How to Stay in Love: The Mishkan and the Art of Repair

Parashat Vayakhel

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My baby brother Shmuel is getting married today to the wonderful Roni Denti. This week’s Committed is in their honor. Mazal tov!

I’ve read a lot about relationships, but I keep returning to John Gottman. For decades, he and his wife studied thousands of couples, uncovering what makes love endure. Their research became famous for an uncanny ability: with nearly 94% accuracy, they could predict whether a couple would stay together or separate.

Here’s what they found: Happy couples don’t fight less. They don’t even have fewer irreconcilable differences. The difference isn’t whether they argue—it’s how they argue. The couples who make it know how to repair. They know how to return after a rupture, how to defuse tension, how to apologize.

Gottman’s research teaches a counterintuitive truth: If you want to stay in love, you must first learn how to fight.

I keep thinking about this as we read Parashat Vayakhel. At first glance, it seems dry—blueprints for a building, detailed instructions for constructing the Mishkan, the portable sanctuary the Israelites carried through the wilderness. But beneath the measurements and materials, it’s a story about love. About how to fight, how to heal, and how to stay in love.

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To understand how the Mishkan connects to love, we first need to ask why it was built. The sequence of events in Exodus seems straightforward: the Israelites leave Egypt, receive the Torah at Sinai, and then God commands them to build the Mishkan. But before construction begins, something catastrophic happens—they betray God. Just weeks after entering a covenant, they build and worship a Golden Calf.

It was a profound betrayal—so soon after their liberation, so soon after Sinai. And it was only the second time in the Torah that people with a direct relationship with God openly defied Him. The first was in Eden, when Adam and Eve ate the fruit. Adam and Eve never came back from that mistake. When God reached for them, they hid. They let shame and fear keep them from repair.

The Golden Calf could have been a retelling of that story. God was furious. He offered Moses an escape hatch: Let Me destroy this people, and I will build a new nation from you (Exodus 32:10). But Moses refused. He pleaded for a different kind of relationship—one where love could survive even a Golden Calf.

Only after God forgives them do the Israelites begin building the Mishkan. And according to Rashi, that timing is no accident. Though the command to build the Mishkan appears earlier in the text, Rashi argues that God gave it afterward—as a response to the Golden Calf.

If that’s true, then the Mishkan isn’t just a sanctuary. It’s a marriage counselor’s office, a space for second chances. It was a divine gift—an invitation, even in crisis, to return. It carried a radical lesson: a relationship with God isn’t static; it must be nurtured. And when it fractures, it can be repaired.

But this lesson isn’t just about God and the Israelites. It’s about us.

A lot of contemporary relationship advice focuses on how to fix things when they break. But the Mishkan wasn’t built as a one-time grand apology for the Golden Calf. It was a response to that crisis, but it was also meant to endure—a permanent structure for sustaining a relationship with God. The Mishkan teaches that love isn’t just about repairing what’s broken; it’s about building a system where repair is always possible, where mistakes are expected, and where the path to return is woven into the very foundation.

In the Mishkan, there was a ritual for every kind of return. Made a mistake? There was a sacrifice for that. The daily offerings? They weren’t for God’s benefit but steady, small acts of devotion to keep the relationship strong. Feeling gratitude? There was an offering for that too—because love isn’t just about fixing what’s broken; it’s about nurturing connection and recognizing goodness before fractures appear. The Mishkan wasn’t just a response to crisis—it was a blueprint for how to sustain love in the long term.

The Mishkan teaches us that strong relationships don’t just survive mistakes—they expect them. They rely on rituals that keep us returning, small daily acts that reinforce connection before cracks become breaks.

In many ways, the Mishkan is the most hopeful structure in the Bible.

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And that brings me back to Shmuel and Roni, on their wedding day.

Tonight, under the huppah, you will begin building something beautiful. There will be so much joy in this moment. But marriage, like the Mishkan, isn’t just built for the good days. It’s built to withstand the hard ones.

Gottman and the Mishkan teach the same truth: mistakes are inevitable, but so is the possibility of repair. Conflict will come, but what matters is knowing how to return.

So this is my blessing for you:

May today be just the beginning of the deep joy you discover together. May you bring out the best in each other, growing stronger because you are side by side. And through all the ups and downs life will inevitably bring, may you always find your way back to each other.

Mabrouk and Mazal tov!