https://hesedyahu.wordpress.com/2020/04/20/learning-about-marriage-friendly-advice/When I got married, I thought to myself that I didn’t know enough about it. I felt out of my depth, that I needed to learn about it, about how to treat a woman, a wife. So I thought I would get some teaching about it.
Now to let you know, I am a man of Caribbean descent raised in the UK and I would be marrying a woman who was also of Caribbean descent raised in Jamaica and America, who was still a christian. It was about a year since I had left christianity, so I hadn’t accepted the oral tradition yet, was just an “old testment guy” and was not into the seven laws at all. But I did revere what I knew of the Jews and their Bible.
My parents had moved back to their homeland by that time and my dad was not so open a man as to give me clear and specific advice, only positive generalities like “just be good to her.” So, knowing some online Jewish resources, I took marriage advice from happywife.com’s rabbi Parmensky and simpletoremember.com’s rabbi Akiva Tatz. I also checked out other sources, always orthodox Jews.
I’m not saying I followed their advice well at all, but a good amount of it stuck and I believe a lot of it had a positive effect on my marriage.
But over the years, more and more, I realise that I had made, at least partially, a significant error. Experiencing certain marital difficulties over the years and learning more about life in general, I see that I had left a gaping hole in my sources for teaching on marriage, and I believe I’m making that lacuna quite obvious in the way I’m writing.
You see, I, as a western, UK-raised, ethnically Caribbean man went to Jews to find out how to deal with a western, ethnically Caribbean, Jam-erican woman, and I only went to the Jews. And that was a flawed approach.
I believe I was thinking too “religiously” and not with worldly-wisdom, with concrete realities. Maybe it was because I had only recently cut ties with Jesus and christianity, and some of its juices and remnants were still in my system.
You see, I appreciate that there are universal teachings in the Torah which can be taught by the Jews. And I stress that they are taught by the Jews because the text of the Jewish Bible doesn’t contain much information about the subject. But it’s important to note that only some of what Jews teach is universal. There are elements that I’m now sure are more cultural to Jews. And relying only on the Jews for marital advice if you are a Gentile, a non-Jew, is a recipe for at least some disaster.
As I’ve learned, we are not all equal. We are not all the same. We may be one human race, but we are definitely not one kind of people with one type of mindset. All people groups of men are not the same in many ways, and the same for all people groups of women. If you try to treat your African or Filipino wife like a Jewess, it may not always work out for the best.
Yes, sure there are similarities, and there are universal teachings that will apply. In much the same way, there are certain medicines and remedies that work for all humans. But there are differences that must be taken account of, because there are some solutions that are less likely to work for a certain type of people than for others.
All I’m asking any sincere reader, all I’m suggesting, is that, if you seek tutelage about marriage, do not do so from a strictly religious approach. Be realistic. Find out about your own people and the people group of your wife, should you choose to accept a wife from another people. That will have its own challenges. Get advice from the wise amongst your own and supplement it with whatever universal Torah teachings there are. But don’t drink any advice from either source as if it’s all pure water that can be thoughtlessly swallowed. Ponder. Test. Learn. Do the best you can.
All the best.
Topic: Learning about marriage: friendly advice (Read 1589 times)