Thus shall she be called Ishah
מיכאל ריטש
(L’chovod the nisu’in of my daughter with R’ Dovid Weisberg נ"י. May they be zocheh to build a bayis ne’eman b’yisroel l’shem ul’siferes.)
Adam says about the creation of Chava:
בראשית ב(כג) זֹאת הַפַּעַם עֶצֶם מֵעֲצָמַי וּבָשָֹר מִבְּשָֹרִי לְזֹאת יִקָּרֵא אִשָּׁה כִּי מֵאִישׁ לֻקֳחָה־זֹּאת
Breishis 3(23): “This time, it is bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh. Thus shall she be called woman (Ishah), for she was taken from a man (Ish).”
Rashi comments, לשון נופל על לשון. מכאן שנברא העולם בלשון הקדש: “From here we see that the world was created with Lashon Hakodesh.”
Rashi didn’t say this about anything till here in the first six days of creation. Perhaps the creation of trees, stars, and fish could have been adequately described in other languages. Not this.
The Gur Aryeh explains: Only in Lashon Hakodesh - of all the seventy languages of the world - can one see this idea that a woman is actually part of a man. In all other languages, man and woman are completely independent words, meaning unrelated entities who sometimes happen to work together. For example, in Aramaic, which is often so close to Hebrew, the word for man is אנוש or גברא, and the word for woman is איתתא. Unrelated. In Spanish, hombre and mujeres, in Russian, chyelovyek and zhenshchinah, in Dutch, man and vrouw, etc.[1]
Now, just as Lashon Hakodesh represents the way Am Yisroel approaches the world, the seventy languages represent how each of the seventy nations approaches the world. If their languages don’t contain this concept, on some level it is out of their ken. As the gemara says (Sanhedrin 57b), בעולת בעל יש להן, but Kiddushin or Nisuin they don’t have.
I want to tell you an incredible idea I heard from R’ Chaim Mintz shlit”a many years ago. I’ve been thinking about it ever since. He said: Our main goal in this world is building a relationship with Hashem. But it’s so hard; he is not physical and we can’t sense him in the regular ways. So what did Hashem do? He created many types of relationships between human beings, and each of those helps us grasp one aspect of our even more real relationship with Hashem. We have a human father - and that can help us understand what it might mean that Hashem is our father. We know about a king - so we can appreciate that Hashem is our King. And a master to a slave, and even a שכן, a neighbor - Hashem sends his שכינה into our midst because he wants to be near us. And so forth. It’s a wonderful idea.
One of the very most important relationships between human beings is that between choson and kallah. And so of course this is also one of the most important relationships between Israel and Hashem. The whole of Shir Hashirim is devoted to this incredibly close, intimate, and deep bond. Rabbi Akiva called it, קדש קדשים.
According to R’ Mintz’s principle, this incredible relationship will be something that no one except Israel is really going to be able to grasp. On its deepest level, it only exists in lashon hakodesh and thus only for Am Yisroel.
It’s actually an explicit gemara.
יומא נד• ז"ל אמר רב קטינא בשעה שהיו ישראל עולין לרגל מגללין להם את הפרוכת, ומראין להם את הכרובים שהיו מעורים זה בזה, ואומרים להן ראו חבתכם לפני המקום כחבת זכר ונקבה. (פירש"י הכרובים ־ מדובקין זה בזה, ואחוזין ומחבקין זה את זה, כזכר החובק את הנקבה[2].)
Yoma 54a: “When Israel came up for the shalosh regalim, they used to roll aside the paroches, and let Israel look into the kodesh kodoshim to see the keruvim embracing. They would say to them, ‘See the love between Hashem and his nation.’ ” Rashi explains explicitly, "like a man embracing a woman".
Kind of an amazing idea. We’re talking about a very private thing, the sort of thing that we Orthodox Jews never do in public. Here it was very public indeed, but it was specifically at the regalim, the only time when the whole nation was present together.
Anyways, it says there that when the אומות העולם chalilah came into the heichal to destroy the Beis Hamikdash, they saw these keruvim and said, "The nation whose blessing is a blessing, and whose curse is a curse[3]; that nation is involved in something like this??!" - and מכבדיה הזילוה (Eichah) we were lowered in their eyes.
As I said. The idea that there could be kedushah in this was beyond their grasp.
L’chovod the simcha: The choson and kallah are adding a new type of relationship between people to their repertoire; they are gaining a new dimension to their reality. B’ezras Hashem, it should help them gain a new dimension in their appreciation of Hashem Yisborach as well. May they be zoche to build a bayis ne’eman b’Yisroel, a bayis below, a bayis above, and may all Israel be zoche that our relationship with הקב"ה be renewed as well, בב"א.
[1] Somebody is bound to bother me about English! Don’t “man” and “woman” violate the Gur Aryeh’s principle? Well, check your dictionary. “Woman” comes from the Old English “wifman”, wifeman, similar to policeman and fireman. It means a person who’s a wife. So the real words are man, and wife - again unrelated.
[2] התורה מדגישה שצ“ל הכפורת מקשה, שיהיו כל חלקיו מחתיכה אחת. והיינו שני הכרובים, וכיסוי לארון. וזהו שאמרו חז“ל ישראל ואורייתא וקב“ה חד הוא, שיש להם אחדות ודביקות בארון.
[3] See the Maharsha. But I would have thought it is referring to the words of Bil’am in next week’s parsha; he says this several times. He got the final word on how the nations of the world deal with Israel’s relationship to Hashem.