Sex & Love

Actually, to confess, my response above was a bit disingenuous:

First, I said,

"First, the Talmud, Rambam, Shulchan Aruch, etc., were all compiled
long before "dating" existed. … So if one wants to inquire about Judaism’s dating etiquette, one
must be prepared to think extralegally. "Glatt kosher? Glott yosher!"
and "V’ahavta l’reacha kamocha" are good places to start. I think the
answer, however, will be quite simple to find, and it doesn’t take a
lamdan or talmid hacham to figure it out."

I honestly believe this is completely true, but truth be told, the Orthodox world is sorely lacking in this. See http://seforim.traditiononline.org/index.cfm/2008/8/29/Responses-to-Comments-and-Elaborations-of-Previous-Posts-III, s. v. "5. In recent years a few volumes from the writings of R. Yehudah Amital…" There, the author (Professor Marc B. Shapiro) quotes Rabbi Yehuda Amital, Rabbi Moshe Shmuel Glasner, Rabbi Yehiel Yaakov Weinberg, and others, regarding the fact that many Orthodox Jews are tragically short on ethical sense, rather relying on strict legality, even where the moral purpose is thereby lost. Rav Hirsch (and his descendants via his son-in-law) would quip, "Glatt kosher? Glatt yoshor!" ["yoshor" means "straight, upright", i.e. ethical propriety]. 

So I believe that what I said is true, but truth be told, this doesn’t mean that all Orthodox Jews, or even most, will live up to it. Rabbi Yehiel Yaakov Weinberg (gadol hador of pre-WWII Germany) confessed in his private letters to HUC Professor Samuel Atlas that he feared for the future of Orthodoxy, based on this. His letters are truly heartrending (I am crying now, thinking of what he wrote).

————

My second response was also disingenuous. I cited Rabbi Eliezer Berkovits as supporting greater womens’ rights (interestingly, Rabbi Berkovits learned under both Rabbi Weinberg, and Rabbi Glasner’s son; I cited Rabbis Weinberg and Glasner above, regarding ethical propriety), but truth be told, this would be a minority opinion in Orthodoxy.

Obviously, if Orthodoxy believes its laws are Sinaitic, there will be great opposition to altering anything at all. I don’t think I need to explain why this is so; if one understands Orthodoxy’s premises and axioms, then opposition to expanding womens’ rights shouldn’t be difficult to fathom. It doesn’t even have to mean any misogyny; there are plenty of Orthodox rabbis who valiantly engage in apologetics, honestly and truly sympathizing with the feminists, but feeling more strongly that they must defend what they hold is Sinaitic. They are torn between what seem to be valid claims by the feminists on the one hand, and by what they hold is Divine, on the other. They do their best, usually trying to apologetically justify the halakhah even as they just to bridge the gap by making things as equitable as they can, without stressing the halakhah overmuch (for example: only a man can divorce his wife, but if he refuses, a prenuptial stipulates that he must pay enormous sums of money until he divorces her; the ostensibly sexist halakhah that only a man can divorce is retained, but they truly do sympathize with the woman, and try to help her as best they know how).

So we could make three views:

1) Orthodox views that lack any sympathy with women and feminism at all. These ones, I believe we will all agree, are beyond the pale, and we may ignore them.
2) Most Modern Orthodoxy, which sympathizes with women, but more strongly feels obligated by what is Divine and Sinaitic. Torn between the two, they do the best they know how, apologetically justifying the halakhah even as they attempt to update the halakhah as much as they can without radically changing it.
3) Rabbi Eliezer Berkovits’s minority opinion, which I set out above.

So I was disingenuous above, insofar as I cited only 3 and not 2. (However, I feel no guilt over having ignored 1, as I am as disgusted with them as anyone else is. My guilt is only that I did not cite 2.)

As for 2, I sympathize with this position, since I too feel this struggle, this rift. However, after some time, I’ve come to the conclusion that 2 is simply not tenable to live one’s life by. Both 1 and 3 fit according to certain premises, and have perfect internal consistency. But the problem with 2 is that it is torn between two worlds, and knows not how to reconcile them. Position at 1 is at home with its misogyny, and 3 is at home with trying to do whatever it takes (within halakhah), however radical it may be, to solve the sexism. But 2 tries to somehow balance modernity with traditionalism, and this balancing act leads to an unstable inconsistency. And what happens if you cannot believe your own apologetics?

Again, position 2 is not being disingenous; they truly do believe their apologetics. They are not being sexist while trying to lie and say they are not sexist. Rather, they honestly feel two impulses, one for egalitarianism and one for traditionalism, and either they must be torn asunder, or they must somehow accomodate the two. But this ultimately leads to some sort of dissonance or split personality, in all but the strongest individuals. As Rabbi Yehiel Yaakov Weinberg (Orthodox gadol hador of pre-WWII Germany) says elsewhere, in a different context, in the afformentioned letters to HUC Professor Samuel Atlas, "Can we uproot our Torah teaching with apologetic formulae or clever deceptions? G-d knows that I have written this with the blood of my heart, the blood of my soul."

As I set out elsewhere, at http://michaelmakovi.blogspot.com/2009/01/for-some-time-ive-been-troubled-by.html, it is for all this that I ultimately chose Rabbi Berkovits’s position (again, Rabbi Berkovits was the student of Rabbi Weinberg). The dissonance was simply too much, and ultimately, one must go to one side or the other.

I wish to comment on your paragraph, "So what does Judaism say about breakup etiquette?  Isn’t the Ketubah just a pre-nuptial agreement that states that the husband must provide food, clothing and marital relations to his wife, and that he will pay a specified sum of money if he divorces her?  It sounds pretty good until you consider the misogynistic process of a traditional Jewish divorce and how her ex-husband can refuse to grant a Get, thus denying her the ability to remarry."

I think this is an unfair criticism.

First, the Talmud, Rambam, Shulchan Aruch, etc., were all compiled long before "dating" existed. Back then, your parents or neighbors would arrange a match, all the details were worked out, and the marriage date was set. If the man could carry a healthy load of lumber or lay bricks well, and the wife could labor over a cauldron, the match was a good one. Not to say that love didn’t exist, but the concept of dating to find someone with compatible traits was nonexistent. Life was too short and laborous.

So if one wants to inquire about Judaism’s dating etiquette, one must be prepared to think extralegally. "Glatt kosher? Glott yosher!" and "V’ahavta l’reacha kamocha" are good places to start. I think the answer, however, will be quite simple to find, and it doesn’t take a lamdan or talmid hacham to figure it out.

As for your criticism of the get, this is unfair for the same reason. "The Torah was given in the language of men", and so had it, in 2400 BCE, spoke of equality of the sexes, people would have balked in contempt, if not been totally bamboozled out of their wits. If the Torah had spoken in such a manner, it may as well have been written in Swahili.

Since the Torah was given in the sort of society that it was, G-d had to work within that society’s parameters and modes of understanding, and "sanctify the mundane". Rav Kook, in an essay on Assyriology, says that if any aspect of contemporary culture of that era could retained and be adapted towards holiness, then such would be done. He says this to explain why the Torah resembles the Code of Hammurabi, but we can adapt his words for our present purposes.

Rabbi Eliezer Berkovits makes this more explicit, in his essay in Crisis and Faith: he notes numerous cases where the Torah "spoke to the yetzer hara" and offered but a concession to human nature, and he says Judaism’s laws of women are the same. We must note that the Torah’s and Talmud’s laws are leagues ahead of where the contemporary world was. Rambam rules that a woman must wash her husband’s face, but not his relatives’ faces, for she is not a slave. To us, this law is despicable, but back then, it was truly a step forward. (Thus too the ketuba; in an era when men could end a divorce for any reason, without owing his divorcee anything, this agreement obligated him to provide for her wellbeing even after the divorce.)

But if these laws are outdated today, this does not mean that we can blithely strike out the Torah’s laws, G-d forbid. Rav Samson Raphael Hirsch says ("Judaism Up To Date"/"The Jew and His Time") that Judaism never strove to be "up to date"; was Avraham’s Judaism "up to date" when he smashed the idols? The Maccabees’ when they declared war on Hellenism? We never find that Judaism strove to be "up to date". And whenever "the times" and Judaism were in accord, it was only because Judaism’s ethics and teachers had percolated down to the non-Jewish world and uplifted them.

Rabbi Berkovits would be in complete agreement with Rav Hirsch. He says that our course is not to strike out the Torah, G-d forbid, but rather, to use its own internal methods to update itself. As Rav Berkovits sets forth in many places (most notably, in "Not in Heaven: The Nature and Function of Halakha" and "Halakhah: Kocha v’Tafkida", and elswhere in "Towards Historic Judaism" and "Between Yesterday and Tomorrow", and reprinted recently in "Essential Essays on Judaism", ed. Hazony), following his teacher (viz. Rabbi Akiva Glasner)’s father Rabbi Moshe Shmuel Glasner, the Oral Law was originally much more flexible than it is today. (See http://www.math.psu.edu/glasner/Dor4/dorrevii_elman.pdf and http://www.math.psu.edu/glasner/Dor4/elman.html for why; both are the same article, but one in HTML, the other in PDF. This explanation is followed by Rabbi Berkovits, and also by Rabbi Dr. Isidore Epstein in his Foreword to the Soncino Midrash Rabbah.)Tragically, the original flexibility of the Oral Law may be forever lost, but we can nevertheless use whatever of its original nature is still remaining to enliven the halakhah.

Rav Berkovits notes that his own father, who learned little besides Shas and poskim, treated the domestic servant better than Rambam prescribes for one’s wife. He says no true Orthodox Jew can live comfortably with halakhah’s sexual disparity. But, he says, this is NOT because we are "modern" Jews, or "Enlightenment" Jews, or "Reform" Jews. No, he says; it is because – we are Jews! This is what the Talmud has made us, he declares. Any reservations we have about halakhah’s treatment of women is due not to modern values, but due to halakhah. (If anything, the modern world has its egalitarian and/or feminist values due to Judaism, not the other way around. These are my words, based on Rav Hirsch, not Rav Berkovits’s.)

Rav Berkovits notes that the Sages found ways for Deborah to be a Judge, for women to give testimony about agunot, and other matters which actually violate the normative halakhah. Is it so difficult for us today to the same, only for all women, and not only for specific women? This is a path wrought with peril, notes Rav Berkovits, but it is our responsibility all the same.

Regarding agunot, Rav Berkovits suggests we use the Rabbis’ power in marriage and divorce to innovate anything they desire, for marriage is done "according to the religion of Moses", giving the Rabbis absolute and unrestricted power in that arena. In fact, if the Rabbis were to declare that jumping up and down while chewing bubblegame would dissolve a divorce, then so would be. Now, this power is too dangerous to use without caution, just as you wouldn’t use nukes without restriction. However, this power can be used in emergencies.

Moreover, says Rabbi Berkovits, we can make conditional marriages and/or divorces: the husband, in his ketuba, notes that if he fails to do such-and-such, he hereby gives his wife a get (King David’s soldiers all gave gets to their wives, with the condition that the get takes effect if the husband fails to return from battle), or, the marriage will have been entered into under false pretenses, and is retroactively null and void (if any marriage is entered into under false pretenses, such as the husband having an illness the wife didn’t know about, the marriage is null and void without rabbinic intervention).

Rabbi Berkovits’s son (according to a student of this son) has done this in practice, and one member of the RCA beit din has suggested the following prenuptial agreement:

1) If the wife desires a get, but the husband refuses, the marriage will have been entered into under false pretenses, and is retroactively null and void.

2) If the couple does not live together for X months, for any reason (even coercion, just as the husband being missing), the marriage is retroactively null and void.

3) Anyone reading this present document is hereby made the husband’s shaliah (agent) to write a get and deliver it to the wife, or to appoint another shaliah, and he another, ad infinitum.

4) If this prenuptial agreement is found to be contrary to the halacha, then the marriage will have been contracted under false pretenses, and is null and void.

This RCA dayan notes that this sort of prenuptial would have the agreement of Rabbi Yehiel Yaakov Weinberg (the gadol hador of pre-WWII Germany, and Rabbi Berkovits’s second teacher) in his approbation to Rabbi Berkovits’s book T’nai Bi’N'suin u’V'Get [Conditions in Marriage and Divorce], and of Rabbi Ovadia Yosef.

Rabbi Emanuel Rackman (in One Man’s Judaism) notes that Rabbis Weinberg and Berkovits’ proposal, if ratified, would instantly solve the aguna crisis for all time.

Your criticism is not against halakhah and Orthodox Judaism, but rather, your criticism is against "hassidim shotim", foolish ultra-extremist pietists who have their priorities wrong and thus completely warp G-d’s intent. Many Orthodox will disagree with the precise details of Rabbi Berkovits’s proposals, but everyone who is truly concerned with keeping G-d’s word, and truly strives to learn what He commands, will find the current treatment of women to be unconscionable and reprehensible – http://www.jewishideas.org/minhamuvhar/rabbis-no-more-alibis-center-womens-justice.