Buying One’s Wife?
The Talmud seems to compare marriage to the purchase of land. But is this comparison really what it seems? In fact, we can flip the script: the Talmud’s comparison isn’t reducing a woman to property; it elevates the Land of Israel to a covenantal spouse. A ring becomes a down payment on lifelong responsibility; the land, a living partner that must be continually ‘courted.’ What if marriage teaches us how to love a land—and a land teaches us how to be a partner?