Throughout the ages, Jewish thinking has had much to say and much to teach regarding the paramount importance of guarding the sanctity of the Jewish home. Of primary importance in Jewish thinking is the concept of fostering and nurturing the goal of transforming the Jewish home into the focus and central hub of Jewish life; making it the source of inspiration for the blessed continuum of the Jewish people as a whole.
Understandably, marriage, and all that is associated with it, comprises a key component in attaining this desired goal. The centrality of the Jewish home in the life of every Jewish man and woman and the Jewish people as a whole calls for an upstanding approach, one that enables and empowers us to establish our homes and realize the ideals of a Jewish marriage in our married lives.
This is why marriage occupies such an important and central position in Torah literature, beginning with the Tanach and the Midrashim of our Sages and continuing with present-day Halachic literatureand Jewish thought.
Prominent amidst all this are the absolutely unique and wondrous Torah insights of the Lubavitcher Rebbe, exceptional in both the realm of intellectual brilliance as well as in the realm of practical guidance and instruction.
Anyone even slightly familiar with the Torah commentaries and novella of the Rebbe, whatever the theme or topic, is astounded and stirred by the Rebbe’s distinctive and peerless holy insights, as expressed in their vast scope, depth and originality, as well as in their quantitative and qualitative abundance and stunning intellectual clarity.
Each instance of the Rebbe’s teachings serves as a shining example of how the various facets of Torah unite as one, revealing and demonstrating the infinite Divine quality that the Torah contains, and expressing the theme that “G‑d, Torah and the Jewish people are truly one” (Zohar III, 73a).
Since the Rebbe’s teachings on marriage and the Jewish home are spread over approximately two hundred volumes of writings, I felt it necessary to assemble at least a modest number of these teachings into one book.
I endeavored, to the best of my ability, to distill his teachings and phrase them in contemporary terms, so that the reader would be able to savor a sampling of the Rebbe’s teachings about marriage and the Jewish home. I pray that I have properly conveyed his thoughts on these matters.
May it be G‑d’s will that we succeed in our efforts of illuminating Jewish souls with these pearls of G‑dly wisdom, thereby hastening the Divine revelation we all so eagerly await and which the Rebbe so eagerly anticipated: the complete and true Redemption, speedily in our days.
Rabbi Yosef Karasik