Varieties of Jewish Happiness

Uses an ancient Jewish wedding blessing and biblical sources as the vehicles to understand what kindles feelings of Happiness in us and how these feelings can be experienced within marriage. The task can be compared to holding a gemstone up to the light and examining it from various angles; neuroscience, history, and language are just some of the observational tools used to examine these complex subjects.

Marriage is a doubly "complex" phenomenon because it intertwines two already very complex entities"the marriage partners. But as described in Varieties of Jewish Happiness, among its advantages, marriage can provide individuals with relative stability in a world that is anything but stable. If we are smart and lucky, we can gain not only stability, but a partner who can provide a lifetime of insights, smiles, eye contact, humor, backrubs, and safety. The most common alternative to marriage-like arrangements is living alone, which requires far less energy expenditure, but produces unwanted and even strange mental states that strongly suggest that we were not designed to live that way.

Yes, we have to fight to maintain our unions through compromises and self-denial. But through our efforts we acquire some merit by supplying a model of stability to and for our children. In this way, we may say to ourselves that we have done our part in sustaining human existence on earth, where, frankly, our presence is not a given unless we properly apply ourselves to the task.