Sexual Hypocrisy Is Not A Jewish Value

I guess that means the Torah dictates wife as property of men.  So adultery is forbidden in the sense that you are forbidden to damage other men's property.

Spitzer is a hypocrite for his persecution of prostitution at the same time he was paying for their services. This man destroyed people, used the power of office for revenge and partisan policy perks while steadfastly telling all he was the moral choice for office. The man was a heartless thug that showed no mercy to others and basked in the glory of their failures. So, it is not an affair or prostitution, but his persecution of others doing what he himself is doing that most people find distasteful.

I agree with your larger point, but I have to take issue with your suggestion that our current fixation on monogamy is an element of "Puritanical repression." It's not. It's a necessary element of the liberation of women. I'm not saying this because I think that women are more monogamous than men; I think everyone finds monogamy a bit difficult at times. I say this because, in addition to being naturally non-monogamous, people are also naturally jealous and possessive. As a result, most people (not all) would enjoy being able to sleep with anyone they took an interest in, but they wouldn't want their spouse to behave the same way. For most of human history, men dominated women to such an extent that it was more or less socially acceptable for men to sleep with multiple women and still demand fidelity from their wives. In modern societies, we try to hold men and women to the same standards, which means that if men want to have multiple partners, they have to accept that their wives and girlfriends will behave the same way, which most men aren't willing to do. Some people work out other arrangements by mutual consent, which is great, but the "monogamous ideal" is the natural consequence of living in a society where women can be unfaithful almost as easily as men can.

Jay M--the author of this brazen and irresponsible outrage deserves loud criticism for having the gall to write such things--ignorance is simply no excuse.

Even if someone knows nothing of Torah, to write on the subject requires at least cursory examination of the relevant facts and since rabbinic authorities are prevalent, any author expressing notions of what the Torah says is required to ask a Rabbi.  Without any due deligence, a public forum that claims to state what is Jewish can gravely misinform innocent third parties who might take such blog entries at face value. It is crystal clear no real Rabbi could agree with anything penned by this author--so his conclusions about "Jewish reasons" "Jewish tradition" the point that Jewish law is sexist and asymmetrical, etc. have no basis in fact and his conclusions fail to cite even one Jewish source--the conclusions are merely transparent to the author alone.  

The most obvious example of the prohibition is somehow dismissed out of hand by the author:  Devarim 23:18:  "There shall not be a promiscuous woman among the daughters of Israel, and there shall not be a promiscuous man among the sons of Israel."   The Jewish concept of holiness is spelled repeatedly in the Torah, so many times, no reader could possibly miss it. Israel is contrasted with nations who have no such virtue and warned to never adapt the practices of those nation and most of those practices have to do sexual matters.  But it is clear that even non-Jews are instructed to refrain from the kind of sexual freedom Jewcy admires so much under the Noahide laws.  All of this is extended further to our laws prohibiting pre-marital sex (and even touching between the sexes!) and it is men, not women, who are commanded to marry so that there is no non-marital intercourse for men.  Perhaps the most famous warning in all of Torah applies to this matter specifically:  "do not follow your eyes and your heart" and Hashem extends the prohibition to make things even more explicit by specifically prohibiting sexual promiscuity during a time of war.

Ancient Israel was unique among the nations for its early ban of Temple prostitution.

The experience of King David and Solomon is understood by all to equate with no permission slip to have concubines, David was punished for his behavior.  Judaism is so chock full of standards for sexual purity, it permeates so much of Jewish law, it is one thing to ignore all of it at one's peril--it is quite another to state point blank that it does not exist. 

The author's claim that it is Paul and Christianity that created all the supposed trouble is some joke since it is the Jews who brought all of this to the world and while the Temple in Israel never had temple prostitutes, the early Church had many prostitutes, officially sanctioned by the Church for hundreds of years after Paul.

And lastly, I need to debate a point made in response by Jeffrey Weaver, namely that it is the hypocrisy of Spitzer and not his actions that is problematic.  I would argue that it matters not a whiff whether or not a Governor of a state has experience prosecuting prostitution rings and hence appears as a hypocrite.  At first, Spitzer seemed to be a Bill Clinton by claiming that it was private behavior and a private matter.  Then, he realized that it was a very much public matter with public implications.  It is the Jews, not the Christians who have always stood up to proclaim that sex is everyone's business and Spitzer's words (especially in marked contrast with Obama's failure to admit anything) easily and readily underscored his failings of his conduct.  While Jewcy writers wish to sluff off his actions as supposedly insignificant, Spitzer himself, after he was discovered, at least had the decency to admit that his conduct, in and of itself and without any context or mention of hypocrisy, was off the mark.

Something deep in his memory told him that this is the case.  He did not get that sense from Paul and Christianity--he got it from his Jewish roots. Since the perpetrator with every incentive to deny the truth sees it and admits it, we can all learn something from his demise.  

And yet this is the bottom line punchline from the author--a pure outrage:

If Jewish values mean anything, they mean that senseless war is worse
than a blowjob, and that billions of dollars of thievery and greed are
worse than a visit to a whore.

It is really amazing what people say.  I am pleased to defend the war against civilization as moral since it is very sensible but only those with dead arguments can attempt these kind of rhetorical contortions.  The subject is sexual infidelity.  What kind of man could possibly have the nerve to exclaim to his wife after being caught in a scandal getting oral sex from an intern--I did not start a senseless war or kill anyone today, it was only sex--give me credit for that!  If that is a line that could possibly work with a woman, a state or a nation--I sense it might have been tried long ago.

David N. Friedman writes:

"The experience of King David and Solomon is understood by all to equate
with no permission slip to have concubines, David was punished for his
behavior."

David didn't have concubines, unless you count Avishag who was sent to bed him in I Kings Ch. 1 in a futile attempt to prolong his life. Otherwise, David had multiple wives, which was permissible at the time, polygamy not explicitly being an offence until Rabbeinu Gershom's ban (which Mizrachi Jews ignored). What David was punished for was not concubinage but adultery, and murder for the purpose of covering up said adultery.

Ashmodai is correct.  I was simply trying to get into the mindset of persons who see any kind of sexual misbehavior from our heroes as a license.

David Friedman:

You missed the joke. Jay's piece was clearly a Purim Shpiel.

Who could tell?  It is plainly consistent with all of the commentary on this blog.

Tell the other editors who wish to legalize prostitution.

One concept not discussed is that of Dina De Malchutei Dina, meaning that a law that doesn't contradict the Torah is to be considered binding. Jewish law does not require one to patronize prostitutes, thus when Spitzer used the services of prostitutes, he not only violated Federal and State laws but he also violated Jewish law. The only hypocrisy here is Spitzer's.

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I blog at Jewlicious.com

Well, then let's haul him off to a rabbinical court.

Jewlicious, I'm skeptical of the value of dina de malchutei dina. Did it ever anticipate or account for things like, well, you know, democracy and civil disobedience? Did it account for the founding principles of a country's government? I'd like to think that Jewish values could have something more enlightened to contribute to American law than a negative judgment on Harriet Tubman and MLK - not to mention that rebellious lawbreaker Haym Solomon, without whom the financial success of the very revolution that gave rise to the nation that enacts these weird laws would have been jeopardized.

OK Mr. Anonymous. There is some discussion about the scope of dina de malchutei dina and the only place where there is no debate is on the issue of reasonable taxation and tax evasion. Jews are obligated to pay their taxes and to not facilitate tax evasion. I am pretty certain that Spitzer knew that the sex trade workers he frequented were not in fact paying taxes - he paid them in cash after all. Thus not only was he violating US law, but he was also violating Jewish law. Furthermore, another Jewish law that he might have violated was that of Chilul Hashem - derived from the Torah prohibition against desecrating God's name and interpreted to include the creation of public ridicule and slander, making the Jews look bad by association etc.

Neither of these Jewish values is a bar to civil disobedience in Judaism. In fact Judaism has a rich tradition of encouraging, even demanding the pursuit of justice. It started with Abraham who protested God's planned annihilation of Sodom for instance. There are some that say that the temple in Jerusalem was destroyed because the assembled sages at a feast did not step in and prevent Bar Kamtza's public humiliation by the host who threw him out after he was accidentally invited by the host's servant who was supposed to invite Kamtza and not Bar Kamtza. I could go on and on, but nothing in Jewish law prevents one from reasonably protesting against injustice. Harriet Tubman and MLK were they Jewish would not have run afoul of Jewish law. Neither did Haym Solomon who was a Jew who helped finance the US Revolutionary war.

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I blog at Jewlicious.com

Taxes. Oh boy. Examples of things that Jews should have kept far away from:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stamp_Act_1765#Protests_in_the_streets

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boston_tea_party

Nothing makes Jews look worse, in my opinion, than endorsing a conformist herd mentality regarding morals legislation in an explicitly secular republic. Maybe not now, but Jews in America have a strong history of advancing the civil libertarian principles of the American republic in a way that often purchases some short term infamy (think of majoritarian backlashes against organizations such as the ACLU, for instance).  The trade-off is that, unlike malchutei (i.e. "kingdoms"), modern-day republics require the occasional acknowledgment of their core principles in order to ensure their longevity over the long-run, no matter how unpopular those acknowledgments are at the moments when they most require acknowledging - and those same Jews provide some of the best examples when it comes to that.  

Methinks the Jewish law in question needs to be updated in light of the tensions inherent in political systems nowadays. Pleasing the foreign king and the subjects of his realm was probably more important to the survival and well-being of Jews when the Babylonian talmud was being compiled than it is in a post-enlightenment world that acknowledges the primacy of individual rights over legally antiquated cultural artifacts - no matter how often that is forgotten.

Were illegal Jewish immigrants to Mandatory Palestine being counted in the censuses and paying their taxes?

Hmmm... 

Shit, do I really have to spell every little thing out? Look at what I wrote. I said reasonable taxation. The most broadly accepted understanding of Dina De Malchutei Dina takes into account the possibility of unfair taxation and allows Jews to not pay or avoid taxes in such cases. Hence the qualifier "reasonable."

 Anonymous wrote: Nothing makes Jews look worse, in my opinion, than endorsing a
conformist herd mentality regarding morals legislation in an explicitly
secular republic.

Legislation regarding prostitution is not exclusively moral. In the common law, much of it had to do with the simple nuisance associated with the trade. In our more enlightened times, governments have legislated laws against other aspects of the trade involving consent as well - i.e. the involvement of minors and trafficked humans. My support of that does not make me conformist or a mindless member of a herd. I love sex! I just prefer it to involve fully consenting adults. Spitzer looked bad because he vocally and enthusiastically enforced laws that he himself did not follow.

Again, Judaism encourages, even commands, the pursuit of Justice - even to the point of civil disobedience. Spitzer's actions were not based on any notion of civil disobedience. He wasn't advocating for more enlightened treatment of sex trade workers. He was just getting his rocks off and thought he could get away with it. You need to stop equating the activities of horndogs with those of American revolutionaries, social activists and a people escaping persecution.

 Anonymous wrote: Pleasing the foreign king and the subjects of his realm was probably
more important to the survival and well-being of Jews when the
Babylonian talmud was being compiled than it is in a post-enlightenment
world that acknowledges the primacy of individual rights over legally
antiquated cultural artifacts - no matter how often that is forgotten.

Dina De Malchutei Dina has nothing to do with pleasing foreign Kings and everything to do with encouraging honesty. There is nothing antiquated about honesty and individual rights do not exist in a vacuum - they are always, even in our post-enlightenment world, subject to competing individual rights and the common good. Your right to swing your fists ends where my nose begins, to paraphrase Oliver Wendell Holmes.

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I blog at Jewlicious.com

Context that I provided. Context upon which you conveniently attached your all-purpose "qualifier" as if I should have assumed what sages from millenia ago would have considered "reasonable". But maybe they didn't. Was there really ever a rabbinical ruling on the Boston Tea Party? At the time when it mattered? What makes you assume that there need not have been one?

Oliver Wendell Holmes was a proponent of many things, including compulsory sterilization - which he apparently deemed to be a way of preventing an encroachment on the common good of some supposed right to keep the mentally handicapped from enjoying the same sex that you claim to love - or at least the consequences thereof. His strict utilitarianism makes him a poor example to quote when it comes to swinging fists and encroaching noses. Usually people don't assume that others have an endless right to stick their noses wherever they want. It's called privacy rights.

And your utilitiarian "common good" assertions invalidate the lip-service you pay in previous paragraphs to the same consensual activity that, by definition, doesn't apply to minors or trafficked adults. That "consen(sual)" activity leaves open the possibility of a whole host of things - such as all other forms of prostitution - much as you can't stand to admit it. You can moralize your arguments as much as you want - cf. "You need to stop equating the activities of horndogs with those of American revolutionaries, social activists and a people escaping persecution." It doesn't make them any more valid than it made the cases brought by Jerry Falwell, etc., etc., ad infinitum. Bash lewdness all you want. The fact is that it reveals the same pernicious moralizing that you underhandedly resort to in every post here that's been against reason, liberty and rights for centuries. And if there weren't laws against what consenting adults could do, then I daresay we'd live in a much more honest society; a society where Spitzer could have got help instead of relishing the taboo nature of activities that are only taboo to people who would define them as such for the sake of a "common good" that believes the words "consent" and "adult" cannot be clearly defined - people who believe such words must be relics of a pre-Holmes, and, I suppose, less moral era. But less moral for reasons that are all to similar to those which you rally to.

What on earth are you going on about? Are you really equating the sex trade with the Boston Tea Party? When I quoted Holmes I was not supporting every single policy he ever favored. If I quote Socrates or Aristotle does it mean I support sex with little boys? You want to discuss the scope of privacy rights? Great! No problem! You want to discuss the extent to which the government ought to be involved in regulating Prostitution? OK!

The notion of me being a basher of lewdness, akin to Jerry Falwell or an underhanded moralizer would make anyone who knows me titter. In the honest society you describe, Spitzer wouldn't need any help (unless he asked for it). There would be no issue with what he did as long as taxes were remitted and income was declared. Why would he need help? I'm all for reason, liberty and rights, but in any civilized society, people get together and calmly and reasonably discuss the scope of these liberties and rights.

And yes, I stand by my belief that the term consent is not as clear as many make it out to be. Our understanding of consent has changed greatly in the last 20-30 years. Many of those changes have yet to be clearly understood by a significant segment of the population. I've already given examples of that.

Don't try to dismiss me as some kind of Christian fundamentalist nut bar with an overriding moral agenda. I'm sorry that what I am saying makes you feel uncomfortable, but so be it. Your notion of the primacy of individual liberty simply merits criticism on multiple grounds. You should, you know, chill out a little, stop resorting to snarkiness, and discuss this like a mensch.

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I blog at Jewlicious.com for an audience of consenting adults.

"Are you really equating the sex trade with the Boston Tea Party?"

No. Are you?

"When I quoted Holmes I was not supporting every single policy he ever favored."

You quoted him as an endorsement of a certain idea of where the boundary exists between individual rights and the authority to legislate on behalf of the common good. You did so heavily in favor of a boundary that encroaches heavily onto individual rights, and in this context, your choice of quoting Holmes was apt given his decision. I merely pointed that out.

"You want to discuss the extent to which the government ought to be involved in regulating Prostitution? OK!"

This has been at the heart of the discussion on the majority of the posts dedicated to it on Jewcy. I've certainly brought it up. And I've seen you bring it up on this post and elsewhere.

"The notion of me being a basher of lewdness, akin to Jerry Falwell or an underhanded moralizer would make anyone who knows me titter."

You can try to shift discussions of what you say on the basis of what a character witness would have to say about you all you want. But that wouldn't change the moralizing tone of your words when you say "You need to stop equating the activities of horndogs with those of American revolutionaries, social activists and a people escaping persecution." If you don't believe there's a remonstrating tone to that then you're just phrasing what you said as an rhetorical device to make prostitution sound too stigmatizing to have any place in a discussion of rights.

"In the honest society you describe, Spitzer wouldn't need any help (unless he asked for it). There would be no issue with what he did as long as taxes were remitted and income was declared. Why would he need help?"

I've got to say, this is one of the most ridiculous things I've read that you've written on this thread. In your equivocation between legal problems and personal problems, I suppose alcoholics wouldn't "need help", nicotine addicts wouldn't "need help", sex addicts wouldn't "need help", and anyone with any personal problems with no legal implications would "need help". Psychologists would be out of business save those who work with inmates. How ridiculous!

"And yes, I stand by my belief that the term consent is not as clear as many make it out to be. Our understanding of consent has changed greatly in the last 20-30 years. Many of those changes have yet to be clearly understood by a significant segment of the population. I've already given examples of that."

You've given examples of where consent can't be defined when it comes to prostitution. They are just that: limited examples. Don't pretend that just because things change over time you can use that as a vague argument in favor of painting all prostitutes as consent-incapable victims.

"Don't try to dismiss me as some kind of Christian fundamentalist nut bar with an overriding moral agenda."

No one's forcing you to make Jerry Falwell's arguments for him.

"I'm sorry that what I am saying makes you feel uncomfortable, but so be it."

Who says I'm uncomfortable with what you say?

"Your notion of the primacy of individual liberty simply merits criticism on multiple grounds."

And you have. They haven't been very well articulated or legitimate criticisms, though.

"You should, you know, chill out a little, stop resorting to snarkiness, and discuss this like a mensch."

I don't even know what this is supposed to mean, but it sounds like a way to pretend that if your other points fail, you can always attack me personally as a way to distract from that.

Anonymous: That's quite a forceful reply. Seems to me you have a lot invested in this issue. With respect to Holmes you stated:

You quoted him as an endorsement of a certain idea of where the
boundary exists between individual rights and the authority to
legislate on behalf of the common good. You did so heavily in favor of
a boundary that encroaches heavily onto individual rights, and in this
context, your choice of quoting Holmes was apt given his decision. I
merely pointed that out.

Thanks for restating my argument for me. But that wasn't my argument at all. I do not believe in nor do I advocate for a position "heavily in favor of a boundary that encroaches heavily onto individual rights..." That's heavy! Now you're equating compulsory sterilization, one of Holmes' really bad beliefs, with government regulation of prostitution. But the best part is this heavy encroachment thing you're attributing to me. If you consider the reasonable regulation of prostitution to be a "heavy encroachment" onto individual rights then that's where we disagree. There are  many non-Bible based and legitimate individual and societal interests that compete with one's desire to purchase poontang. You may wish to pooh pooh these as the ramblings of some Jerry Falwellesque fundamentalist Bible thumper, and that would be your prerogative, but it would display a stunning ignorance of the massive amount  of legitimate academic, legal and sociological scholarship that supports that position - again, none of which makes reference to morality, God, human decency or anything else like that.

You further added that: Don't pretend that just because things change over time you can use
that as a vague argument in favor of painting all prostitutes as
consent-incapable victims.

I think I was referring to our perception of things. Of course not ALL prostitutes are "consent-incapable" victims. But how would a John know, with absolute certainty, which prostitute was consenting and which was merely acquiescing due to coercion,  drug or addiction induced addle-mindedness? As our fuller understanding of consent evolves, can we responsibly turn a blind eye to these issues? It's not a vague argument. It's been made before by accomplished and widely respected people who have studied the issue extensively.

In any case, I think we've said all that can be said on the issue. You and I disagree on some very fundamental points and I don't see any hope for uhm... progress. Best of luck to you.  

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I blog about your Mom at Jewlicious.com

But how would a John know, with absolute certainty, which prostitute was consenting and which was merely acquiescing due to coercion, drug or addiction induced addle-mindedness?

That's just a canard though. Could you identify something you know with absolute certainty? Why should prostitution have to exceed an epistemic standard so high that it's not used (and can't be used) in any area of law or science? You can't know with absolute certainty whether you've received consent to have sex with anyone (or participate in any non-solitary activity at all) under any circumstances. Name a reasonable epistemic standard prostitution couldn't meet.

Or, under your standard, how would a a customer for agricultural, construction work, or domestic work know with absolute certainty which members of the labor pool are under some sort of coercion or exploitation? (Hint: legally sanctioned work, labor regulations, social security registration, etc., are quite helpful in discriminating licit from illicit cases.) Guess we should ban any form of labor with the potential for exploitative abuse, huh? And while we're at it, any collaborative activity with the potential for exploitation? Can't know with absolute certainty.

I should have substituted "absolute certainty" with "reasonable certainty." One can make a reasonable ascertainment of consent and that is all the law requires or ought to require. Consent to sexual intercourse is one of those tricky areas where we tread very carefully for a number of reasons. Thus a determination of consent is suspect when the person allegedly consenting to sex is a minor, or intoxicated, or one's employee, or one's student or where consent has been conveyed through a third party. In this respect, the experience of legalized prostitution in multiple jurisdictions is instructive. Despite the state's involvement, human trafficking continues to flourish. One cannot reasonably ignore these facts, brought to light in study after study, that show a high percentage of trafficked women, even in state sanctioned and supervised brothels.  

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I blog at Jewlicious.com

"a determination of consent is suspect when the person allegedly consenting to sex is a minor, or intoxicated, or one's employee...."

So, do you think Monica consented or was that a condition of the workplace?

I think all indications are that she consented.

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I smoke cigars and blog at Jewlicious.com

"I think all indications are that she consented."

I'm impressed to see Jewlicious suddenly utilizing a standard of "reasonable certainty" in place of the absolute certainty that his previous posts implied were necessary. Especially in instances where the above action would have involved an more direct exchange of money - such as the form of a cash transaction - rather than a mere paycheck.