Reply To: Ladies First – Is it respectful or not?

No one has to agree with Rav Avigdor Miller’s views. We do have to accept the Rambam. We can acknowledge the fact that it may be hard to live our lives according to the way he describes. This may be due to many factors such as the fact that we may not be understanding him accurately or due to the society we live in or due to the fact that it is difficult to figure out how to apply his words to our lives or due to the (possibly incorrect)meaning that the average Western mind ascribes to his words.

But it doesn’t really matter so much on a practical level. As Wolf said, each person has to figure out what works best for him in his marriage. It is worthwhile to try to figure out how and to what extent we can apply the words of the Rambam to our marriages, but we should not make ourselves crazy about it if it is not working for us.

At the same time, we have to be careful how we speak about the Rambam and other Torah sources. The fact that we have trouble understanding how to apply his words to our lives (whatever the reason for that may be), it does not mean that his words aren’t true. It probably means either that we are understanding him incorrectly or that for whatever reason we are not capable of living up to it. Chances are it’s a combination. IT DOES NOT MATTER. As long as we acknowledge that it IS emes but not something for us right now.

On a personal note, I have had similar experiences in other areas. In my case, they were generally in areas regarding actual Halachos D’oraisa. For example, I realized recently that there I have a problem in terms of understanding how to apply the halachos of Kibbud Av v’eim in my life. I was brought up with a very strict understanding of Kibbud Av v’eim. If you learn the halachos, that seems to be the correct understanding.

However, it occurred to me recently that it is a problem that I have been living my life that way since it is NOT good for my relationship with my parents, and if it is NOT good for my relationship with my parents, it does not make sense for me to be living my life that way. However, I had a problem, because halacha is halacha on the one hand, but on the other hand, it did not make sense that I am supposed to be acting in a way that is bad for my relationship with my parents.

I spoke to someone about it who was able to give me some guidance and understanding of what my approach should be. It is difficult to give it over exactly, but the basic idea was that I came to the realization that when it comes to any areas of halacha having to do with relationships and emotions, etc, you can’t be a perfectionist and you can’t approach it the way you approach not turning on a light on Shabbos. You have to be realistic about who you are and what you are capable of and what works for you while constantly striving for a higher level of course, but not worrying about things that are not in your frame of reference.

There are few people nowadays who can have healthy relationships with their parents if they concern themselves too much about all the technical halachos brought down in the Shulchan Aruch. That is fine. It doesn’t mean those halachos are not emes. It doesn’t mean that they are not the ideal. It does mean that if someone can’t relate to them, they shouldn’t worry about them too much.

The same goes with the above-quoted words of the Rambam which are not dealing with serious clear-cut halachos d’oraisa (unlike hilchos kibbud av v’aim). To the extent that one understands and can apply the words of the Rambam to his marriage, that is beautiful and wonderful. If someone feels that applying the words of the Rambam to his marriage will ruin his marriage, he should NOT do so, because that would be a dumb thing to do, and I think the Rambam would be the first person to tell him this! This does not mean that the words of the Rambam are not correct – it simply means they are not for him right now, or more likely, that he is not correctly understanding how to apply them. It doesn’t really matter what the reason is.