GEN1196 Nowhere are the ethical ideals of married love more tenderly expressed than in Judaism. In our religion, it means ideals and spiritual experiences shared; it signifies the struggle to work out together the will of God in everyday life and the effort to make the home a place of friendliness, refreshment and peace. In the happy home, God becomes more real to all who dwell there and to those who visit it. This aim is suggested by the other word for marriage, Nissuin, which means an uplifting of the soul and an ennoblement of human desires. There is a verse in the Bible which contains both a warning and a definition of the true marriage of souls. [this verse] The words “and he loved her” come after the words “and she became his wife.”   Logic would have reversed the order. What lesson does the verse convey? To teach that love after marriage is the sequel and the effect of a perfect partnership in which joys, anxieties and responsibilities are shared jointly and unstintingly. Cynics say that marriage is wonderful at the start but soon romance fades away and then all is not “happily ever after”.   A dull monotonous round in “double harness” takes the place of what seemed, “once upon a time”, such a thrilling state of existence. Some marriages are like that; but they need not be. “When husband and wife”, says the writer of ‘The Threshold of Marriage’, “are purposed to work for happiness, to learn by mistakes in their understanding of one another, then marriage becomes more interesting and more joyful each year. Here is an illustration. You light your sitting-room fire. At first, the wood and paper flare up, and the flames flicker and dance. Yet it is only when the fire settles down to the steady glow that it really does its job and provides the comfort and the satisfaction you look for. So it is with marriage. The later years of mature love and deeper experience may have lost some of the sparkle of ‘first love’; but what they have gained is precious beyond compare.” It is in the relationship of the partners after marriage that our ethical teachings are seen at their best. The husband is to honour his wife more than himself and to supply her with all the comforts of life she needs; of course, in measure of his means. If he does so, he will be a happy man; for blessings come to a home on account of a good and virtuous woman. Here are some of these blessings: she rears his children; she it is who makes it possible for him to pursue his studies undisturbed by attending to his physical wants; she alone can fill the house with happiness and holiness.   More than one religious historian of our people has borne witness that the wonderful and mysterious preservation of the Jews is due to the Jewish woman. This is her glory not alone in the history of her own people but in the history of the world.   LEHRMAN 250-1