Our Gemara on Amud Aleph asks, if you say that the Adar immediately preceding Nisan is always 29 days, why should they desecrate Shabbos for witnesses to travel, as the court can calculate the time of the New Moon without witnesses? The Gemara answers: Because it is a mitzvah to sanctify the New Moon on the basis of the testimony of witnesses who actually saw the new moon and not rely on calculations or established practices,מִצְוָה לְקַדֵּשׁ עַל הָרְאִיָּיה.

This idea that some things must be experienced visually can be understood more broadly.  The point is, that certain processes of the mind and spirit cannot be properly attained without a visual, physical experience.  You can love God, or your spouse, or your children as much as you want in your heart, but you also need actual face to face time.  In the Kiddush Levana liturgy we know that greeting the new Moon is somehow symbolic of greeting the Shekhina, however greeting the Shekhina itself is symbolic of the loving relationship between husband and wife.

Every couple goes through challenges in balancing all the responsibilities and the need for personal time. Often the greatest casualty of this process is intimacy – ranging from physical intimacy to simply spending time talking to each other. Time disappears. Everyone is exhausted. The bedroom starts to look like a nursery with diapers, toys and other paraphernalia.

Some couples never really recover from this hurricane of parental demands and responsibilities.  If you add the economic realities of working mothers to the mix, is there any time left at all?

When most people hear the phrase "koveya ittim," they think of the daily moral obligation upon every Jewish male to set aside time to study Torah. Let’s take a moment to think about a different type of keviyas ittim.

If one interviewed most frum couples and asked them to list their priorities of the day and their lives, you would hear responses such as raising good children, earning a living, acquiring knowledge of Torah, and performing acts of chessed. These are all important and worthy activities, of course, yet it is rare for a couple to consider another crucial activity: spending time together alone.

Few can live their lives solely in service of others. Most people who ignore their emotional needs become irritable, bitter or quietly resentful. Over the long haul, couples are not able to function effectively as parents, breadwinners, or even klei kodesh unless they spend some time focused on emotionally meaningful activities that nurture their relationship. Even if one spouse of the couple is that rare tzaddik or tzadekes who can forgo this need, the other usually is not.

This leads to an imbalance, where one spouse feels constantly deprived but also feels guilty, because the other spouse is too holy to care about so-called mundane emotional needs.

Many couples today are not given the social sanction and encouragement to develop a relationship with their spouses. Who is out there is telling couples that it is a priority and a moral obligation to tend to your spouse and your relationship? It is just assumed that you get married and live happily ever after. But in fact, that rarely happens without much effort and commitment and spending time growing together. 

People are busy and stressed. They carve out time to daven in a minyan and study Torah because the values of the community are strongly in favor of these activities, and so they make the necessary sacrifices to fulfill these moral obligations. But couples are not told that maintaining their relationship is also a priority and cannot be neglected. Perhaps couples avoid spending time alone because it feels indulgent or selfish – should they really be spending scarce funds, and scarcer time, to treat their spouses to a special evening? The answer is yes. It is not indulgent or selfish. It is a fulfillment of the mitzvah of v'ahavta l'reacha kamocha – love your neighbor as yourself.

There are those who believe this refers to doing chessed for others, not our spouses – and indeed, we often treat strangers a whole lot better than we treat our own family members. In fact, however, halacha points us in the opposite direction. In regard to the mitzvah of tzedaka, the more closely related the person, the greater the mitzvah and the greater the obligation (Shulchan Aruch, Y.D. 251:3).  

There are no more excuses. Are you koveya ittim? 

Translations Courtesy of Sefaria, except when, sometimes, I disagree with the translation

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