R. Refael was the chief rabbi of the three sister cities of Altona, Hamburg and Wandsbek in Germany for twenty-three years. These three important Jewish centers were known as AHU, after their Hebrew abbreviations, and were the residence of many famous scholars and personalities, such as R. Jonathan Eibeschutz, R. Tzvi Ashkenazi, R. Jacob Emden, and Glueckel of Hameln.
A woman’s influence is different from a man’s. A man needs to conquer, to vanquish an opponent. Therefore, his victory is often superficial—he may get the other guy to nod his head, but not to surrender his heart.
A woman is able to reach inside a man, so he may not even recognize her influence. He feels as though this was his idea all along. Her conquest is through nurture.
From where does this talent come? Paradoxically, from the woman’s union with a man. In that union, she discovers what it is to be a woman, and how a woman conquers with love.
So too, from the man’s union with a woman, he can learn to heal the world through nurture. To be truly a man.