Rejewvenate!

In a move that brings Orthodox Judaism hurtling forward through time to the 1960s, the Shalom Hartman institute will ordain women to be Orthodox rabbis.

More accurately, the institute has opened a 4-year program to prepare people of any Jewish denomination to receive rabbinical ordinate.

More on this later, but I think this marks a major turning point in Jewish history, not so much for the content of the decision, but because the decision emerged from an Israeli institute. Is progressive Orthodoxy now an Israeli phenomenon, surpassing Yeshivat Chovevei Torah?

As the Jewish community variously gears up to prevent, ‘inreach’ fret, strategize, or otherwise just plain deal with intermarriage, I think an important point is being overlooked.

The intermarriage of today is not the intermarriage of the past. A good analogy is how America assimilates people today versus in the past. The model of past assimilation was the melting pot. A diverse immigrant population would come to America and busy itself with the task of becoming indistinguishably American. People sought to abandon the individual trappings of their cultural in favor of American homogeneousness, and with it, American prosperity.

Today’s assimilation is different, as is today’s intermarriage. Sociologists now refer to the “salad bowl” rather than the melting pot. Individuals do not melt into a single type, but rather, retain much more of their individuality and identity evena s they are accepted into the whole. One no longer need shave a mustache, discard a head scarf, or unwind a turban to achieve acceptance and success in what has gone from a repressed culture in the 1950s to an exuberant, expressive and polyglot one today.

Intermarriage today is not about erasing a Jewish identity in order to melt into a Gentile society. Though marrying a person of another faith will certainly blunt certain kinds of religious expression and later others, in relationships observed today, it does not, nor does it even seek to, eliminate expression of one faith or the other.

The point in this, as in all discussion of intermarriage, is the next generation. Put aside for a moment the question of which children from what types of unions are ‘actually’ Jewish, as vexing a question as this may be for some, and as consuming as it is when we engage it. Children from mixed unions are often encouraged to explore both faiths. Many wish to choose only one, and many wish to commit to one in a more complete manner than perhaps their parents did. Maybe this is in response to the fractured upbringing they experienced. Who can say for sure? But these children will resurface in our Jewish communities. And some children will embrace all the fragments of their religious identity, and try to stitch a whole fabric out of this patchwork. They too will resurface in oru Jewish community.

And so will many others, undescribed here. But that puts the point on this whole discourse. Intermarriage today is different than intermarriage in the past because the children WILL EMERGE in our communities. That’s a hopeful thought.

In response to a halachic question submitted to him, Rabbi Yuval Cherlow of the Hesder Yeshiva of Petach Tikva (an Israeli Orthodox institution) has permitted women who are unmarried to become pregnant and raise children out of wedlock. There are a few restrictions:

• Women must be at least 37 years of age
• Women must have exhausted all conceivable options for getting married
• Efforts to marry must not cease after conception or birth
• Pregnancy should be achieved through artificial insemination
• Preferably, a contractual arrangement should be reached with a Jewish sperm donor of certain identity. The parameters of the relationship can raneg from no further involvement to invovlement in the lfie of the child similar to that of divorced parents
• If the above cannot be achieved, anonymous donation may only be accepted from a non-Jewish donor. Under no circumstances should anonymous Jewish donation be used for this purpose (there are some issues with anonymous Jewish donors regarding future marriageability).

Here’s the link, for those of you proficient in reading Hebrew.

ישיבת ההסדר פתח תקוה - לידה ללא נישואין

I’m writing now to put forth my position on the topic of mikvah immersion for unmarried women. I’m certainly not the first to speak about this topic. I’ve heard that Rabbi Irving (Yitz) Greenberg suggested, as early as forty years ago, that unmarried women be permitted to go to the mikvah, so as to avoid incurring the penalty of karet (lit. cutting off - the meaning is not entirely certain, but is usually understood as being spiritually eviscerated from the Jewish people) when engaging in premarital sex. Rabbi Greenberg’s position was not welcomed, to say the least.I think Rabbi Greenberg’s position simply didn’t go far enough. It is my belief that all Jewish women, from Bat Mitzvah until menopause, should immerse in the mikvah monthly. From a purely halachic perspective there is no true ban on unmarried women going to the mikvah, and unmarried women did go to the mikvah in the past, prior to participating in the Paschal sacrifice, or prior to touching consecrated goods, priestly tithes and so forth. However, given that premarital sex is forbidden (even if only rabbinically), over the last two thousand years there has been no reason to allow unmarried women to go to the mikvah.

Until today. Based on various studies of American sexuality, Jewish women remain abstinent longer and have fewer sexual partners than their non-Jewish counterparts. However, it is clear that most Jewish women do not come to their marriage beds in virgin white. Interestingly, no Jewish denomination supports or condones premarital sex. The Conservative movement has crept towards an acceptance of premarital sex in monogamous, committed relationships, but I haven’t found any official responsa permitting it. In other words, Jewish denominations have taken the Nancy Reagan approach to premarital sex - just say no.

That approach has proven as ineffectual for premarital sex as it was for drugs. Just as today, US citizens regularly flout inane and draconian drug laws and pay no regard to the dictates of their own legal system, Jews have premarital sex, not even paying lip service to the rabbis and teachers who preach against it. Today, rabbis of every denomination have simply been cut out of the conversation. I personally know of quite a few non-Orthodox parents who have urged their adult children to have premarital sex. Many of them would consider it a mistake to marry while still a virgin, and advise their children to ‘get to know’ their bodies and their sexuality prior to marriage. With the age of marriage climbing in every Jewish denomination, it becomes unreasonable and in some ways even perverse to insist on virginity for the first thirty years of life.

We need to find a way for religious teachings about sex to be heard again. It is true and immutable that Jewish history and halacha speaks out against premarital sex, but it is also true that the Jewish community of today lives in times never before lived, and in societies never before imagined. As other rituals fade or lose their hold over the Jewish imagination, the ritual of Mikvah has found new life. Non-traditional mikvah ceremonies to mark life transitions have become increasingly popular, and even traditional mikvah observance has gained new adherents outside of the Orthodox community. Aside from the pressing halachic concern of the need to prevent issurei karet, there is a more desperate need to bring sexuality back into the religious domain. We need something better than ‘just say no’.

I believe that Jewish women would serve well, and be well-served by, the monthly purification ritual. The cyclical separation from sex would grant couples space and freedom from the throbbing claims of the sexual instinct, and give them new insights into their relationships. I believe it will reduce the instances of premarital sex, and certainly of casual sex outside the framework of a committed relationship. I believe that it will provide another door into Jewish observance and relevance, and that it will strengthen the commitment of Jewish women to express their Judaism in concrete ways. And of course, a woman who goes to the mikvah before she weds will almost surely go after she weds.

First off, my apologies for the long hiatus. I hope to continue posting regularly, at least until Mrs. rejewvenator has our first child, God willing, this autumn. After that, all bets are off!

I think I’ve made my position on the “shidduch crisis” clear in the past: I’m not so sure it even exists. As a good friend of mine pointed out, nobody has actually quantified the problem. If I wanted to know some basic statistics, like what percentage of Jews are married within a given age cohort, or what percentage of unmarried Jews are trying to get married, or how long it takes, on average, from the time a person starts looking for a spouse until they actually find one, or how Jewish marriage stats compare with marriage stats in other cultures, religions, or ethnic group, there is nowhere to turn. When asking these questions, you’re lucky to be met with a blank stare - more likely, you will face outright hostility for your callousness towards the poor, miserable, unmarried yidden.

While we may not have any firm idea of what the problem is, how big it is, or whom it affects, we do have a wealth of answers. From the hi-tech Jewish dating web sites to the decidedly low-tech matchmaker clubs, there is a dizzying panoply of companies, organizations, foundations, shuls, and individuals offering solutions to the crisis (and maybe trying to make a little bit of money too, why not?) Recently, while browsing Shadchan Magazine, I was struck by the fact that there were no pictures or physical descriptions of any kind, save for one - height!

Harry Maryles, with whom I’ve disagreed in the past on various hashkafic (philosophical/theological) issues, recently wrote about physical characteristics in shidduchim:

The desire to marry the prototypically western ideal size woman who wears a dress size of 2 or less… is all too alive and well in the Charedi world. That’s right. Young men seeking marriage partners seem to require one common thing of their potential mates: They must be “super-model” thin. That’s what they point out to their Shadchanim. Talk about shallow! Can there be anything shallower than specifying a dress size?!

I’ve heard this particular argument before, and I find it, like beauty, to be only skin-deep. First off, while everyone love to quote the Eshet Chayil (Woman of Valor) and its conclusion that “Sheker Ha-chen Ve-hevel Hayofi, Isha Yirat Hashem Hi Titahallal” (The lie of grace and vanity of beauty - a woman who fears God, she will be praised!), it’s telling that Sarah, Rivka and Rachel are described by the Torah as being exceedingly beautiful. In general, the Tanach views physical beauty in a woman to be a positive and desirable characteristic. While beauty can certainly be deceiving, it is also desirable, and a relevant consideration in choosing a spouse.

Whether the attitude described by Rabbi Maryles is in fact endemic to the broader Jewish religious world is uncertain, but it would not be surprising if it was. Most of us would argue that it is rather predictable. A young man looking for a wife within the shidduch process is an extremely dependent man, even as he is on the threshold of starting a family and leaving his parents’ house. He is dependent on the shadchan for appropriate matches, on his family’s money and good name in attracting the right kind of girls, and is extremely restricted even in the actual dating. It really goes down to the details - I’ve learned that it is not appropriate to order two alcoholic drinks on a date! (My personal practice was to down two shot before I went on any first date!)

The problem is not that the single Chareidi man doesn’t have the correct priorities, and their desire for the current cultural mode of beauty is not wrong or anti-Jewish. These men have nothing else! Chareidi dress is both not revealing (a good thing) and not flattering to a woman’s figure (a bad thing). It’s not realistic to expect men to stop caring about how women look, and it’s perverse to assume that being very frum means that you no longer need to be attracted your wife, or that you no longer fantasize about attractive women. From an economics perspective, if ‘good boys’ are a scarce resource relative to the women, it is natural that the boys will raise their price, so to speak.

I could go into a whole harrangue about whether it’s more menschlich to worry about a women’s waist or her father’s wallet, but it’s not worth it. Every adult understands that factors which may strike us as unromantic, or even vulgar, may nevertheless have a considerable impact on the ultimate success of a relationship. No, my concern is for something else.

The religious world has done a pretty good job of selling its women on the value of inequality. Orthodox Judaism to the right of the MO has convinced its women that their less-than-enviable position within Judaism is a part of the Divine plan, and that dignity, meaningfulness, and fulfillment can be found in an embrace of the traditional maternal role (as well as the not-so-traditional role of primary breadwinner and supporter of a torah scholar of even marginal quality - but that’s kollel, and a different post). My guess is that we may have fooled the women, but we haven’t fooled the men. The disrespect shown to women by insisting on a certain dress size is no small matter. I know many people who are happily married to women of somewhat greater proportions than what is in vogue in the Chareidi world, or in Vogue, because they met a person whom they knew how to relate to from a position of respect and appreciation rather than demands and expectations. It is simply not healthy to raise men like that.

But let me ask this question before we go: Let’s say we crunched all the number and discovered that being an overweight woman was highly correlated with being a single woman? How would we respond to that? Would we encourage our boys to marry fat girls, or would we encourage our girls to slim down? And let’s say that the expectations of the boys are actually unrealistic and unattainable? How would we lower their physical expectations? Put another way, if weight gain is connected to being single, do we shut down the shadchan and open a gym? Or do we force the boys to marry fat?

(NB - please do not pillory me for my insensitivity, which is itself the result of a mental disorder. I hope that you will be sensitive to my condition.)

I believe that it was Bangitout that broke the story about the Hareidi ban on visiting Miami Beach a couple of weeks ago. At the time I chose not to comment on the issue - frankly, I wasn’t even sure that the ban was real! Since then I actually had a chance to visit Miami Beach, and I’m not sure that I disagree with the Hareidim, at least as far as they go.

Miami Beach, and the Miami area in general, is one of the least-dressed places I’ve ever been to. It’s not just that the weather is hot. I’ve been to hot cities before, but I’ve never seen quite what I saw in Miami. I fully agree that there is a culture of immodesty in Miami Beach that exceeds most other cities (though it may be matched - I’ve never been to LA, but I hear it’s pretty bad). I mean, even the mannequins in the stores featured larger endowments than most private universities! I think that for the Hareidi community it is perfectly appropriate to limit or ban trips to Miami Beach. As to the extreme extent of the ban, I just don’t feel like I’m in a position to make the determination of whether that has gone too far.

In a related matter, the New York Jewish Week had a cautionary article by Alisha Abboudi and Debbi Frankel about the unsupervised antics of Jewish day school students vacationing in Miami Beach. Even if you don’t read any other part of the article, you can’t miss this excerpt:

The interaction between the girls and boys was grotesque. Hands and mouths were everywhere. Nothing was private, no body part untouchable. A small boy of 15, walking around in a daze searching for his older sister, was easily deterred from his mission by a “friend” who smacked him on the back and said, “Come on, let’s go find us some chicks!” He followed.

The article is a little over-the-top, with its descriptions of virtually unclad teenage girls, drug-dealing children, and bare-bottomed, drunken boys. And surely, whatever these young Jews are up to, it pales in comparison to the debauchery of non-Jewish teens at spring break or Mardi Gras. Nevertheless, the concerns are real, particularly given the almost nonexistent level of parental supervision over these week-long breaks.

I’m not a regular reader of the Jewish Week, and I probably would have missed this article if not for Harry Maryles over at Emes Ve-Emunah. His take? That the deplorable behavior observed at Miami Beach is a result of a failure by parents to transmit proper Jewish values to teens. Here’s the relevant passage:

But another very important factor is the near lack of proper Torah values being transmitted about interacting with the opposite sex in their homes. It is an unfortunate truth that most Modern Orthodox Jews are more in the category of Orthoprax… or my favorite term for them, MO-Lite. These are Jews who are basically Shomer Shabbos and Kashrus and attend Orthodox Shuls. But they are more concerned with lifestyle issues than they are with Halacha. Their values are not centered in Torah but in other things. Typically, the parent of this type is more concerned with getting his child into an ivy league university than he is with his level of Mitzvah observance. Not they they aren’t committed to observance. They are. They want their children to be Frum. But it is a secondary concern.

I have an alternative theory, that is simpler and I believe more accurate. (I might say it’s less slanderous, but I’ll leave that to you to judge.) A large segment of the Modern Orthodox community simply doesn’t hold by Shomer Negiah. To some this might seem an extreme statement. I’m reminded of a post I saw on Rabbi Yitzchak Abbadi’s controversial website, Kashrut.org. A questioner asked for age-appropriate information for a 9-year old interested in becoming shomer negiah. Rabbi Abbadi’s response (by way of his son) was that “it’s not an issue of “Shomer Negiah,” but rather keeping the Laws of the Torah. By labeling it Shomer Negiah, we have given the ones who are not Shomer, a license to do that. What if I am not Shomer Retzichah? That would mean I don’t follow the laws of not murdering.”

Compelling as the answer may sound, it bears witness against itself. No one claims to be both frum and not shomer retzicha! Yet there are many otherwise-observant Jews who proudly proclaim that they are not shomer negiah. This is not a case of acknowledging an obligation even while failing to meet it. Rather, an impossible-to-ignore segment of the MO community simply does not believe that refraining from touching members of the opposite sex is a mandated halachic practice. Moreover, while some consider the practice a meritorious stringency, others consider the practice of shomer negiah a perversion of the proper relationship between the genders.

Is there room in halacha to not be shomer negiah? I’m no expert in the matter, but it does seem that laws intended to prevent a menstruating woman from having sex with her husband might not apply to unmarried teens who may or may not be ritually impure. Certainly, the existence of exceptions for touching that is not affectionate indicates that some skin-on-skin contact is okay.

The above is really just halachic apologetics though. The community that rejects, or even repudiates shomer negiah isn’t doing so to preserve the rights of men who wish to shake hands with women. Rather, this community embraces what they consider a more natural set of rules to govern contact between the sexes. This community fully expects that teens will date, hold hands, and kiss. Premarital sex is still considered out-of-bounds, but sexual experimentation on some controlled level is expected, and even encouraged. Together with that is a more permissive attitude towards other avenues of teenage experimentation such as drugs and alcohol.

What can we make of all this? Are teens who are engaging in this mild form of teenage rebellion doomed to a life bereft of proper Torah values? Perhaps parents are more permissive because they expect their teens to return to the straight and narrow after a year or two of study in Israel. Maybe parents simply remember the less-stringent days of their youth, when Young Israels sponsored mixed dances and nobody had yet heard of shomer negiah.

What’s certain is this. Bad behavior by teens while on unsupervised vacations is not a problem specific to one denomination, or even one religion. It’s the nature of adolescence. The Miami Beach scene is populated not only by the Modern Orthodox. Syrian youth, Yeshivish teens, and many other sects and subgroups can be seen walking the boardwalks and frequenting the hotel lobbies and bars. The vices of drinking, smoking, and drug use have also penetrated all of our communities. As for sex, while its true that MO girls are more likely to be found in bikinis, more extreme problems like molestation and prostitution, though rarer in general, appear to be a greater problem in communities to the right of Modern Orthodoxy.

Before we run around blaming the hashkafot of one group or another, and before we accuse parents of negligence, let’s just ask one question. Is the Miami Beach scene really a problem? In the words of a good friend of mine, and a keen observer of human behavior, are we just lamenting the tail-end of a normal distribution? Maybe 99% of kids go to Miami and have a good, reasonably wholesome time. Maybe it’s only that last 1% who are acting out, engaging in risky behaviors, and calling out for attention through their misbehavior. It would be tragic if we forgot about actually dealing with that troubled 1% because we got caught up in a game of hashkafic Gotcha!