My experience is things are better when the rules are known. That was workable and in fact great until religious people started sticking their noses into our businesses.
I mean to say marriage in the context of a Litvak yeshiva is usually pretty good. Everyone knows what to expect and what their obligation are. Everything is either already spelled out in excruciating detail or else discussed before hand and accepted by all parties.
What makes this work is not the society they live in, but the fact that both parties are loyal to the Law of Moses and want to keep it to the ultimate extent of their abilities.
This works perfectly well unless neighbors or insane religious leaders begin to stick their noses into where they are not wanted. And the trouble is almost all religious leaders are insane. It is the particular Achilles heel of the religious world. It comes from a curse of Jeremiah the prophet. When the Jewish people did not listen to Yermiyahu [Jeremiah] and other true prophets, God gave us a curse that he would send to us evil leaders and to them we would listen.
The truth is the laws of marriage are too much to learn before marriage. I have never heard of anyone that could go thorough Ketuboth, Kidushin, Gitin, Yevamot, etc plus the Tur, Beit Joseph [Even Ezer].
What I did, and which is I think a good idea is to do the Tur, Beit Joseph on Nida plus the sidur of Yaakov Emden. Plus Shelomo Berger at the Mir learned the Tur, Beit Yoseph with me, plus there was a rav at Torah VeDaat in NY that gave a series of classes based in his book which was a great introduction to the subject.
If one does not have a marriage based on loyalty to Torah, then you end up with modern day marriages which are slavery and nightmares.
The general Litvak marriage is founded on a mutual goal of having the husband learn Torah all his life. That is it is a marriage based on a transcendent goal.
[In short I should mention that the major difficulty is calculating the ווסת period. Outside of that things are simple. What you have is basically simple. She sees one day then she waits until she stops and then you count seven clean days. That is she checks before sun set on the day she thinks she is clean with a clean white cloth (and she must check inside in the crevices). Preferably a piece of a white linen shirt. Then she checks on days 1, 4, and 7. Then a natural body of water on the night after day seven. Most women have a period that is slightly longer than 30 days. That means she never sees less than 30 days. If that is the case she does not have to be separate from her husband on the day 30. That means let's say she see any time from day 34 and on. Then forget about day 30. But if she has seen 3 times in a row on day 34 then she must always be separate from her husband on day 34 unless she has established a different day another three times. If there is nothing that is established after 34 days then she simply is seperate on the same period of separation as the last period.]
I mean to say marriage in the context of a Litvak yeshiva is usually pretty good. Everyone knows what to expect and what their obligation are. Everything is either already spelled out in excruciating detail or else discussed before hand and accepted by all parties.
What makes this work is not the society they live in, but the fact that both parties are loyal to the Law of Moses and want to keep it to the ultimate extent of their abilities.
This works perfectly well unless neighbors or insane religious leaders begin to stick their noses into where they are not wanted. And the trouble is almost all religious leaders are insane. It is the particular Achilles heel of the religious world. It comes from a curse of Jeremiah the prophet. When the Jewish people did not listen to Yermiyahu [Jeremiah] and other true prophets, God gave us a curse that he would send to us evil leaders and to them we would listen.
The truth is the laws of marriage are too much to learn before marriage. I have never heard of anyone that could go thorough Ketuboth, Kidushin, Gitin, Yevamot, etc plus the Tur, Beit Joseph [Even Ezer].
What I did, and which is I think a good idea is to do the Tur, Beit Joseph on Nida plus the sidur of Yaakov Emden. Plus Shelomo Berger at the Mir learned the Tur, Beit Yoseph with me, plus there was a rav at Torah VeDaat in NY that gave a series of classes based in his book which was a great introduction to the subject.
If one does not have a marriage based on loyalty to Torah, then you end up with modern day marriages which are slavery and nightmares.
The general Litvak marriage is founded on a mutual goal of having the husband learn Torah all his life. That is it is a marriage based on a transcendent goal.
[In short I should mention that the major difficulty is calculating the ווסת period. Outside of that things are simple. What you have is basically simple. She sees one day then she waits until she stops and then you count seven clean days. That is she checks before sun set on the day she thinks she is clean with a clean white cloth (and she must check inside in the crevices). Preferably a piece of a white linen shirt. Then she checks on days 1, 4, and 7. Then a natural body of water on the night after day seven. Most women have a period that is slightly longer than 30 days. That means she never sees less than 30 days. If that is the case she does not have to be separate from her husband on the day 30. That means let's say she see any time from day 34 and on. Then forget about day 30. But if she has seen 3 times in a row on day 34 then she must always be separate from her husband on day 34 unless she has established a different day another three times. If there is nothing that is established after 34 days then she simply is seperate on the same period of separation as the last period.]
