Divorce — A Sermon by Rabbi Harold M. Schulweis
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are reserved to Valley Beth Shalom, a California nonprofit corporation.
Rabbi Harold M. Schulweis: Aleha ha-shalom -- is very protective of our
only son. She was cut out of the same mold, as they celebrated, the
Jewish mother who wrote to her son who was with the United States armed
forces, fighting between North Korea and South Korea, she wrote him a
postal card with four Yiddish words, "Mish zikh nisht arayn." And I have
always -- during the preparation of these remarks, I heard her voice very
often. Pick another topic, pick another time, pick another place, there are
enough themes to either talk about, why do you want to talk about divorce?
Mish zikh nisht arayn.
Her mother was a very good woman. I realize that there are tremendous
hazards in speaking about divorce, in walking no matter gingerly among the
minefields of this most volatile, sensitive, complex and painful concern. I
know the dangers of generalization. I know that no two marriages are
alike, that no two divorces are alike, that not all parents and not all children
react to divorce the same way. I know that. I know that things vary
tremendously with the age of the child, with the gender of the children, with
their ego strength, with the character of the altercations at home, with the
character of the divorced parents. I know the trickiness in using statistics,
and I know that there are bloodied heads out there, wiser and nobler than
my own.
But I must say that with all due respect to momma, not to raise this issue
before this very congregation, on this very holy day of individual and
collective introspection, is to betray the mandate of Judaism, which is to
hear and to respond to the suffering of people. It would be to deny the
mandate to exercise Jewish intelligence, Jewish wisdom, Jewish ethics in
application to the lives of people who have been deeply insulted and
injured. I want you to know that the tears and the screams can no longer
be contained in the rabbi studies; they have spilled over, that containment,
and they are now very much in the public domain.
These days when you speak about marriage, there is an unusual
nervousness, unusual apprehension in the air. We have come to accept
the tentativeness of marriage, the reutilization of divorce, which is now a
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rite of passage somewhere between marriage and death. And we have
very low expectations. And with it there grows a tremendous, deep
cynicism. The joke has it, this is part of Gauguin humor, part of gallows
humor -- Jewish gallows humor at that. The son says -- the husband says
to his father, "I'm gonna buy a ring, I want to have it engraved from Larry to
Kathy." And the father says, "Listen to me, son. Don't have it engraved
'from Larry'."
We have, all of us, grown tremendously immune to statistics. There's
hardly an article on the subject of divorce that doesn't begin with almost a
casual announcement that one million marriages will break up in the United
States this year, that divorce is multiplying like mad flies in the sun. Forty
to forty-five percent of marriages end in divorce -- you're not shocked, we're
not shocked, we are not children.
Even a scant two decades ago, the media was able to arrange for carrying
of sitcoms like "Father Knows Best" or "Leave It to Beaver" or "Make Room
for Daddy" or "Ozzie and Harriet." We don't watch anymore. Can’t be
done You're not going to find a program like that in contemporary terms,
when we had programs like "Alice" or "One Day At A Time" or the cinema
which reflects how much we have changed. "Kramer Vs. Kramer," "Four
Seasons," "Ordinary People," "Only When I Laugh." The Columbia
sociologist Amintai Etzioni says that At the rate of depletion, we in America
are going to run out of families before we run out of oil."
Forty-five percent of all children born this year were lived in a single parent
household for some period before their 18th birthday -- 45 percent. People
are marrying and divorcing and remarrying and re-divorcing. Six out of
seven divorce people remarry, which is good. Except for the incidence of
second divorce is proportionately greater than that of first divorce.
Fewer than 60 percent of second marriages endure, and fewer still of third
marriages. Once upon a time, we said these are statistics for the gentiles.
A gentile concern, not Jewish concern. Today, we know that 41 percent of
all Jewish households are led by single parents. So, once upon a time, you
could tell simple kinds of jokes and attribute them to Jews, but certain jokes
you could never attribute to Jews.
I want to give you an illustration of a joke that could only happen in the last
10 or 15 years, which really represents Jewish humor. Two mothers are
talking about their families. One said to the other, "Wish me 'mazel tov,' my
daughter got married." "Mazel tov." "Not only that, she got married to a
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doctor." "Mazel tov." "Not only that, but before that she was married to a
lawyer." "Mazel tov." "Not only that, but before that, to a CPA." "Mazel
tov, mazel tov, mazel tov."
Nobody can feign surprise. Nobody here is innocent of knowledge, what's
going on. And in recent years, you know that there's been an unusual
tension that surrounds public events, that there's a volume of bar mitzvah,
we were very fortunate we had many of them. But increasingly, we find the
situation of tremendous tenseness.
A mother would say to me sometimes, "Rabbi, I don't understand why I'm
so nervous. After all, Jeffrey knows his Haftorah backwards and forwards,
he knows his speech. I am so nervous." I know why she's nervous. I also
know why Jeffrey is nervous because we sat together just months before in
my office, she and Jeffrey and Jeffrey's older brother.
And she began by saying, "Rabbi, I know how you feel. But I just can't
bear it. I will not, I cannot have my ex-husband up there. It will kill me."
Her eyes light up with fear. "He just left us high and dry, after all that I have
done for him, in moments when -- he refused to pay his synagogue dues.
He doesn't care for whether or not Jeffrey has a bar mitzvah or not, and
now to see him, Mr. Piety, stand over there and present the Tallis and
express all his tremendous declarations of love for Jeffrey, it's hypocritical.
It's wrong. And I can't stand it." And she breaks down and she sobs. And
we sit, all of us, in that little study in silence. The boys with downcast eyes
and with lips that were drawn tight. And you can feel the heat of
embarrassment. So I lean over and I take from Jeffrey his speech which
declares his love for Judaism, for his mother, for his brother, and makes no
mention of the father.
He lives with his mother. "Jeff, honey," she says, "after all, it's your bar
mitzvah. Do you want to have your father up there with you or not? You
have to make up the decision, it's your bar mitzvah, not mine." And Jeffrey
is silent and he shrugs his shoulders and he says, "I don't care." He cares.
I know his mother.
She is not as shrewd but is a fine, warm, sensitive, intelligent, and
compassionate person.
And I know Jeffrey's father who was a
distinguished physician with a wonderful reputation in the community, and
is a generous, spirited, and intelligent man. They are members of the
havorah. I am not dealing with street people.
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Shabbat morning, 8:45 a.m., Jeffrey is there and he is leading the
congregation in Sukei Dezimra and we have Jeffrey's mother and brother
and grandparents there. A little later, Jeffrey's father arrives accompanied
by his new wife. They walk down the center aisle and he sits on place
there behind the second bar mitzvah with an intact family and I can see an
awful lot of other good seats, by the way.
I have one of the fringe benefits of being a rabbi. The only difficulty is that I
see too much. I see for example, that Jeffrey is craning his neck, looking
over to where his father is, rises very hesitatingly and rushes across the
aisle, shakes hand with his father, looks back at his mother to see whether
or not she approves, then rushes back and slinks into his seat.
And we're all nervous, and I'm nervous as well. I'm not nervous about
commentary but I'm in a fix because flanking him on either side is Jeffrey
and the other young man, and I don't know what to talk about. I got to
watch my words. Should I talk about the importance of family rite? Shall I
talk about the sacredness of Ishbak, then I'm pouring salt in the wounds of
Jeffrey and his family.
Should I not talk about that and with that omission, in some sense is that
fair to the other family? And how do I relate to the new wife? Was I too
warm, too approving or too cold, too aloof? And I have to watch my syntax
because they asked me, "Please, Rabbi, do not say, 'Jeffrey, the son of Dr.
and Mrs.; say Jeffrey the son of Dr., Jeffrey the son of Mrs.'" Jeffrey is
going to have two bar mitzvah parties. One is thrown by his mother she
wouldn't have the father there, one from reciprocity is thrown by the father
because the mother will not be there -- two parties. Two parties. Lucky,
lucky Jeffrey. Lucky, lucky catering.
Statistics are bloodless, but these are hemorrhaging lies. Bar mitzvah is
not a single, simple event. It never was but it became much more so an
event, an event with all kinds of roots and all kinds of branches, all kinds of
conflicts which become focalized around the bar mitzvah because the
family is gathered together. The parents of the parents are here to see
how well the marriage has functioned. It's a rite of passage not for Jeffrey
alone but for the whole family, and it doesn't exult itself here.
Two weeks ago, I walked into a school courtyard to talk to the principal of
the day school. And as we were talking, a little girl, maybe 7 maybe 8
came over and tugged down his jacket and asked to be kissed. And he
lowered his face and she kissed him. We kept on talking. Three minutes
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later she came back to ask again to be kissed. And I said to Barry, "Is this
child a child of a broken home, divorced home?" and he wanted to know
how I knew it.
This child has grown suddenly very sullen in school. She is cheerless.
She can't get it out of her head no matter how many times she is told that
somehow, she is the cause of the breakup of her parents. And she still
pleads with her father each time he visits her, "Please come back, Daddy.
I'll promise I'll be good."
This other child's mother has remarried a man with his own children. And
this wonderful woman, she wants so desperately to make a new life for
herself and for her child. And her new husband whom I know is a prince of
a man. Truly a prince of a man. He takes the young man out for games
and -- if anything is a little bit too permissive. And the boy likes him well
enough that the kid is conscience-stricken. He's afraid to express his love
because it will be, for him, a betrayal he thinks of his father. It's a violation
of his fantasies -- the fantasies of so many children. Years after the divorce
-- somehow rather, no matter how rotten and rotten the marriage was that
somehow there'll be a grand reconciliation and he'll have his father back
again.
So he locks himself up in his bathroom. And after hours of pleading, the
mother, in frustration, screams, "Okay then. If you don't like it here, go live
with your father." You're not going to see this in the Brady Bunch.
You saw the picture, "Kramer Vs. Kramer," do you remember the custody
trial in which Meryl Streep, the mother finally regains the custodial rights for
Billy who was aged seven, and Billy cries and says to his father, "Where's
my bed gonna be? Where am I gonna sleep? Where will my toys be?"
We have a Billy like that. He's in our school.
He's a nice Jewish kid. Every Friday he comes with a rolled up sleeping
bag. And the kids make fun of him. But he brings it because one week,
he's with his father, one week with his mother and he has no bed of his
own, and he is one confused, frightened little boy who wets his sleeping
bag.
Well, you hear that Friday evening a couple of years ago there was a bar
mitzvah here and I -- it's a memorable event because I gave a sermon and
presented it in 20 minutes. It was an unforgettable, incredible moment.
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And being finished in 20 minutes, I asked the congregation if there were
any questions. They would have to do that so soon.
This man got up and said, "Yes, Rabbi. I have a question. I want to know
why I'm a non-person, why I am ostracized, why nobody speaks to me."
This was no mashugana. He was no lunatic. This was the uninvited father
of the bat mitzvah whose name I did not mention because I was assured
that he would not be there. And I thought about this girl, and wondered
what she would associate for the rest of her life with the bat mitzvah. And
with the synagogue. And with Judaism, and with the rabbi, and whether
when she has children of her own. Around bar and bat mitzvah time, she
wouldn't go a little bit nervous.
These are private holocausts of people whom you and I know, and I must
confess to you that originally, and very often, I feel so saddened and so
angered at the damaged lives that I want to rail against divorce. And I see
these children of Armageddon, I see this and I just am filled with accusation
and with condemnation and with judgment and with taking sides, and I feel
to say to both parents "How in the world can you be so done selfish or
cruel, so hedonistic, so narcissistic that you don't care what happened to
innocence?"
Until I draw a little closer to those who were involved. And I sit face to face
with the people who are divorced, who are a divorcee, and for a moment
enter into their lives. And I say to myself, "Who am I to stand in judgment?
What kind of conceit is it for me to point a finger?" These are men and
women, very often, who are hopelessly entrapped in households filled with
never-ending sarcasm, embitterment, destructive screaming, smoldering
resentments, people who are devoid in their homes, in their lives, of any
laughter, of any love, of any sweetness, of any song.
They are not the husband and wife -- they are adversaries. Judaism allows
me -- allowed me this simple-minded absolutism? Have I become a priest - a priest for whom divorce is either venal or mortal sin? Do I ever marry a
couple from Mark and Matthew "What therefore God has joined together,
let no man put asunder"? Does the Jewish marital vow include the line "till
death doth us part"?
For Judaism, divorce is not a casual matter. The rabbi who issues the Get
very often fasted on the day of the Get. The Talmud says, “He who
divorces his wife, even the altar of God sheds tears." Divorce in Judaism is
the court of last resort. But divorce in Judaism is not necessarily the worst
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possible fate. There are hellish marriages for which divorce is euthanasia.
It's not easy to be a rabbi. Not these days. I am not now dealing with ritual
issues -- simple ritual matters like -- permitted or prescribed. I am dealing
with men and women, many of whom are courageous persons who are
willing to pay and are paying a terribly high price in order to straighten up
their lives.
Things are not what they appear to be. That much I can tell you. From my
experience, they're never what they appear to be. And I can also tell you
that there are no villains and there are no saints. That the divorced are no
better than I am. No worse than I am. That the divorced have no less
moral sense than I have. You see these divorced women struggling to
recover from a shock of divorce is struggling to recover from the fact that
with the announcement that she is now divorced, every single male
including those of her former friends, feels that she is fair game for sexual
assault, for sexual advances.
You see this woman who is such a popular woman? Had so many friends?
In the havarah, in the sisterhood, she has now become a pariah. She has
become one of the untouchables. She is cast in the role of the femme
fatale, of the Jezebel, and she is there lonely and isolated and abandoned
and dejected and rejected. And that man who has become a born-again
bachelor. He's sick at heart because he tells me that he doesn't like, he
cannot stand playing the dating game, that he cannot stand new flirtations
and disco courtships, and he says to me, "Rabbi, it's too early to give up
and it's too late to start all over again." He's a pathetic man. This is a man
who is always frightened of losing the children. That he has become a
sugar daddy to his children -- bribing them with gifts because he is afraid
that they will disinherit him.
There is tragedy enough in divorce. There is tragedy in the finest, most
civilized divorce. In the best of divorces, there is a terrible grieving. A
terrible sense of fear and of guilt and of loss. It is death. It is death. One
man whom I have great respect for told me divorce is like a never-ending
death. That's a pity that we don't have a right like the right for death for
divorce. Something like Kreah, tearing of the garment, something like
putting earth into a casket of one's cremated memories.
Something like a Shiva or a shloshim, because it is clear to anyone who
had dealt with this, the same kind of thing that Kubler-Ross talks about
when she talks about death and dying are going on -- in the process of
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divorce. Fear, rage, anger, blame, shame, bargaining, pleading, regret,
remorse, accepted. Death.
The closest analogy we have is the writing of the get, because the get is a
religious document witnessed by people, witnessed by two witnesses in the
presence of a Bezdin of a tribunal written out by hand by a sofer, 12 lines,
and it is called interestingly in the Bible sefer k'ritut, which means a bill of
cutting, of severance. And in fact when it is presented to the wife, then the
wife is gives it back to the Bezdin and it is cut. Its four corners are cut, as if
one cuts into separate parts two people who once were as of one flesh.
But please understand that the get is not a punishment. It is not an act of
indictiveness. It is an act of love. I know how paradoxical it sounds to you.
But it is called, a letter of release. A letter of freedom in which party is
encouraged, is allowed to start again a new, you are now allowed to other
people. It is a sacred act.
It's an act of love that you and I cannot live together as husband and wife,
does not mean that feelings and responsibility and duty and common sense
has been thrown out of it. The dissolution of our marriage does mean the
death of decency and of dignity. For we once loved each other. We once
caressed each other. We once shared the deepest moments of intimacy.
And together, we bore these children. We are no longer husband and wife
but we have not divorced our children.
Our children are not orphans, and we have no right to orphan them. That
requires some tremendous commitment, some great moral courage. But I
think it's exceedingly important for an all of the darkness and despair of
divorce, there is a spark of holiness to be salvaged. Children can be
spared. Children are, in all the literature, in all the conversations that I've
had, amount to the same thing. These children are frightened to death.
They are abandoned. They feel stranded. They feel cast off. They're
worried about if anybody will take care of them physically. Anybody will
nurture them, anybody will love them. They are afraid that just as the
father left the mother or the mother or father, they can both leave the child
stranded.
Children can be spared. They can be assured in words and acts. We both
are here for you. We both will not forsake you. We both love you. And the
critical term over and over again is the word 'both.' It is the crucial factor for
the preservation of the child's self-esteem, self-worth. For his emotional
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health. What is necessary is the loving stable and continuing relationship
with both parents.
Both parents. Both parents. Professor Andrew Watson, a psychiatrist, a
professor of law and psychiatry at the University of Michigan put it very
simply. "Girls must learn how to become women, but they must also learn
how to relate to men. Boys have to develop masculinity while they
understand the ways of women." And these crucial lessons are learned
from the father and the mother and it cannot be done, it cannot be done
without father and mother; it requires an intensive contact with both, and no
lawyers and no courts and no litigation and no psychologist and no
psychiatrist can be surrogate for the healing power of a father and a
mother.
Now, I'm not done. And I understand fully well that what is being talked
about is something that is exceedingly difficult to perform. Because there
are hurts and anger and pained and guilt and sense of betrayal, and desire
to vindicate, the desire to be vindictive, desire for revenge -- and that's not
easily put aside. But what is called for here is something like a heroic
sense of maturity. What is called for here is some sort of self-restraint of
these combative adversary impulses. Heroic wisdom does not say that
you're not going to have those feelings.
You can't deny those feelings, but you can contain them. You can contain
them of the basis of your love for your children. It calls for two people to
adopt between themselves in ethics of dissolution based upon the love of
children so that children will not be forced and compelled to perform parentectomy -- a surgery in which they choose between one parent or the other.
Who will you live with? Who would you live with? Him or her? Who will
you have there? Will you have him up there? Invite him to your Simcha or
not invite him to your Simcha? It is fine to say "I have given you life and
death. Choose life." But to say to child, "I have given you father and
mother. Choose," Is cruel.
I remember as child myself, I had a wonderful aunt who, I suppose you
refer as cute and intelligent, but she would always says, "Who do you love
more? Your father or your mother?" And I remember that it was only a
game and I remember that of sheer near-contemplation of making such a
choice would make me sick. And finally, learned how to answer. Both, I
said to my aunt. Both, I said to my aunt. Both, I said I love them both the
same way. A child of divorce is born of one flesh, now it's being torn aside.
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I will never forget a Sunday morning at the end of Sunday school, two
parents -- each claiming that this was their Sunday with their child. Each
quarreling in the courtyard, each one literally tearing up the child, "Come
with me." All out of the sake of love. I want you to know that parentdectomies leave tremendous odds not for one generation -- I want you to
remember that not God, not God, but men and women visit the iniquities,
their iniquities upon the third and the fourth generation.
I just read this past week by coincidence Martin Buger when he was three
years of age, parents divorced. His mother left. And here is now, an old
man, writing the story of when he was three years old he told that to a
playmate and said to the playmate, "She will come back." As a child, the
only children can say. But no, she will not. She will never come back.
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