May 3, 2025
Author(s): Rabbi Wes Gardenswartz,
Parshat Tazria-Metzora
When It Just Is
May 3, 2025 – 5 Iyar 5785
Temple Emanuel, Newton, MA
A woman in Israel approached her rabbi with the following dilemma. When she was a younger woman, she was not religious. She had relations with a man and got pregnant. She had an abortion. She then became religious. She did teshuvah, repentance. She committed herself to learning Torah, doing mitzvot and joining an observant community. She moved to a new town, where she was not known, met a young yeshiva student who did not know about her past. She did not tell him. They got married. She got pregnant and delivered a healthy baby boy. Her husband wanted them to do a special ritual ceremony called pidyon haben, redemption of the first born, where they thank God for the gift of their first-born. Under Jewish law, however, the family could not do this ceremony because of her prior abortion, which the husband did not know about. So this wife and new mother approaches her local rabbi to ask: Should she now tell her husband about her past, that she had had an abortion, and that this baby was not eligible for this ritual? Doing so would have spared her husband from saying a prayer at the ritual that he should not have said, a ritual infraction known as a berakhah le’vatala, a blessing made in vain? But doing so might also have endangered their marriage. Or should she permit her husband to say a blessing in vain which would preserve the marriage and family peace, even though doing so perpetuates the omission?
This local Sephardi rabbi said: I don’t know the answer. Let me ask the Chief Sephardi rabbi of Israel at the time, Ovadia Yosef. Ovadia Yosef was a towering legal, moral and political authority for the Sephardi community in Israel. He was known to be extremely learned and pious. He was adored by his community. When he died in 2013, 800,000 Israelis attended his funeral, the biggest funeral in the history of Israel.
This local rabbi asks Ovadia Yosef for his ruling: Should this woman tell her husband the truth, which might jeopardize their marriage, or not tell her husband the truth, thereby allowing him to commit a ritual infraction of reciting a blessing that should not have been recited.
Ovadia Yosef ruled that she should not tell her husband; that it is better to preserve the marriage and family harmony, even if doing so is facilitated by a material omission. Better an imperfect peace, better a marriage built upon a material omission, than a divorce.
Now why am I sharing this with you now? This woman’s dilemma is not our dilemma. We are not disciples of Ovadia Yosef. The technical question of the ritual infraction means little to us. And some of us may be uncomfortable with a rabbinic ruling which authorizes the perpetuation of a lack of honesty and lack of forthrightness, between a husband and a wife, as the price of keeping their marriage alive. After all, what about ethics? What about the rabbinic teaching chotamo shel hakadosh barukh huh emet hi, the signature of God is truth. Can we be cavalier about a spouse not leveling with a spouse about a matter of such importance, and about the Sephardi Chief Rabbi of Israel endorsing this lack of honesty? Is this opaque case relevant in any way to any of us?
The answer is, yes. It is relevant to all of us, in the following way. Here is what this case invites us to think about: How do we deal with what just is? This woman’s past just is. Her not telling her husband about her past just is. And the fact that there are now three very delicate lives hanging in the balance—the wife, the husband, the baby boy, and the home that they have together, or not—all that just is.
We all have our own version of what just is. What is it that just is in your life? We wish it were different. We wish we were not confronting this dilemma. But we are. An aging parent. It just is. A struggling child. It just is. Cognitive decline. It just is. Our aging body or waning physical health. It just is. Losing our job. It just is. Financial tension. It just is. A broken relationship. It just is. And all of that is just in our personal lives. Add: what is happening in America that we wish were otherwise. It just is. What is happening in Israel that we wish were otherwise . It just is. What is happening in the world that we wish were otherwise. It just is.
It just is. How do we deal with it?
That is at the heart of what Ovadia Yosef faced when he learned of this woman’s dilemma. We learn something so powerful from his decision. We learn that the perfect cannot become the enemy of the good. Rather, we take what is, deepen it, strengthen it, and nurture it, so that what is gets better. We cannot make what is perfect. But we can make what is better.
This woman could not change her past. And Ovadia Yosef could not know what would happen if she belatedly told him the truth now. There was a real risk that the marriage would collapse, to the detriment of mother, father and child. So his charge was to make the marriage better now.
How might we apply Ovadia Yosef’s posture—take what just is, however imperfect, and make it better—to our own lives?
I thought a lot about Ovadia Yosef’s posture this week when our beloved Joan Mael passed away. Joan worked at Temple Emanuel for 30 years. She was the glue of our shul. Everybody who knew Joan loved her. All that I knew. I got to work with her every day.
But there is something about Joan that I had never focused on until her burial on Monday afternoon. She was laid to rest near her husband Sid Mael, who had died in 2010. I did the quick math in my head: that meant she had been widowed for 15 years. And, her sons had shared that Sid had had Alzheimer’s for five years. Five years where she lost him before she lost him. Five years where she became a caregiver. I did the quick math in my head. That meant she had last had a healthy husband 20 years ago. For the last 20 years, 5 of them she was a caregiver, and 15 of them she was a widow. And then I did the quick math in my head. I knew and loved Joan for 28 years. And 20 out of those 28 years were years without her healthy husband. Why did I never focus on that fact during all the years we were working together? Why did I only notice how hard the last 20 years must have been when we laid her next to her husband?
The reason is: if you knew Joan you knew this, Joan was always irrepressibly hopeful, optimistic, strong, resilient. It wasn’t an act. It was who she really was. Resilience was not her façade. Resilience was her soul. She took what is—those hard 20 years—and she did not make it perfect, but she did make it better. She built and deepened all kinds of relationships with her family and with her communities, here and at Sharei Tefilah, that brought her genuine joy every day. She was always listening to music, Israeli music and hazzanut. She was traveling to see grandchildren. She was always dressing with a cool hip style. She was traveling on March of the Living. She was going to Hartman to learn Torah. She was finding deep meaning in how she encountered every person who walked through our doors.
This to me is her great legacy. The facts of our life are important, but our attitude about those facts, how we see them, the kind of energy we bring to those facts, is even more important. The past cannot get remade. But the present and the future are what we choose to make it. That is why Ovadia Yosef wanted this couple to raise their son in harmony. That is how Joan Mael could be legitimately hopeful and happy the last 20 years. That is how all of us can be when we face our own version of what just is.
When it just is, make it better. Shabbat shalom.