With Baroness Julia Neuberger, Senior Rabbi at the West London Synagogue.

Last week my parents would have celebrated their 70th wedding anniversary. It would have been a great party- they were very good at parties! Sadly, they didn’t live long enough to celebrate it. But 70 years of marriage is becoming more and more common. Meanwhile, we’re all being told the divorce rate is up, that people have no ‘staying power’, and that young people go into marriages saying they can divorce if it doesn’t work out!
The truth is, of course, that long marriages are a modern phenomenon. Women died in childbirth. Men got killed in war, or even out hunting. Just as children did not survive infancy, adults did not survive long enough to be together for 70 years. So we’ve got some real revising of our assumptions to do. Much of our society still regards divorce as unacceptable. In the Hebrew Bible, the prophet Malachi declared, "I hate divorce, says Adonai, the God of Israel." and according to the Talmud, "When a man puts aside the wife of his youth, even the very altar weeps." But the rabbis of early Judaism recognised divorce was sometimes necessary, however undesirable. And they said it when you wouldn’t make it to 50 years of marriage, let alone 70.
So I think we should do more to recognise just how hard it is to stay married for a long period, congratulate those who succeed more than we do- but also recognise that long marriages mean putting up with moods, learning to live with each other’s vagaries, and allowing for the odd row. My parents argued a lot, with a serious row at Christmas every year. But they stayed together- and towards the end of my father’s life, it was touching to see them holding hands, like young lovers, because they knew they were going to be parted, by illness and death. Let’s celebrate the ones who do make it to 50, 60 and 70 years- and try to emulate them, where we can.