Dear Friends,
“Give in on matters that are important to you, but don’t give in on who you are.” This is a key sentence that I find myself saying again and again to men and women who come to consult with me regarding marital issues. It is an important sentence, since it encompasses an entire doctrine – on one hand complex, on the other really very simple.
On the one hand you have two different people, who are sometimes complete opposites of each other. Each one of them has things that are important to them in their lives, and sometimes the couple’s important things contradict one another, so that over the years their arguments and fights always come back to the same points over which they are divided. Because even though the arguments take a different form each time, in reality they arise from those same basic disagreements between them.
And now we get to the complex question: To what extent should one give in? To what extent should one compromise? The answer is very simple: “Give in on matters that are important to you, but don’t give in on who you are.” Check with yourself how important the matter is, and if it will indeed make you feel “This is not me, I am losing the sense of who I am,” that is a marker that means one should consider the issue very carefully.
In Parashat Nasso, which we will read this week outside of Eretz Yisrael, there are seventy-two Pesukim (verses) that repeat themselves, word for word. These are the offerings donated by the Nesi’im (princes) of the tribes for the sake of inaugurating the altar upon the completion of the Mishkan (Tabernacle) in the desert. Twelve times the Torah goes through the list: One silver bowl, one silver basin, one golden ladle, one young bull, one sheep, one he-goat etc. And here, too, there is a question, which has a simple answer: Why does the Torah, in which every letter and certainly every word are exacting and full of meaning, “waste” seventy-two Pesukim to tell us the exact same thing, over and over? It would have been much simpler to write that all the Nesi’im brought the following offering, and then list its components only once.
The Rebbe focuses here on a very important point. Mathematically, quantitatively and physically, the Nesi’im indeed brought identical offerings. But essentially, from the inner, spiritual point of view, each brought a different one. Each one of them did bring the same bowl and the same ladle, but in their hearts each one had his own private intention; for each one the donation expressed something else in his soul, a different sort of connection to Hashem, a different approach and angle of expressing gratitude, joy, excitement etc. And the message is razor-sharp: in the macro we should live in unity – in love and brotherhood, but in the micro we must still maintain our own personal, individual identity that only we have, the one that makes us unique and makes us who we are.
Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Zalmen Wishedski