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Marriage is an extremely important mitzva. It allows a person to put many values into practice: love and sanctity, unity and faith, loyalty and joy, life and blessing. A person fulfills two important mitzvot by getting married. The first is marriage itself, which includes the commitment of each partner to love their spouse and look after their wellbeing and happiness. The second is procreation, the mitzva to have children.
Some people mistakenly believe that procreation is the primary purpose of marriage. In truth though, marital love is more important. To understand this, we need to review some basic religious concepts:
God created an imperfect world, allowing humans to complete it. This enables us to be partners with God in everything good in the world and to enjoy it fully. The greatest deficiency in all of creation is division. The one God indeed created everything, but because He concealed His light, all creatures are disconnected from Him, and consequently from one another. Each creature looks out only for itself, thus leading to all the world’s strife, discord, conflict, and war.
The goals of Jewish faith are to see beyond the surface separation, believe in the one God, and restore unity to the world. This is why the mitzva of “Love your fellow as yourself” is called a “major Torah principle.” Its ultimate actualization is the marriage covenant between husband and wife, enabling two distinct individuals to unite completely, body and soul. Often, the body and the soul are in conflict. The soul longs for good while the body is attracted to evil. The soul longs for eternity while the body longs for temporary pleasure. Within marriage, the body and soul unite. Even carnal desires, which often lead a person to sin, are uplifted. The mitzva of marriage joins together the noble ideals of faithfulness and unity with the greatest pleasure. The moral value of total devotion joins with the greatest joy.
While the entire creation is God’s handiwork and thus expresses unity, the union of a man and woman expresses an even more profound unity. We can see this clearly when we look at the story of the creation of Adam and Eve. According to the Talmud, they were originally connected back-to-back. God then separated them. When they chose to reunite of their own volition, their bond was stronger, loving, and procreational. As it says: “So the Lord God cast a deep sleep upon the man; and, while he slept, He took one of his sides and closed up the flesh at that spot. And the Lord God fashioned the side that He had taken from the man into a woman; and He brought her to the man. Then the man said, ‘This one at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh. This one shall be called Woman, for from man was she taken.’ Hence a man leaves his father and mother and clings to his wife, so that they become one flesh” (Genesis 2:21-24). Singles all face the same challenge – to find their soulmate, and thus complete themselves and the world. It is from this starting point that a couple can move on to the second mitzva – procreation.
Being married is so important that the Sages tell us that a man who is not married "is not a man". They derive this homiletically from the verses, “This is the record of Adam’s line . . . He made him in the likeness of God; male and female He created them. He blessed them and called them Man” (ibid. 5:1-2). Only when two people are a couple is the image of God within them fully revealed. This allows them to be blessed and to have children. As we read, “And God created man in His image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. God blessed them and God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply’” (ibid. verses 27-28). The Sages add that anyone who is unmarried is left without joy, without blessing, without goodness, without Torah, without a [protective] wall, and without peace. Faithful marriages filled with love and joy bring down a flow of supernal light to the loving couple, adding life and blessing to the world. This is what Rabbi Akiva means when he states, “If husband and wife are worthy, the Divine Presence is with them; if they are not, fire consumes them” (Sota 17a).
We will first explain the value of marital love which expresses itself through the mitzva of ona (marital relations). This will be followed by an explanation of the mitzva of procreation. To fulfill these wonderful mitzvot in purity, the Torah also prescribes the nidda laws (as we will see in Chapter 9). To fulfill them with sanctity, the Torah prescribes laws of modesty, prohibits adultery, allows for divorce, and defines the couple's fiduciary responsibilities (as we will explain in Chapter 10). In Chapter 11 we will describe how a traditional Jewish wedding is conducted.
