Sucking Others into the Sands of Sin
Two women stood before me, their children scheduled to marry each other in two months’ time. The mother of the groom spoke first. “My husband and I raised our son in the path of Torah and mitzvot. We imbued him with Torah and yirat Shamayim. It is our fervent hope to see him establish a home based on halachah, where mitzvot will be valued and respected. We expect him to observe Shabbat, kashrut, and taharat hamishpachah.”
The other woman then began speaking. She averred that in her home, the women would immerse only once, before their marriage. She felt it was unfair to demand more than this from her daughter.
I was shocked at her words. “This young man whom your daughter chose to marry is marrying her, not you. He is obligating his wife to accept upon herself mitzvah observance. This has nothing to do with you. Why are you interfering in the level of halachah which will be upheld in their home? If your daughter agrees to her husband’s requests, who are you to mix in?”
The chatan’s mother had more to add, “We are also aware that in the kallah’s home they mix milk and meat and even eat pork, rachmana litzlan.”
“It is none of your business what we eat in our house. Don’t meddle into our private affairs,” spat out the kallah’s mother.
Upon noting the level of the escalating volume, I ordered them to break off the match. If this is how it was starting off, it would never last.
I then soundly rebuked the kallah’s mother for desecrating the words of the Torah with impunity. Additionally, I scolded her for her intentions of taking a solid boy who fears Heaven and intending to make him sin and trample upon everything he was trained to hold holy.
After the two women left my room, I reflected upon the scene that had taken place. As a result of such a disastrous marriage, years of pure Torah education and fear of Heaven were liable to go down the drain. Woe to the one who causes a fellow Jew to sin, as Rashi quotes the Midrash (Rashi, Devarim 23:9), “A person who causes another to sin is harsher to him than one who kills him.”
