For this reason engagement happens through a one way flow of speech. The groom talks while the bride stays silent. He pronounces his intention, “Behold you are sanctified (betrothed) to me…” and she does not respond. Her silence expresses her lack of protest which establishes the criteria of mutual consent. Their engagement, with all its contractual responsibilities, activates by her muteness. Why doesn’t she speak at least a word of verbal consent? That would seem to be more consistent with the mutually binding character of their relationship.
The reason for this custom is that the engagement ceremony models the earlier developmental stages in the evolving relationship of man and woman. In those stages the bride is just beginning to recover from her fall and diminishment. Her stature remains severely decreased and overwhelmed to the point of near non-existence before the groom. The most obvious symptom of this disparity in stature is her lack of “voice,” both in her associated form of worship, i.e. prayer; and in her mute acceptance of engagement. Each reflects her katnut and is thus performed in silence.
However the time is rapidly approaching when woman will complete her journey of perfecting. Fully recovered from her ‘fall,” she will return to her root in the sefira of keter, (כתר), and manifest as “a crown to her husband” having now superceded him in stature. Their roles will have inverted and she will be drawing down their light, bounty and consciousness and passing it on to him (a service he has provided for millenniums). All this will follow an earlier shift when the bride comes into her voice, both literally and metaphorically, for voice symbolizes the more general activity of projecting herself out into the world as an independent agent. The seventh marriage blessing reads, “Let there soon be heard …the voice of the bride.” Let the bride come into her voice. Let her express herself and project herself in fully audible speech, the very opposite of the whispered prayers we now employ in our Shemona Essrei.
This is what it means that “the voice of the bride will be heard, ” meaning, “Let it soon be heard.” Both phrases indicate a future state when the supernal bride will finally attain her full stature and recover her voice. Now we are still in the era of engagement and the bonding between man and woman only incorporates their more external layers of light and consciousness. Their inner selves are displaced. Prevented from entering into direct contact they surround the couple instead, exerting an indirect influence and serving as their cosmic engagement ring. Reflecting this cosmic stage of development, where woman (and all things feminine) is still profoundly diminished, a bride accepts her engagement in silence and prayer is whispered.
But in the future woman will return to her root as crown and receive her lights straight from the very source of consciousness itself, the inwardness of the Infinite light. The relationship between groom and bride, God and Israel will then be fully consummated, for woman will become a vessel unto herself, a freestanding, independently acting partner in marriage. She will recover her voice and project herself out into the world to such an extent that the roles of man and woman will invert. Man will receive his light and bounty from the transcendent levels of HaShem via the agency of woman as his intermediary, a state described by the seventh marriage blessing, “Blessed are You, HaShem who rejoices the groom with the bride.”
This shifting of dynamic between man and woman underlies all of the promised messianic blessings that await Israel in the end of days.
