Characteristic Number 1 – A Higher Commitment

Now if a person's core value, let's say, is adventure. What they most like in the world is adventure. It could be right now, this person seems like a very nice person. They're volunteering in a hospice, at a hospital. Why? Because for them this is adventure. It's an exciting thing. They get to help people in the last few moments of life. And to me it looks like they're really very kind. But the reality is they're not kind, they're just adventurous. And over time, if their core value is adventure, then the way that they pursue that core value or express it might change. They might stop working in the hospital, and they might try other expressions of adventure which I don't admire as much, in fact which might even be unpleasant or, in my mind, even unethical.

However, if the core of the person is a burning desire to do good, to live a good life, a righteous life, a life of caring, then everything else will rotate around that, and at least I know that for the rest of my life I'll be married to someone who will take care of me, who will take care of my children, who will be a good person. And of course, if you have to live with somebody for the rest of your life, that's what you want to know — that they're going to be a nice person to live with. So as they say in these Jewish circles, they say the person should be a ben Torah, meaning that the person should be fully committed to a life of Jewish ethics. So too I would recommend that all of us learn from their example and that we make certain that the person that we want to marry, at their core, is committed to goodness.