Friday, February 22, 2013

Men, Women, and Megillah


[This is not as much a Purim dvar Torah, as much as it is a thought related to the title, using examples from Megillat Esther.]

Emotional vs Intellectual decision making

By Rabbi Avi Billet

I don’t care very much to compare women and men simply because I think the comparison isn't fair. Human we all are, but other than the obvious physical differences, I believe that the natural differences that come from being different genders make comparisons ill-conceived. It's almost like comparing a tennis player to a soccer player, wondering which is a better athlete.

I first heard the following generalization from one Rabbi W/Vunder who was one of the rabbis on the Heritage Tours trip to Poland that I participated in as a teenager, when I noticed Israeli girls weeping in Auschwitz while I was scribbling in my notebook and keeping my emotions to myself. He said, "That's the way it is. Girls are more emotional." The generalization is more supported in a simple Google search than the other way around, and it follows that males – in general, though by no means exclusively – make more decisions based on a rational or intellectual thought process, while females are (generally, though not exclusively) more prone to making decisions based on emotions.
            
With that in mind, I confess that this past week, in advance of one of my public speaking engagements, I happened to run some of the ideas past my wife, who told me that one of the thoughts I planned to share – though heavily sourced in a comment of Tosafos (Yoma 72a) as well as by many Rabbinic sources from the last several centuries – was anachronistic and inappropriate for the intended audience. 

Was her response emotional or highly thought out? It may have been both. But I can say with certainty that my defense was purely emotional. What's wrong with it, I argued! Every person who studied in yeshiva knows this! Yes, she responded, but your audience is not a bunch of yeshiva guys. I realized I was letting my emotions dictate what my intellect was telling me should be OK to share. The emotion versus intellect roles, it seems, had been reversed.

As luck would have it a rabbi I admire happened to approach me before I spoke. I quickly asked his advice to which he responded quoting Bereshit 21:12: "All that your wife Sarah has told you, listen to her voice!" And I did. They were both right.

With all this background, I think there are two very worthy points we can take from Megillat Esther which can play a significant role in the male-female relationship: the first for spouses and the second for those looking to find spouses.

The Megillah is full of characters who are impulsive, who make every decision based on their emotions. Arguably the only exceptions to this are Mordechai explaining to Esther how she can not shirk her opportunity to save her people (which causes Esther to change her emotional response to an intellectual response), and Haman's wife Zeresh who lays out for her husband a logistical plan for how to rid himself of the nuisance called Mordechai who literally ruins Haman's day every time he refuses to bow. She tells him, "Make a wood [gallows] 50 cubits high, and in the morning you will tell the king, Mordechai will be hanged, and you will come to [Esther's second] party happy." (Esther 5:14)

The king's insomnia may have uncovered his obligation to Mordechai for saving his life, but he may have chosen to honor Mordechai in a different way had Haman not shown up in the middle of the night and gotten tricked into playing into the king's "trap." Even if Mordechai had been otherwise rewarded that night, without a personal parade and Haman's disgrace, were Haman to come along in the morning to say, "Since saving your life, Mordechai has become a traitor!" there is a reasonable chance to say the king might have allowed the execution after he had paid his debt to the man.

But everything changed for Haman because of his problem; he did not listen to his wife! His wife said, "Sleep on it. Wait until the morning." But he had no patience. He let his emotions overtake him, and they told him, "You have to do this now." Intellectually it made sense, but the intellect was really driven by the emotion.

The moral of the story: If your wife gives you good, sound advice, take it and follow it.

The second lesson about relationships is based on a comment made by Rabbi Elijah Kramer, the Gaon of Vilna (Gra), when Achashveirosh crowns Esther queen. "Esther was brought to the king in the tenth month, Tevet, in the seventh year of his reign. And of all the women, the king loved Esther, for she found favor and kindness before him… and he placed the crown on her head, making her queen in place of Vashti." (Esther 2:16-17)

The Gra wrote, "He crowned her immediately, without waiting to see if there might be one more pleasing than she. He told himself there is none better than she."

One can argue that a man who has spent every day with a different woman for four years either knows everything about women, doesn't know what he's looking to find, or knows exactly what he is looking for in a woman.

In light of the Gra's interpretation, my vote is for the final possibility because I believe that the "Maybe there is someone better" attitude is one of the most destructive approaches to "shidduchim" out there. Too many people play games with others' time and lives because they don't really know what they are looking to find.

We can learn from Achashveirosh, however, to know what you're looking to find so that when it comes your way there need not be hesitation. Go for it. Work at it. Make it work. Lightning doesn't strike. Bells and whistles don't sound. You just know. You make a decision, a commitment, and then a "go" at a life together. And with God's help, it lasts a lifetime.

And when men listen to the sage voice of "all that Sarah says to you," (not that men don't have good advice, ideas, suggestions and encouragement to provide as well – it does take two to tango, after all) we can come out looking great for doing the right thing.
            
And our relationship is only strengthened as a result.
            

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