Question:
If a married woman is more spiritual than her husband - who doesn’t want to learn Torah or daven - how should she approach her marriage? What should a wife do in this situation? The husband doesn’t like it when the wife keeps pushing him to be more spiritual. And what should the wife do when their 12-year old son also doesn’t want to learn Torah or daven? The son will usually imitate his father’s behavior. The husband grew up “Chareidi” and that is what he looks like, but he doesn’t enjoy davening or learning, and he does the bare minimum - and sometimes he doesn’t even do the bare minimum. He will skip through most of davening in the morning when he’s not in the mood, which happens often. He has no problem with coming late to shul and sometimes he will daven quickly in the house and he won’t go to minyan. He almost never learns Torah in the home. The set of Shas (Gemara) he received for the chasunah (wedding) is still completely new and unused, for the last 15 years. He has a daily shiur at the shul he goes to, which is about an hour long, but he will skip going to the shiur whenever he isn’t in the mood of going. My children will never see him learn if this is the way he stays.
My question is, what is my role, as a wife – in this situation, where my husband is sorely lacking in yiras shomayim (fear of Heaven) and in Torah learning and in davening – am I supposed to do anything about this? If yes, then what is it that I should do? And, in addition to my question, since this situation is very saddening to me, is there any sefer I can learn which will strengthen me with inner joy?
Answer:
A woman should become strong and stable through developing her own inner world.
Through the inner joy that she will get [from developing her own inner world] she can be of influence to her environment, but she should do so with subtlety.
She should express unconditional love [to her husband and child].
She should daven and cry for the other person [who needs help], but not in front of the other person.
She shouldn’t speak about the topic to the other person.
She will need to do a lot of inner work when it comes to having emunah [faith in Hashem] and savlanut [patience].
She should recognize that all Jews are called the children of Hashem, and therefore Hashem will do [to them] whatever is good in His eyes.
She should not blame herself about anything she can’t do.
She should accept the suffering with love.
For any step of improvement that her husband makes, she should express great, deep joy about it.
Through this [contemplating the tagim of the Hebrew letters], one reveals the intellect from its potential state to its active state. Through this, one can arrive at “simple, non-analytical reflection”. This is not referring to actual “simplicity” itself, but to simple, non-analytical reflection.
The “Inner Silence” series which explains hisbodedus is partially based off this concept of simple, non-analytical reflection, albeit the fact that the series does not elaborate on how to reflect on the various combinations of Hebrew letters and words.
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