Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai’s Divorce Party

A Talmudic tale about an original solution to barrenness teaches us an important lesson about love, marriage, choice, and faith.

Every year, on Lag BaOmer, tens of thousands of people ascend to the grave of the great sage Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai on Mount Meron to celebrate his hilula—the anniversary of his passing from this world and his soul’s union with its Creator. What is so special about Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai that he inspires such great and boundless joy?

Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai (abbreviated as Rashbi) lived around the 2nd century CE and was one of the greatest Tannaim (Mishnaic sages). What distinguishes him from other Tannaim is the fact that he is attributed with the wisdom of the Zohar, the first comprehensive Kabbalistic work. The Zohar, originally called Midrash Yehi Or, is structured as an unusual interpretation (midrash) on the weekly Torah portions, making each verse and word in the Torah appear as a window into hidden, wondrous worlds. Although the Zohar was revealed relatively late in history—in the 13th century, more than a thousand years after Rashbi’s death—nearly all great Jewish masters agreed that its contents originated with Rashbi and his circle of friends and students, who themselves appear as speakers in the Zohar.

As previously explained, Kabbalah is the “soul of the Torah.” Its usage of enchanting words, its evocative imagery, the echo of higher worlds resonating within it—all combine to provide the Torah learner with a feeling that the Torah is alive, pulsating, and reviving him. While the revealed Torah teaches us to serve God primarily out of fear or awe, the hidden Torah allows us to come to Him out of love—out of the very joy and sweetness of living with Him.

The merit of opening the gates of the inner Torah to all Jews is therefore Rashbi’s. Indeed, in Chabad Chassidut, Lag BaOmer is called “the festival of the giving of the inner Torah”: Just as Shavuot marks the revelation of the Torah in general, so Lag BaOmer (occurring shortly before Shavuot, as a sort of prelude to it) marks the revelation of its inner dimension.

There Was a Woman

But Rashbi’s uniqueness is also evident outside the Zohar, in the stories and Midrashim about him that appear in rabbinic literature. Let’s now look at one such story,¹ revealing a glimpse of Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai’s wondrous wisdom:

There was a woman in Sidon who was married to her husband for ten years and did not have children. They came to Rabbi Shimon Ben Yochai and asked to separate from each other.

The background to the story is a law in the Mishna,² which states that if a couple does not have children for ten years, the man, obligated to fulfill the commandment of procreation, must divorce the woman and marry another woman.³

The law formulates the matter dryly and decisively, but clearly this situation hides a very human reality laden with many emotions. The obligation to divorce because one cannot have children, even though one may have a happy and loving marriage, can be unbearable. In fact, in recent generations, many esteemed and righteous people have refrained from implementing this law. The most famous case is perhaps that of the Lubavitcher Rebbe, who was married to his wife for 60 years, until her death, without ever having children.

The story before us seeks to peek behind the scenes of this law, into the human drama unfolding behind the letter of the law. Moreover, the entire story is about being able to look beyond the boundaries of reality in which the law operates, to a place where there is no need to implement it.

Although the obligation to procreate is on the man, the heroine of the story is the woman: “There was a woman.”⁴ She has been married to her husband happily for ten years without children. But since the couple fears God and seeks to follow the law, they come to Rashbi with a heavy heart to carry out the divorce.

Rashbi said to them: Just as you were joined together in food and drink, so you should not part except in food and drink!

What exactly is Rashbi saying here? He looks at the couple before him and sees the love between them. He sees that this is not a simple case that can be ended coldly. On the other hand, the law clearly states they must divorce. What should they do? Rashbi takes a surprising, crazy, deep action: follow the law, he tells them, get divorced; but don’t do it in sorrow and grief. Honor your ten years of marriage and your love, and just as you married in a festive meal, so too divorce in a festive meal!

A divorce party? This sounds like an invitation for trouble. And indeed...

They followed his advice and made a feast day and made a great meal, and the woman intoxicated her husband excessively. When the husband’s mind settled, he said to her: My daughter, see any good thing you desire in my house and take it and go to your father’s house.

The couple listens to the holy sage and holds a joyous divorce feast. During the evening, the woman lovingly hands her husband one wine glass after another, until he is quite drunk. But then suddenly comes a moment of sobriety. The husband turns to his wife and says: My daughter, as a memento of our marriage, I permit you to choose the item you like best in my house, the jewel or treasure or trophy that makes you happiest, and take it with you to your father’s house.

The woman looks at her dear husband, whom she has been married to for ten years. She is overcome with emotion: With or without children, how could she ever live without him?

Suddenly—and it’s unclear whether she thought of this herself, or if Rashbi’s holy spirit entered her—a wild idea springs to her mind and a smile spreads across her face.

What did she do? After he slept, she hinted to her servants and maids and said to them: Carry him on the bed and take him to my father’s house.

 In the middle of the night, the husband awoke as his wine had worn off. He said to her: My daughter, where am I? She said to him: At my father’s house. He said to her: What do I have to do with your father’s house? She said to him: Didn’t you tell me last night—any good thing in my house, take it and go to your father’s house? Well, there is no thing in the world better for me than you!

Wow. The woman applied her husband’s wish, that she take an item of her choice with her to her father’s house, to him! He was her favorite item (plus, when asleep, actually resembled an inanimate object).

But now we have query for you. Try to answer the following question: Did the man and woman actually divorce? On one hand, the husband sent his wife to her father’s house and she went there; on the other hand, he legally gave her possession of any item she wanted in his house, and since she took him, he now belongs to her.

We seem to have here a reversal of the traditional Jewish marriage (to which, if you recall, Rashbi initially compared the divorce feast): Instead of the man acquiring the woman and becoming her husband, the woman acquired the man and now she is his “husband”!⁵

They went to Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai, and he stood and prayed for them, and they were blessed with children. This teaches us that just as God makes the barren fruitful, so do the righteous make the barren fruitful.

Perhaps to resolve the legal tangle they found themselves in, the couple decide to return to Rashbi. But upon arriving at the sage, all he does is pray for them to be blessed with offspring. Miraculously, his prayer is answered, the woman becomes pregnant, and the couple live happily ever after. The end.

Or is it?

Unconditional Love

The end of the story raises a big question. The last line says, “Just as God makes the barren fruitful, so do the righteous make the barren fruitful.” In other words, it attributes the couple’s pregnancy to Rashbi’s prayer. But if all it took for the couple to have a child was Rashbi’s prayer, why didn’t he do it from the beginning?! What was the need for the divorce feast with its convoluted consequences if what ultimately helped the couple solve their problem was a prayer that Rashbi could have offered from the start?!

It seems there is only one way to answer this question: if Rashbi was capable of making the barren fruitful but chose not to do so before the divorce feast, it indicates that at that stage the prayer would not have been effective. Although the couple’s marriage was seemingly fine and full of love, something in their relationship was blocked, in a way that no prayer could break through. A fundamental change had to occur for Rashbi’s prayer to pierce the heavens and work. This is why Rabbi Shimon sent the couple to hold their unique divorce—to bring about this change.

But what was it in the divorce feast that opened the possibility of fertility between the couple?

When the woman chose to take her husband on the night of the divorce, she expressed pure love for him as he is, regardless of whether their union was fertile or barren. The woman is under no legal obligation to marry, and as far as she knew at that moment, they would never have children again. And yet she chose him. This love is called “unconditional love” (ahavah she-einah teluyah be-davar⁶)—love for the essence of the beloved, free from any personal interest or gain.

This is also why their divorce was like an inverted wedding in which the woman takes the man. Looking at her husband in the the feast, on the verge of separating from him, the woman suddenly realized that in all ten years of their marriage, she had indeed been married to him, but had never married him, meaning she had not really chosen him to be her groom. Only when we are about to lose something do we stop seeing it as a given and start seeing it as a possibility—as something that can be chosen. The option of separation allowed the woman to choose her husband anew, from a higher place. This choice created a new level of connection between them, enabling Rashbi’s prayer to work and bless them with a living and lasting offspring.

Rashbi’s advice to the couple, which at first glance seemed crazy, reveals itself as profound guidance for married couples: In times of crisis, when the relationship seems stuck and not progressing, one should return to the starting point of the relationship and choose it once more, this time from a more profound, unconditional place. “Just as you were joined together in food and drink, so you should not part except in food and drink”: one should let go of the negative pattern of the relationship, not to separate, but to awaken new love for the spouse, free from the burden of previous expectations and conditions. One must be able to say to one’s spouse, “There is no good thing in the world better for me than you.”

From “My Husband” to “My Man”

The story ends, but another sentence follows:

If with flesh and blood who said to flesh and blood like himself, “There is no good thing in the world better than you,” they were blessed, how much more so Israel, who await the salvation of the Holy Blessed One every day and say, “There is no good thing in the world but You”—how much more so.

The story, it turns out, is not just guidance for couples in times of crisis, but also a parable for the relationship between Israel and the Holy Blessed One. This suggests that even in our relationship with God, barrenness can occur, which can be overcome by choosing anew to connect with Him. But what exactly does the metaphor of barren marriage in relation to God mean? What is meant by the idea that we are married to God but unable to bear children?

Simply put, a barren marriage with God means a state where our service to God becomes routine, and our connection with Godliness does not bear fruit and multiply in our hearts. Faith exists in the head but does not penetrate the chambers of the heart. Indeed, according to Kabbalistic texts, the brain and heart are compared to parents and children, respectively: A healthy and fruitful brain “conceives” and “gives birth” to feelings in the heart, meaning it yields emotional identification with the intellect’s insights. In a state where the connection with God is purely intellectual and scholarly, no feelings are born in the heart, and the connection with God becomes barren.

Like the woman’s story, in our relationship with God we always ascend from one level of connection to a higher level. This ascent is hinted at in a wonderful verse from the prophet Hosea:

And it shall be at that day, says the Lord, you shall call me my man [ishi] and shall no more call me my husband [ba’ali].⁷

The verse is God’s words to the Israelites, who are compared throughout the Bible to His wife. The verse prophesies that in the future, we will no longer call God “my husband” but rather “my man.” Although both words hint at intimate union (they derive, respectively, from the two synonyms be’ilah and ishut which refer to this), they express different levels of intimacy: “My husband” expresses an earthly connection through a covenant, and also hints at a certain superiority of the husband over the wife, while “my man” expresses a higher and more intimate connection, and also hints at equality between the man and the woman (and even, subtly, the woman’s superiority over the man, as ishi suggests that the man belongs to the woman in a certain sense). In the love of “my man” there is no element of the ownership and superiority present in the word “husband,” and brings to mind only closeness and identification (hence ishi begins with Aleph, the first letter, while ba’ali begins with Bet, the second letter).

When the woman from Sidon carried her husband to her father’s house, she turned him from her “husband” into her “man.” We need to do the same in our relationship with God: renew our connection with Him out of free choice and without prior conditions, feeling that we thank Him for His existence—because through Him, we have our own existence.

In the Shema which we recite twice a day, we read the well-known verse from Deuteronomy: “And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.”⁸ In Chassidut, it is explained that the level of ba’ali expresses love “with all your heart and with all your soul,” while the level of ishi adds the element of “with all your might.” Indeed, the Sages interpreted the expression “with all your might” as saying “with every measure that He measures for you, be very, very grateful.”⁹ This beautiful expression, structured like a short poem, expresses that the love of ishi is a love that is entirely above reason and intellect, grateful for the bad as well as the good.

When the woman chose her husband no matter what, recognizing that he alone gave meaning to her life, a new place opened in her heart to receive from him, and this allowed them, for the first time, to conceive. Similarly, the decision to devote ourselves to God opens our hearts to Him and allows His light to penetrate us. As in the story, it is Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai who enables us to do this: The inner dimension of the Torah that he revealed to us, full of emotion, taste, and color, expose the full presence of God in our lives and allow our faith to penetrate our hearts and plant living and enduring seeds.

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1. Midrash Rabbah Song of Songs 1, 30. See also: Pesikta de-Rav Kahana 22, 2; Yalkut Shimoni Genesis 1, Remez 16.

2. Mishna Yevamot 6, 6.

3. Contrary to what some mistakenly think, Jewish law recognizes the possibility that it is the man who is infertile, allowing the woman to marry another and try to have children with him.

4. In the version we have. In other versions of the story it says "An incident in Sidon with a man who married a woman."

5. In fact, it should be clarified, the man does not acquire the woman in the betrothal ceremony. The act of acquisition that the groom performs at the wedding is the acquisition of the exclusive right to be intimate with the bride – it is the bride herself who grants him this right.

6. Pirkei Avot 5, 16.

7. Hosea 2, 18.

8. Deuteronomy 6, 5.

9. Mishna Berakhot 9, 5.