Reciprocal Relationship of the Individual and the Collective Israel

When a man takes a new bride, he shall not enter military service or be assigned to any associated duty. He must remain free for his family for one year, when he can rejoice with his bride.        Deuteronomy 24:5

            Netziv writes that the verse gives a new husband permission to “rejoice with his bride” throughout the first year of marriage, rather than presenting a mandate, since the actual obligation is only during the first week, and that by rabbinic decree (Aruch haShulḥan, Netziv’s father-in-law, presents this as the Halacha [Shulḥan Aruch, Even haEzer 64:10]). Netziv adds that the Torah’s grant of permission is not self-evident, since Israel is in the throes of war.

        In my humble opinion, the Torah teaches an important lesson in the balance between the individual and the collective Israel: though the nation is engaged in war, the individual maintains the right to rejoice with his new wife. However, the Torah delimits the boundary between the rejoicing of the individual and the suffering of the community, since the groom’s exemption from military service is limited to a permissible war, while in a mandatory war “even the groom from his room and the bride from her ḥuppa (bridal canopy)” participate in the military campaign [Babylonian Talmud, Sotah 44b; Maimonides Laws of Kings 7:4]

      Indeed, Rabbi Shlomo Wolbe writes that personal development requires one to first be an individual and only then is one able to be a member of the collective. In truth, one who has no individual personality not only cannot contribute to the collective, but has nothing at all to contribute.

        Rabbi Menaḥem Recanati (1250 – 1310) adds a conceptual aspect: the joy shared by a married couple “facilitates the connection between the congregation of Israel and the Holy One, blessed be He.” This concept is hinted at by Zohar [Numbers 118a]: “True joy can be found only when Israel is in its Land, for only there is there true union between a husband and wife, and only in the Land is there true joy of the bride, joy in heaven and on earth.”

Rabbi Shimshon Raphael Hirsch adds the comment that the nation’s happiness and wholeness are dependent upon the happiness and wholeness of each and every family, since all families collectively form the nation.

       Thus the Torah expresses the reciprocal relationship between the individual and the collective Israel.