Dvar Torah on Marriage

In parshat Bereishit 2:24 it says:"That is why a man leaves his father and mother and is united with his wife, and they become one flesh".

These words were spoken by God when Adam first saw Eve and understood that this was it - this, as Adam put it,  is עצם מעצמי ובשר מבשרי - "bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh", this is the being whom I can love, and with whom I can complete himself, and be wholly human. At the time, Adam had no father and mother to leave, other than the God who had created him, and yet God felt it was neccessary to look beyond Adam, into the future, and address us, the children of Adam and Eve, and explain to us how this most basic of human interactions - the intimate relationship between and a man and a woman, which Adam just experienced - actually works.

Though it is naturaI, it is not simple. In order to make the leap of becoming one with another person, of becoming one flesh with another person - the ultimate expression of which is the birth of a child who is literally the flesh of the two of them made one - one must first leave his or her parents. One must first forge an independent, mature, adult identity. It is only once that has happened, only once we have become our own person, a separate individual, that we can successfully love and be one with another adult.  As important as our parents are to us all - and the Torah underscores this by including honoring our mother and father as one of the Ten Commandments - these verses in Bereshit are telling us that leaving our parents is as important as loving them. Becoming an adult, choosing a partner, and becoming a parent yourself, is a natural and desirable stage in honoring your parents, and following in their footsteps, by becoming, like them, a creator and sustainer of life. It takes an act of maturation, and seperation, to make us into the independent adults we need to be in order to truly be one with another independent adult.