The Living in Clarity Podcast, w/Coach Ratner

The 10 Commandments of Marriage: #4-Keep Shabbat

• By Coach Daniel Ratner

Share episode

Let me know your thoughts about the podcast. Thank you for listening!

Can shared spiritual practices really transform your marriage? On this episode of the Living in  Clarity Podcast, Coach Ratner explores the profound impact of the fourth Ten Commandments of Marriage: Keep Shabbos. We delve into why couples who pray together tend to have more enduring relationships, emphasizing that shared meaningful goals and values are crucial. From bonding over children to engaging in philanthropy and community involvement, we discuss how a deeper, spiritual connection can enhance your marriage far beyond physical attraction or common hobbies.

Join us as we share inspirational stories, including a couple who found fulfillment by supporting educational and political organizations. These narratives underscore the importance of a shared altruistic mission, which can provide a stronger foundation for marriage than superficial connections. Whether you are religious or not, the key takeaway is to pause and reflect on your shared journey, focusing on something greater than yourselves to sustain a fulfilling and enduring marriage. Discover how Shabbos, or any similar practice, can help you achieve this deeper connection with your partner.

Speaker 1:

Welcome to the Lydian Clarity Podcast. This is Coach Ratner and we are doing the number fourth of the Ten Commandments of Marriage. Now, in the real Ten Commandments it says you have to keep Shabbos. Now what is the Marriage Ten Commandment number four Keep Shabbos. It is saying that families that pray together stay together. Now, this has a lot of truth to it, because if you look at the divorce rates in the religious world not just the religious Jewish world, but any religion it's much lower than it is significantly lower than it is in the regular secular world. Now, one of the reasons for this is that one of the questions you must ask someone before you get married is do we share common meaningful goals and values? Now, those common meaningful goals and values must be more than just physical, because how many times have you heard of people get married? And really the reason why they get married is because they both want a children, and children are a very good reason, very good goal for people to have. But that cannot be the only reason that someone gets married. You may find a couple sitting in their kitchen after 20, 25 years of marriage. The kids have left the house and they're staring at each other in the kitchen wondering why they got married in the first place, because the reason why they got married has left the building. You have to have much more deeper reasons to get married than just physical. Many people meet at softball games and they meet at Pilates classes and yoga classes and running clubs and marathons. They have a common hobby together and then they get into a physical relationship and confuse the factuation with love and then wonder why 10 years later they get into a physical relationship and confuse the factuation with love and then wonder why 10 years later they're in a horrible relationship. Because you know when you get married. It's funny. I remember I used to work out with my wife when we were dating and like, do we work out together now? Not a chance. I mean, both her own wives are busy. She works out when she can, I do when I can. And plus, as you get older you don't maybe work out as much or you get injured or you change hobbies and suddenly that common bond, that physical working out together, is not a common bond for you anymore. So that can't be a good reason to get married.

Speaker 1:

Some people get married because of money. They find a spouse who can support them and give them all they desire. Of course we look at guys like Bill Gates, jeff Bezos we can see that money is not the cure-all for having a passionate relationship. It's nice to have money better to have money but there's got to be a deeper, more meaningful reason to have a marriage. You must have common meaningful goals and values and they have to be more than just physical. They have to be spiritual and if you're not religious, it has to be more than just the physical world, which means it has to be giving to other people. It has to be more than just the physical world, which means it has to be giving to other people.

Speaker 1:

I was on a private jet recently. I flew with some H donors from LA to Miami and this couple they're in their 60s and they sold their company for a lot of money, obviously, and they don't have any children, so obviously that's not their common bond or their relationship. But they have something meaningful in their life and they spend all their time helping organizations around the country. They support a school in Los Angeles, a Chabad school. They support H-O-T-O-R. They support conservative-leaning political organizations and they're involved with them. Angeles Chabad School. They support H-A-T-O-R. They support conservative leaning political organizations and they're involved with them. They actually don't just write the check, they actually are involved with them and give advice and help, and that's their common meaningful purpose and goal, or meaningful value and goal, I should say.

Speaker 1:

Because you have a common purpose, it brings pleasure to your relationship and Shabbos is a major part of that. Shabbos is the day that you're able to stop watching the world the way that God created it, because we all, the six days a week, we're trying to move the world the way we want it to be. Like we want to take food in our kitchen and make food out of it. We want to start our car, we want to you want to build a business, we want to exercise and get in better shape. Whatever we want to do, we're constantly trying to make the world the way that it fits for us. On the seventh day, god says stop creating, stop trying to change the world, and walk the world the way that I made it. I made it full of pleasure.

Speaker 1:

In fact, it's interesting that the first place that God placed man in the Torah is a place called the Garden of Eden, and when I ask a class, what is the? In Hebrew it's called Gan Eden. I asked the class what is the definition of Gan Eden? They always say Garden of Eden because Gan in Hebrew means garden and Eden in Hebrew I guess they pronounce it as Eden. It's just kind of like the pronunciation of it. But really the Garden of Eden really means the Garden of Pleasure. That's where God placed man. That means we're supposed to get pleasure in this world. And one way to get a lot of pleasure not just for ourselves but our relationships is to keep Shabbos.

Speaker 1:

If you're not Jewish, there's no requirement for you to keep Shabbos, but you can still make one day a holy day for you. Will you disconnect to connect? Disconnect from your mobile devices and your TVs and your texting? These things take over our life and then we don't connect. We end up connecting to a computer instead of our spouse. So disconnecting is another way to you know, kind of a non-Jewish way to keep Shabbos, but it really helps with relationships. I know, growing up I wasn't religious and I always looked at Shabbat as all the things I can't do I can't do this, I can't do that and because that was my vision of it. And then, once I started keeping Shabbos, my vision totally changed. I'm like, wow, look at all the things that I can do. Look at all the things I enjoy so much more. When I don't have those interruptions like meetings and phone calls and texts and emails, I get to connect to my family, especially my spouse, on a deeper, more passionate level because we're together without the interruptions of our daily lives.

Speaker 1:

Kind of like when you go on vacation. You always look forward to the vacation, but you don't realize when you go on vacation that there's lots of hassles. Your flights are late, people get sick, you have lost baggage Every day. If you go somewhere you don't pre-plan in advance. All you're doing is trying to figure out where you're going to eat today, what you're going to do today, constantly like Googling, trying to find places, trying to hire tour guides, whatever it is you're doing. And you come home and then what happens? You need a vacation from a vacation Because even though it was a vacation, like you, focused on the positives, didn't focus on the negatives, and there were usually lots of negatives.

Speaker 1:

Shabbos is a day that brings pleasure to our lives and it's hard to see that when you're not doing it. You know, I always say now there are people who grew up religiously, who have stopped keeping Shabbos and generally I'm going to say this is a generalization that mostly it's because they're coming from dysfunction in their families. Because I have a hard time seeing how like you can keep, and I was like one of the things that brought me to Torah was I saw truth in it and so far nothing in the Torah is not true. So like it's hard for me to argue, but like if something came out.

Speaker 1:

For example, there's a concept in the Torah that you know says you're not to eat a pig. That for an animal to be kosher, I have two signs, one being splithoos, which means there's a split between their toes, and it chews its cud, which means that it regurgitates its food, which means it swallows its food, it spits it back up again and swallows it again. I think they have two stomachs, I'm not so familiar with that and it says there's only one animal that has split hooves and doesn't chew its cud. Specifically, now, if you don't believe the Torah is written by God and was written by man, there's not, even it's like, definite evidence that it's at least 2,000 years old. And do you think that 2,000 years ago they could have said oh, by the way, there's only one animal in the world that has split hooves and doesn't chew its cud. It's called the pig. And the reason why the Torah is a little more definitive about this animal is because it looks kosher. We're listed four other animals. It's because it looks kosher, we'll list four other animals. Five other animals that don't have split hoes but they do chew their cud, I think one being the camel, the hare, and because of that they don't look kosher. But it says be careful if the pigget looks kosher and that's the only animal that has split hooves and goes to its cud. So if there was a discovery of an animal in the deep woods of Africa or South America and it had split hooves and didn't choose cud it was a mammal, it wasn't a pig that would prove the Torah to be wrong. And I'd have this scenario staring in front of me, in front of my face. Oh, my gosh, the Torah's not real. Why should I keep Shabbos? And it'd be really hard for me not to keep Shabbos.

Speaker 1:

I enjoy it so much Because it brings so much pleasure to my life. The way I look at it is, and by the way you have pleasure in life. It's like it's pleasure for both couples, for the couples, me and my wife because we're together and we don't have interruptions. I used to ski a lot and I remember the first day I skied I was skiing in West Virginia, it's no show and it was cold and damp and windy and I was miserable. I mean, this is before they had the parabolic skis. All the skis were kind of straight, so it was much harder to ski back then. This is back in the 1980s, early 80s, and I was miserable. And one of the reasons why I was miserable is because I had no control in life. I had no control in life. I had no control.

Speaker 1:

And what you do when you're skiing for the first time, you're doing what's called the pizza. So you take your two skis and you point them together. So when you go downhill you can't go very fast and you're scared of the mountain. You look at these other slopes, the Black Diamonds, the Blue Diamonds, and you're like there's. But the more you ski, the more control you have. And eventually you do what's something called the hockey stop, and the hockey stop is when you can stop on a dime. You take your two skis and you're now skiing like French fries. They're parallel to each other and you stop on a dime and suddenly that mountain, which looks scary and formidable, is now full of pleasure for you, because now you can go anywhere on the mountain. You're not afraid anymore, because now you know you can stop on a dime and life is the same way.

Speaker 1:

You want to get the most pleasure out of life. When you're going through your week, working, cooking, exercising, and Shabbos comes, can you stop on a dime? Because when you do you'll get the most pleasure out of life. It's hard no matter how much work you have piled up Friday afternoon, it's still really sitting there on Monday. No matter what People will make excuses that have too much work to do, you do. You can work every day of your life.

Speaker 1:

The problem is, every day will be exactly the same. You won't have that day of pleasure to bring into your life and that's what Shabbos does. It brings us pleasure in life because we know how to stop all the time. And that mountain which looks scary, which you had no intention ever of going on a black diamond or a blue diamond or a green, whatever it is you stayed on the bunny slopes. Now you're not afraid anymore. When you bring Shabbos into your life, your relationship, you'll start to see more pleasure in your relationship have a much more passionate marriage. That's the fourth commandment of the Ten Commandments of Marriage. To keep Shabbos, I want to thank you for listening to my podcast, living in Clarity. If you happen to enjoy this, please like, share, comment. It'd be great. I'd love to see some comments. Anyway, we'll see you next time.