Tisha b'av and marriages

Today is the holy day of Tisha Ba'av, the ninth of Av, the fast day marking destruction of the first and second temple, as well as the dates (different years) the Jews were expelled from Spain, France, and England. This date also marks the date of the announcement of the "final solution" as well as the deportation from the Warsaw Ghetto. There are even more connections, but clearly this is a bad day for Jews, which is marked by fasting and meditation.

Clearly not a day connected to joy or weddings, or white dresses. 

But I heard some wonderful "midrashim" about the day and lessons for marriages. 

Before the destruction of the temple, sheep, cows and goats were brought as sin offerings. Why these animals? Because each of them represent something that we need to sacrifice in our own behavior if we wish to have successful relationships. The sheep follows the crowd, making decisions based on what others will think. Sacrificing our inner "sheep" means that we stop making decisions based on our neighbors rather than on what we know is right. 

The goat represents the way we are driven by desire. Desire can be wonderful, but not if it is governs all our actions. The same is true for the cow, which represents being useful ALL the time in ALL ways. It is wonderful to be useful, unless that is all we do, multi-tasking every moment of the day, and forgetting to care for ourselves. 

So what  does all this have to do with marriages? It is said that when the temple stood there were as many prophets as the number of individuals who walked out of Egypt, meaning the G-d spoke to us..each of us..personally. But that connection, for so many reasons, is more difficult to find. So how do we connect now? By doing a mitzvah...fulfilling a commandment or "good deed."  And the most powerful way to do this is in our intimate relationships, of which marriage is one. 

So if relationships are holy, and offer us a pathway to spiritual connection, then we should bring our best self to each other. One way of doing to stop blaming others and taking responsibility for our own actions. We do this by sacrificing our inner sheep, goat and cow, so that we are open to T'shuvah...returning to the world of connection. 

We build strong relationships by changing ourselves. When we change ourselves we change our relationships and the world around it.