch Aruch Chaim 25:2 and the Rambam in Isurei Biah 21:9 who say essentially the same things, so we quote Rambam here: “A man’s wife is permitted to him. Therefore, whatever a man wants to do with his wife, let him do it. He may have relations with her whenever he wants to, and he may kiss her in any part of her body that he so desires, he may sleep with her normally [in the front] or the other way [in the back] as long as he does not emit seed that goes to waste. Nonetheless, it is a sign of piety when a person does not do these things whenever he wants to, but rather sanctifies himself during intimacy…”

This is incredible. It says that the Torah completely permits all of this anytime and anywhere in the woman, and then he says that piety requests us, but does not demand from us, that we not do these things, but display a more modest approach to intimacy, unlike the “what difference between women and a fish” taught in the gemora above.

Something is very much out of place, and we must find it.

The answer is as follows. Let us look carefully at the words in the Rambam, which are the words of the Shulchan Aruch, and the true meaning of the very strange gemora about women being fish and meat.

The missing idea is this: A Jewish man has usually only one wife, although in past and long gone generations a man could have more than one wife. But this was rare, even in ancient times. Now, a man with one wife, sometimes is as the “administering angels” meaning, now, something different than what we said before. We said before it means he was as angels who knew about babies and what makes them to be born with blemishes. But now we explain it as something else. A rabbi like the administering angels is a rabbi who has no understanding of the excitement of all kinds of sex. That is an advanced level of holiness, not available for most people, not even for most rabbis. And since most rabbis don’t have this perfection of holiness, they have active evil inclinations, which can very easily connect with a pretty woman with the worse sins. Nearly all men have this imperfection and are not angelic at all, but rather, are endangered by any sight of a pretty woman. The only protection for most men, even great rabbis, is to have the kind of open intimacy with their wives which may not please the wives so much as to completely satisfy the husband, who eats his “fish and meat” and is completely satisfied. The wife may not be totally pleased, and she may even go to the greatest rabbis and complain that her husband did this to her or that to her in intimacy, but if the husband has a choice of doing that or doing it with another women who may be somebody else’s wife, and produce mamzerim, we know why the Rambam and the Shulchan Aruch clearly emphasize the freedom of the man to do what he needs to protect himself from sinning with other women.

We can understand this from the basic language of the Rambam. “All that a man wants to do with his wife, he should do it.” That means exactly what it says. A man has a need for his wife for a certain kind of intimacy. If the husband desires to do this act with his wife, and the wife doesn’t do it with him, for whatever reason, either because she refuses to do it, or he refuses to do it, the desire of the husband doesn’t disappear. It would appear when the husband notices the wrong woman, who may be married to somebody else, but who likes this husband as he likes her. To protect the husband, and his family from disaster, the husband is commanded to do what he wants to do with other women only with his own wife, not with a strange woman, and thus be satisfied in a proper way, and not to feel a need for other women. Because any man who has any kind of sexual need that is not available from his wife for whatever reason, is one step away from Gehenum. So he is not on the level of the administering angels, and is ready to go to a hot place. To save himself and his family, he is told: Do it with your wife. Don’t live in danger.

And the wife must accept this, as if she was a fish or a piece of meat. Better an insult than to find out that her husband is sleeping with a woman married to somebody else, besides her, his own wife.

We now return to the great question that the passage in the Torah instructs a Jewish man “and make your wife happy” which means, as Rashi and the Zohar explain, that he is to make his wife happy even if it costs him his own happiness. He must make her happy, not together with him, but only for her. If so, we surely have a problem with treating his wife like a fish or a piece of meat. What about the mitsvah “and he shall make his wife happy?” What happiness is there in suffering physically and emotionally by being a fish or piece of meat?

But this passage “and he shall make his wife happy” is considered by the Zohar as talking about the first year of marriage, and indeed that is clearly stated in the passage that requires making the wife happy. The first year of marriage must be dedicated not to the passions of the husband but to making his wife happy, not making himself happy. Therefore, if the first year in marriage the husband refrains from certain appetites in intimacy, and yes, this could be a problem, nonetheless, the first year is devoted to one thing, making the wife, not the husband happy. Afterwards, when the husband for the first year has shown the wife his great love for her, despite his inner problems with his biological drives, the wife can more readily accept his love for her, which she clearly witnessed the entire first year, and accept whatever the husband requires to maintain his holiness in marriage. Thus, the first year the husband may refuse his biological appetites in intimacy, to make his wife truly happy with him, even though he may not be happy himself with this making his wife happy and not himself. But after the first year, we do not allow the husband to deny his appetites with his wife, because if he does that, he is endangering himself to end up sleeping with a strange woman. That surely is not what the wife wants. Better for her to be a fish or a piece of meat, but to have a husband who does not sleep with other women, even women married to another man. However, if the husband in the first year of marriage fulfills the command in the Torah “make your wife rejoice” which means essentially buying for her what she needs even if he doesn’t have enough for both of them, and she lives in a house with what she needs for herself and any children born to them, if at the same time the husband has marital relations with her, which are important to both, but does certain things which are not pleasing to her, she accepts it, because she knows of the great love her husband has for her, and she appreciates his marital drives which if not used with her, can heaven forfend lead him astray away from her.