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At the Core of Infidelity
Today’s upside-down world has created and showcased a victim known as a “trans widow” – a woman who has to deal with the fact that her husband has “discovered himself.” His new self magically no longer involves his wife. This is somehow seen as legitimate because it is about a person “being true to himself.” In a nutshell, the husband has decided that he is simply more important than his marriage. His relationship takes a back seat to self.
One does not have to indulge in sexual confusion to act in this way. Most classically, this kind of selfishness was displayed by those who chose to be unfaithful to their spouses.
When men or women individually commit any wrong toward a fellow human being, thus breaking faith with G-d … Any party whose wife has gone astray and broken faith with him… (N. 5:6 and 5:12).
Isn’t it interesting that the phrase “breaking faith” is the same phrase whether it applies to somehow being disloyal to G-d, or to a woman not remaining faithful to her husband? Does this suggest that there is a similarity between infidelity to G-d (expressed by stealing from another person) and infidelity to one’s husband?
We can explain this by examining the precise word. The word expressed here for “breaking faith” is מָֽעַל, ma’al.
Isn’t that strange? The word shares the same root word for a very common word in the Torah, literally translatable as “from on,” but used in the following contexts (“ma’al” bolded):
Creation: God made the expanse, and it separated the water which was below the expanse from the water which was above the expanse. (G. 1:7)
So Lot chose for himself the whole plain of the Jordan, and Lot journeyed eastward. Thus man parted from his brother. (G. 13:11)
To Abraham’s sons by concubines Abraham gave gifts while he was still living, and he sent them away from his son Isaac eastward, to the land of the East. (G. 25:6)
In these (and many other) examples, isn’t the meaning clear: that ma’al is about a separation between objects or people wherein the person separating sees themselves as taking the high road? Waters above (heavens) versus waters below? And Lot and Avram each choosing separation instead of their relationship? Even Avraham’s other sons accepting gifts instead of trying to interact with their step-brother?
Is this, then, the essence of both infidelity and breaching with G-d: acting with rank selfishness, putting oneself above the relationship with another person? What is infidelity in a marriage if not discounting the person you are married to?!
Isn’t this concept at the very core of adultery and even idolatry? The pursuit of one’s self-interest or pleasure, but at the expense of our foundational relationships? Choosing the path, as Lot had, of material wealth and enjoyment over doing the hard work of investing into a challenging relationship?
Doesn’t this describe anyone today who chooses to abandon their relationships in order to be “true to themselves”?
Is the choice of this phrase a way for the Torah to explain that an adulterous woman has acted in her perceived self-interest, separating from her husband as surely as the waters above separated from the waters below, or Lot from Avram?
Isn’t this also at the core of “commit any wrong toward a fellow human being, thus breaking faith with G-d”?
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Rebekkah and the Camel
Does this understanding of ma’al apply elsewhere? For example, when Rebekkah first sees her future husband:
Raising her eyes, Rebekah saw Isaac. She fell from (ma’al) the camel. (G. 24:64)
In a physical sense, Rebekkah falls off the camel. But perhaps, in a spiritual sense, the very opposite occurs? Perhaps she actually separates upward from the camel, in order to start her relationship with her husband?
Could the text be using this phrase (first used to describe the waters above separating from the waters below) to tell us that Rebekkah is breaking from the animal kingdom, and her background with an idol-worshipping family, in order to forge a new connection to the meditating Isaac?
Published in General
The number of “trans widows” certainly takes a distant back seat to the women who break up a marriage/family simply because they are no longer “happy.”
If you are a gay man, don’t get married to a woman and have children. I know an ex-family like this and everybody is really screwed up or committed suicide
I recently saw videos of Rabbi’s and Jewish dating service people talking like this. Except for the fact that they vote Democrat so much, Jews make a lot more sense to me.
Incredibly tragic stories.
Reading such stories of “trans” whatever is no longer surprising.
Meaning these stories have become commonplace.
These stories had to start somewhere and they had to be surprising when they were started.
I want to know when these stories started. By who were these stories started.
Are there any documented “trans” stories of a hundred years ago? Do they these “trans” stories in third world nations? Why here? Why now?
If they are religiously observant Jews (not just ethnically Jewish), then they likely vote Republican.
In terms of raw numbers I’m sure what you say is true. I still can’t help but feel for the wife in this scenario.
Well sure. But usually it’s the women who break up families.
I never understood why it is noble and honest to destroy one’s family by a late-life orientation change but an equally honest reflection of desires and personality such as a choice to move to Vegas to drink, gamble, snort and pursue 19-years old strippers is considered invalid, selfish and wrong. If that lifestyle is the real you according to your feelings and desires, how dare anyone judge?
Having a beard used to be the only way to fly but now it’s a just a dick move.
Here’s too much information. He definitely, totally was gay. The reason he married my aunt is because my family was far more screwed up than I knew. His son killed himself. I talked privately to somebody that knew the family and she said the first two kids were really screwed up. They didn’t talk to anybody at school. You can definitely feel the difference between the first two and the last one. The second kid married to Korean, and now she lives on the other side of the world being in English teacher and in that environment, she is basically g-d and she doesn’t have to deal with any crap over here. Extremely religious. When it comes to men, if you are gay, just be gay unless you’re really conscious about what you’re doing. Some gay men can work it out where they have kids and a family and all that but, you really have to have your act together. I saw him for the first time in 20 years the other day and it was really good to see him. Good guy, but man, my family is so freaking screwed up. My mom’s family is a joke. I wish somebody would have told me. Everybody acted like nothing was wrong and they sure as hell didn’t talk about it with me. I think the only people that weren’t totally damaged was one of my cousins that an informed opinion told me that her family was so screwed up she didn’t take any of it seriously. She didn’t go to college and just got everything done and it seems like her kids turned out good. The other one is my mother’s youngest brother. He was a mistake and he just got way the hell out of the Midwest the second he got out of college. My dad had narcissistic personality disorder and it didn’t bother my mom because I think my mom’s mom had narcissistic personality disorder. lol All of mom’s sisters got divorced or never married, plus a lot of hidden scandals.
If a man is gay, he better just go with that unless he’s really thought out something else. They don’t have any damn power over it.
In my family, pretty much everyone ignored one uncle being gay, although it was totally obvious. But fortunately he never married/had children, so nobody else got messed up because of it.
They may not have any power over being gay, but they absolutely have power over… hmm, I suppose, over what they do with it.
Wow. Could have been a reality show on AMC or Bravo.
When I was a young teacher, I recall a kid who was acting out nearly all the time but never seemed malicious. There was something oddly cold and unreal about his parents which called to mind an insight from a family therapist who once gave a lecture to the faculty including the observation that the family member who is acting act is often not the one who is crazy. It also brought to mind Scott Peck’s book People of the Lie in which a family dynamic becomes perverse because protecting some falsehood, some false image that becomes the greatest value to the detriment of all else. (It turns out, Peck, a very insightful man, had a few secrets of his own.)
Getting family energy right makes everybody better and fuller. Poisoning it distorts lives, maybe forever.
I really, really needed to hear that. All but two of us are really screwed up.
I also forgot to say that, my uncle that moved the hell out of the Midwest was married for about a minute and never got married again. No kids. Not really religious behavior for a family of supposedly religious people. Of course my mom never told me he got divorced. lol
I think this analysis is dead-on.
I’m definitely not saying that some people don’t completely act out late in the marriage and do some destructive things, but man if you’re gay just go with it or you better have a plan that you thought up yourself. Dennis Prager would always say there were gay men that would get married to a woman and have babies and go to church just because they felt strongly about all of that but I don’t know.
This is one of the rabbi videos I was talking about as far as commenting on marriage. I think it makes a lot of sense. It’s short.
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/sXJyoTYnNHU
I like Jews, Jewish philosophy, and Judaism so much but I don’t get why they vote Democrat. lol
I’m going to try to figure out what the other video is. There are obviously tons of these of Jewish dating coaches and rabbi’s talking about dating and marriage.
Well, on average, gay men are a lot hornier than anybody else by far. That is just a fact. I’m pretty sure statistically they have a lot of trouble keeping anything like a marriage vow, which is a secondary reason I’m not fired up about the government saying that homosexual marriage is the same thing as heterosexual marriage. I forget what they said, but somebody here had some logical explanation about why it was that way. I’m not saying they shouldn’t get a certificate from the government about a household formation, but it’s not the same thing as heterosexual marriage.
The social pressures/expectations for that used to be very strong, but not any more. Now they’re all about “My Truth.”
I would start with try not to be fake as soon as possible. Like in your teenage years. If you come from a crappy family unit, it’s not that easy.
You have to accept yourself as you are. The sooner you do it the better. I was driven into being what my dad needed for his business. It was patently ridiculous. He can’t even do any of the things he drove me into. After watching videos about narcissistic personality disorder, it’s amazing how much they know about it now and how people with NPD behave. He worries like hell about a couple of things in his business and the rest of the time he makes it look like he knows all about everything because he has to be perfect. Every single conversation is shaped that way, and I’m not exaggerating.
*edit
My standardized tests for college were way off for what I was going to do. I went to a lousy school for math with a lousy guidance counselor that literally spent one minute with me on this stuff and gave me the greenlight on anything I wanted to do. Total, exceptional, waste of human capital of all time. World record.
One of my side hobbies is that I write for a very popular Jewish dating column. Under a different name, of course.
Good man.
This might be the other video.
Here’s another good one. Really good.
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/sXJyoTYnNHU
Here’s some more.
My brother-in-law is a PhD psychologist and successful. The woman he married has a social worker degree.
The gay uncle is a unsuccessful PhD psychologist.
The uncle that moved away is a Psychologist.
My other sister has a goofy masters degree in some woo woo thing they had out in California.
Everyone is damaged in my family except for more or less two.
Mom’s other sister was really weird.
Shorts don’t embed. It’s easy to fix, just delete the www. and turn youtube into youtu.be and delete the .com/shorts
See?
More evidence that what people often do in college is try to fix their own problems. The craziest people I’ve ever known, had degrees – sometimes advanced degrees – in psychology etc.
And a lot of stupid people become teachers. (When I was going to Oregon State, the average GPA in the “school of education” was lower than the athletes.)
Fair point in the abstract. But I think in contemporary times it is NOT about the principle. Instead, it’s about who or what it serves. In contemporary society it’s now the most sinful taboo for a straight man to pursue his goals, desires and appetites without reservations. It must instead be in the service of Feminism or LGBTQIA2S+ ideologies. If a woman however does it, it becomes “empowering”. A man can become a “Trans man” or woman (whatever the correct PC lingo is) but a man cannot become a selfish man in his own right pursuing his own narrow self interests. The modern man must be a neutered servant to a capricious master basically.
Btw, I’m not endorsing the view a man should simply nuke all duties and responsibilities and go full on hedonistic. I am not. I’m simply pointing out the paradigm we are currently living in. But I do understand why some men say “screw it, I’m going to die anyway” and go ahead and do it. I’m just not one of them.
I count neglect as the greatest gift my adults gave me. I could not begin to imagine what well-hidden competency they might have to contribute, with rare and valued exceptions. While I regret not putting my worship life in order earlier, they weren’t well qualified for that task. I was luckier in that my college selection was perfectly suited for me.
I bet iWe wasn’t expecting the content in this thread!
Those therapists and so-called counselors aren’t much help either in my view. Ricochet cheaper than a shrink. Which touches on a subject of a post if I get around to writing it.
I always kinda thought the Bible was R-rated. The seriously messed up stuff people do and the dysfunctional families etc. But it actually reflects the human condition. In fact documents it depending on your religious views. The Cotton Candy gospel types don’t touch this stuff. However, something tells me iWe is not a member to a Prosperity Gospel Church where you can manifest things. Maybe Joel Osteen with his growing library of canonical books can shed some light on the issue. Hum, “I AM” two words that might change my life today. What a minute, for Jews and Bible scholars doesn’t the phrase “I Am” have an implied meaning? Didn’t that power result in some guy from Nazareth having a bad day?
But I appreciate the Bible references iWe comes up with.