The Partnership of Peace
A man once came to me, bewailing his lot. He related that his son-in-law beat his wife, this man’s daughter, and treated her with scorn. His daughter suffered incessantly from her despotic husband. Shalom bayit was a rarity in their home.
The man added that when he had chosen this young man as a son-in-law, the young man was an indigent pauper. The father-in-law built him up, giving him the money to start up a business. He offered his daughter a handsome dowry to boot. In spite of his magnanimous acts, when the son-in-law became angry (which was too often to recount), he forgot all of the good he got, and flew into a fit of rage against his poor wife.
“Why did you invest so much in your son-in-law, showering him with money?” I inquired.
“I wanted him to feel such a sense of indebtedness toward me so that he would treat my daughter like a princess. But all of my dreams have been shattered. He does not acknowledge any of the good I did for him, and he treats my daughter like a slave woman.”
I wondered what went wrong with the business of buying off the young man. Why did he behave so selfishly and aggressively toward his benefactor? I realized that the young man felt he was a worker for his father-in-law. It is the nature of workers to work as little as possible (Gittin 13a). But if the young man would feel like a partner in the business, it would be a different story. With the profits being split between the two, he would put more effort into seeing it succeed.
I instructed the man as to how to proceed. Furthermore, I blessed him that his daughter’s marital harmony be restored, forever.
