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Favorite Romantic Jewish Story?

Personally, I always loved this one (from Shir Hashirim Rabba – the midrash that gives commentary about Song of Songs):

Another matter, “let us exult and rejoice in you.”

We learned there: If a man marries a woman and stays with her ten years and she has not given birth, he may not remain idle. [Since there’s a commandment to procreate, but only men have an active obligation of fulfilling this commandment.]

Rabbi Idi said: There was an incident involving a certain woman in Sidon who stayed with her husband ten years and did not give birth.

They came to Rabbi Shimon bar Yoḥai and sought to separate from one another.

He said to them: ‘By your lives, just as you came together with food and drink, so too, you shall separate only with food and drink.’ [As in, since you started your marriage with a wedding party, end it with a divorce party.]

They followed his advice and made a celebration for themselves, made a great feast, and she got him to drink in excess.

When he was in good spirits, he said to her: ‘My daughter, [this was a common way for husbands to address their wives, as weird as it might seem to us] see any good item that I have in the house, take it, and go to your father’s house.’

What did she do? After he fell asleep, she motioned to her servants and maidservants and said to them: ‘Carry him in his bed and take him to my father’s house.’

At midnight he awakened from his slumber after his wine had abated.

He said to her: ‘My daughter, where am I?’

She said to him: ‘In my father’s house.’

He said to her: ‘What am I doing in your father’s house?’

She said to him: ‘Is this not what you said to me in the evening: See any good item that I have in the house, take it, and go to your father’s house? There is no item in this world better for me than you.’

They went to Rabbi Shimon ben Yoḥai and he stood and prayed for them and they were remembered, to teach you that just as the Holy One blessed be He remembers the barren, so too, the righteous cause the barren to be remembered.

And [additional] matters may be inferred a fortiori: If a flesh and blood [woman], because she said to another of flesh and blood ‘there is no item in this world better for me than you,’ was remembered, Israel, who are waiting for the salvation of the Holy One blessed be He every day, and say: ‘There is nothing good in the world other than You,’ all the more so. That is, “let us exult and rejoice in you.”

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