Shalom Bayit: A Different Kind of War and Peace

When I think of the theme for our study this year at the Shalom Hartman Institute, A Time for War, A Time for Peace, I can’t help but immediately understand it in an external way – literally, all of the fighting that takes place in the Middle East. This is only reinforced by the events that have been going on since we arrived mid-June. And last week, many of the sessions also looked at war and peace from this standpoint, approaching it through a variety of lenses: Torah, Talmud, Midrash, etc. One professor, Yehuda Kurtzer, who is also the President of the Shalom Hartman Institute in North America, flipped this theme on its head and had us look at it through other lenses, one of which was domestic. This can also be defined as shalom bayit, peace in the home. The text he used was a midrash from Deuteronomy Rabbah, and is one example of how the Rabbi’s domesticate peace. The text reads:

What is the meaning of “seek peace, and pursue it?” (Psalms 34:15) Once Rabbi Meir was sitting and expounding, etc., that a woman went home, it being Sabbath evening, and found that her [Sabbath] light had gone out. Her husband asked her: “Where have you been so late?” She replied: “I have been listening to R. Meir’s discourse.” Now that man, being a scoffer, said to her: “You will not enter my house, whatever happens, until you have gone and spat in the face of R. Meir.” She left the house. Whereupon Elijah, of blessed memory, appeared to R. Meir and said to him: ‘It is because of you that the woman has left her house.’ Elijah, of blessed memory, then acquainted R. Meir of the episode. What did R. Meir do? He went and sat down in the Great Beit Hamedrash (house of study). Now that woman came in to pray, and on seeing her, R. Meir pretended to be blinking. He asked [aloud]: “Who knows how to cure a sore eye by a charm?” Whereupon the woman replied: “I have come to cure it by a charm;” and she spat in his face. Thereupon he said to her: “Tell your husband: ‘Lo, I have spat in the face of R. Meir.” He further said to her: “Go, and become reconciled with your husband. See how great is the power of peace.”

This text is taking war and peace out of a militarized context and domesticating it; looking at the importance of peace in the household, and just how far one is willing to go to create that peace. As Yehuda Kurtzer said, “So great is the power of peace that I’m (referring to R. Meir) willing to subordinate Torah to the power of holiness between a husband and wife.” Here, peace becomes a phenomenon that manifests itself in family relationships, and is so important that a revered rabbi would do whatever possible to maintain it.

I have loved everything that I have learned at Hartman and have had an incredible experience. I especially love when a text makes me reevaluate an entire theme, and forces me to look at it from a perspective I never would have connected with it. I look forward to another week of study!

 

By: Rabbi Karen Kriger Bogard

Shalom Bayit: A Different Kind of War and Peace