There’s an old Jewish teaching that compares a groom on his wedding day to a king. Although it seems to be a simple metaphor which allows the groom to feel like royalty for a day, the comparison actually runs deeper and it has something to say to every one of us, married or not.
In ancient Israel, a king was required to write two Torah scrolls. He kept one of them strapped to his arm at all times and was meant to accompany him everywhere—even in battle. The second Torah scroll was locked away in his treasury and remained untouched, protected from the wear and tear of daily life. Following the king comparison, a custom developed in which a groom gets called up for two special Torah readings (called aliyot) — one on the Shabbos before the wedding and the other on the Shabbos after.
Getting back to the king analogy, the first scroll written by the king is the one he carries with him at all times and is meant to guide him at all times, especially in the chaos of battle. But why the second scroll? Why write an entire Torah scroll whose purpose is to just sit untouched in the treasury?A Torah scroll that travels through the world gets worn down. Ink fades, edges fray, and letters will inevitably chip or smudge. In Jewish law, even one damaged letter is enough to make an entire Torah scroll unfit for use. Therefore, every so often the king’s working scroll, the one that had seen dust and travel and use, was brought back and checked against the pristine one in the treasury. Wherever the traveling scroll had drifted from the original it was corrected. The treasury scroll was never meant to be a museum piece, its purpose was to serve as standard; something to measure against and return to.
Let’s apply this to marriage or any relationship, calling, or commitment you’ve made in life. When the groom is given an aliyah (called to the Torah) before the wedding, it is like the scroll placed in the treasury, which represents the marriage as the couple first envisioned it—pristine and idealistic. When they stand together under the chuppah, everyone means every word—they are genuine when they talk about being patient, generous, and endlessly attentive to one another; that’s their beautiful vision of the home they choose to build preserved in its perfect form. But the aliyah after the wedding represents the marriage as it’s actually lived, which is compared to the traveling scroll because a real marriage doesn’t stay in the treasury. It goes out into the world, and the world chips away at it with its bills, deadlines, exhaustion, overflowing inboxes, misunderstandings, or the myriads of small and large distractions of ordinary life. Nobody sets out to become less patient or less present with the person they love, it just happens the same way ink fades and edges fray, almost without anyone noticing, and this is why the king needed two scrolls, not one. It’s not enough to have a beautiful vision if you never check your life against it and it’s not enough to just keep grinding forward in the real world without ever pausing to ask where have I drifted? What needs fixing?
The real work isn’t choosing between the treasury and the battlefield, it’s the discipline of returning. Every so often, we need to pull the worn ‘scroll’ off our arm and hold it next to the one we keep in our heart. There’s no guilt about wear and tear because it’s inevitable and, of more importantly, it’s a sign of life. The crucial lesson is to come back and compare yourself to the original vision—the one that is what you truly want.
One doesn’t need to be a newlywed for this idea to apply. Maybe it’s a marriage of twenty or forty years. Maybe it’s your relationship with your children, your parents, a close friend, or your own relationship with being Jewish, which you once valued and vividly felt but now seems to be running on autopilot. The question is the same, when was the last time I checked the traveling scroll against the one in the treasury?
You don’t need a formal ceremony to do this. It can happen on a quiet drive home, a Friday night dinner, or right now as you are reading this. As long as I remember I have a ‘treasury’ that houses and protects my vision and values, I can access it anytime and ask myself where and how far I’ve drifted from the person I know I can be in my closest relationships and in my own life. Then, I can—gently—begin the correction. Good Shabbos (Sources: Pirkei D’ Rebbi Eliezer 16:16; Midrash Talpiot, Anaf Chatan V’Kallah; Magan Avraham 282; Rabbi Dr. Zvi Ron)
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