Yevamot 62: Be Fruitful and Multiply; Obligation to Pleasure One's Wife

We look at the many different opinions on whether creating one boy and one girl are the ideal way to fulfill our mitzva to "be fruitful and multiply".  Is one of each enough?  What if we had two boys?  What if one child dies?  What if someone who converted already had children - who inherit. Is the mitzva fulfilled?  What if one's child has a child - might that grandchild count as your child?  Should you continue to procreate until you are old?  How much does lineage matter to how we 'count' our children/grandchildren?  The rabbis go into some detail discussing these and other questions.

We are supposed to fill up this "uninhabited" earth, say some rabbis.   This justifies why sometimes grandchildren, students and even slaves might be called one's children.  The Gemara discusses the bad deaths of his thousands of pairs of students, likely through the Bar Kochva revolt.  It also discussed the need for a man to have a wife.  A wife is considered to be protection for her husband, like a wall.  She is wisdom, like Torah.  And she is his home.  Since blessings rest in our homes, as said by Ezekiel, men must have wives in order to bestow blessings others.

Women who desire their husbands - especially before the husbands leave on a journey that is not for the sake of a mitzva - must have intercourse, or at least spend time, with their husbands before the journey.  This can come close to the time of menstruation.  And if the trip can be postponed for a couple of days to accommodate a woman's cycle, the trip should be postponed.  Women may be quiet about their demonstration of desire, but men should look for it and respond.

At the end of our daf, we read a fascinating quote from the Sages: One who loves his wife as himself, and honours her more than he loves himself, and who instructs his sons and daughters in an upright path, and who marries his children off near to their coming of age, and you shall know that your tent is in peace".  

Although the rabbis debate the meaning of marrying one's children close to the ages of their sexual maturity, the rest of this quote is lovely.  Especially in the context of the rabbis' antiquated views on family roles, it is a pleasure to read these particular words.