Sheva Brachos Torah

Some of these depend on the crowd. I frankly never found the right crowd for the mechasheifah joke, but could be there isn’t. Now that I’m married I can only say some of my jokes when the mrs. isn’t around…

Actyually oomis, you are correct. The Ohr Hatzafun says that women, by dint of being “formed” instead of “created”, are supposed to be better and more refined than men.

Now for chosson jokes.

This week is parshas Metzorah, and that reminds us of the chosson… (you then go on to explain how the metzorah gets transformed, and the chosson undergoes a positive transformation by becoming an adam shaleim)

The chovos halevavos says the moshol of the Rebbe and the talmid walking along and they see a rotting carcass.The talmid says “How smelly is the carcass”, and the Rebbe says “But how white are its teeth”. Even though the stench is overpowering, the Rebbe knows that one has to have an ayin tova and see the good in everyone. In this case, despite the obvious stench, he found the one positive thing jhe could say- the carcass has white teeth. This, my friends, is an ayin tova.

And that reminds us of our chosson. He has white teeth…

anon for this, I tried hunting down a source for it, but the only place I found so far was the chovos halevavos, and he just says it as a moshol.

“This week is parshas Terumah, we we learn about the bayis we made for Hashem. Since a marriage is also bayis, it pays to study the bais hashem to see what we can learn. and we see the 3 most important things for building a bayis (dramatic pause)…namely zahav, kessef, and nechoshes…

May your house be like the mikdash..everything donated.”

It says, ??? ??? ??? ???. so what is the good that we’re talking about? In Eicha, it says ??? ???? ?? ??? ??? ???????, “It’s good for a man to wear a yoke in his youth”. Chazal tell us (Midrash Rabbah Eicha 3:9)that this refers to the yoke of Torah, the yoke of parnassah, and the yoke of marriage. So this is the “Tov” that the passuk is referring to. Even though it will sometimes seem like a yoke and a burden, this is the ultimate good for a person. (So far this is true. )

So if this passuk is talking about marriage, it makes sense that the neighboring pesukim are also about marriage, and are offering advice for marriage. Let’s see what they say…

??? ??? ?????.. let him sit by himself and be quiet…

??? ???? ????…let him put his mouth in the dirt…

??? ????? ???…let him give his cheek to the one hitting him…

The aufruf is to get the chosson used to things being thrown at him…

In order to make sure I was properly mekayem the mitzvah of sheva brachos, I’d like to just say that ?? ??? ??? ??? ??? ????? ????? ??…

the last one of my last post, lo kachal velo sarak, is what the gemara in Kesubos says to say about a kallah. How much more serious can you get?

It says ??? ?????? ?? ??? ?????? ?? ???. We see from here how difficult krias Yam Suf was…

It also says ??? ?????? ?? ??? ?????? ?? ???. How can 2 totaly different things have the same level of difficulty? It must be a proof to the kollel system- Zivug and parnassah are the same thing!

I was once speaking at the sheva brachos of a friend of mine from Brooklyn. As a Brooklyite, he was much more familiar with Yiddish than I was. The week was parshas tzav. I said, “Before I met Simcha I used to think this was Parshas Tzav. Now I think it’s Parshas Tzu.”