In the second of a series of sermons on “Judaism and the Family,” Rabbi Milton Steinberg of the Park Avenue Synagogue discussed “Divorce–the Jewish Position.”
Describing the threatening increase of divorce throughout the United States and analyzing the factors which are responsible for it, Dr. Steinberg interpreted the attitude of both those who hold that divorce laws should be liberalized and those who contend that they should be made more stringent.
“The great teachers of Israel have always realized that it is futile to keep the family intcat by making divorce difficult, that once the marriage has failed there is no point in chaining two human beings to one another,” Rabbi Steinberg declared. “Their method of preserving the integrity of the family was by imbuing people with a proper appreciation of the seriousness of marriage. The modern world. perplexed as it is over the threatened dissolution of the family, can well learn the lesson of the rabbis who insisted that the rope.” approach to the marital problem is to emphasize the ideal of marriage as a serious partnership. Once this idea is conveyed divorce ceases to be a problem.”
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.