Post by Rabbi Neil on Mar 14, 2020 0:17:53 GMT
Twenty years ago, I spent three months at an ultra-orthodox yeshivah in Jerusalem, surrounded by impressionable young men who were dissatisfied with the world around them and who were seeking new answers. I loved being surrounded by all these young Jewish men from faraway places. The only contact we had with young women was around the Shabbat table at meals organized by adults who subtly implied that if we stayed at the yeshivah, one of these beauties would almost certainly end up being our wife. Near the end of my three months of total male immersion, a friend from the yeshivah – someone I’m still friends with, in fact – introduced me to his new fiancée. I don’t remember if she put her hand out to shake mine or the other way round, but what I do remember is how extraordinary it felt to just touch a woman’s hand after not having done so for three months. Suddenly, I thought I understood shomer negiah, the Orthodox practice of not touching individuals of the other sex unless you are married to them and, even then, only at certain times of the month. This was about making the contact we had really mean something.
Weeks later, though, I was heading home. I was on a sheirut from Jerusalem to Ben Gurion airport in Tel Aviv. I was sitting next to a woman and was thinking nothing of it, just two human beings sitting next to each other. We made a stop and she got out to let a Charedi Jew get in. She then sat down next to the window so that he was in between the two of us. As we drove, he started leaning more and more into me. It became deeply uncomfortable as he pressed against me. After a while, he was really pushing against me. I realized that he was shomer negiah, that he didn’t touch women. But this wasn’t just not touching out of respect for reserving contact for one special person, this was offensive. It wasn’t that he chose to avoid women, he was repulsed by them. I was young and impressionable and was in a place of really respecting the ultra-orthodox path at the time, so as we pulled into the next stop, I asked if he wanted to swap seats. He was so grateful, and then we carried on our way. Had that happened today, I might have pushed him off me and onto her deliberately. Or, I might have been more tolerant and merely informed him that Rabbi Moshe Feinstein (probably the leading Orthodox halakhist of the modern age) specifically said that "regarding the permissibility of traveling in crowded busses and subways during rush hour, when it is difficult to avoid being pushed by women: Such physical contact involves no prohibition, because it does not contain any element of lust or desire." My guess is, though, that he was too strict for even that halakhic opinion, or that he was thinking more about ritual impurity than about lustful thoughts.
I am in two minds about shomer negiah. It can be deeply empowering, reserving ourselves for that special person and truly celebrating their touch. But it can also be yet another means of patriarchal domination, in particular, a means of reinforcing ancient fears of uncontrolled blood loss that result in the view that women are often impure and thus somehow abhorrent or disgusting. As a fairly conservative young man with limited exposure to women, it was quite a revelation to me later when I first learned that women don’t actually view their own menstrual cycle as impure, abhorrent and disgusting! I thought that was a given! So, where had I got that idea from?
The answer is Torah. In Leviticus (18:19), we learn that a man should not come near to a woman during her period of uncleanness to uncover her nakedness. Note the word “uncleanness,” as though that is assumed. Rabbinic commentary on this verse makes it clear that this mitzvah does not just apply to one’s own wife, but also to all other women. Since we do not know where in their menstrual cycle other women are, and since we cannot know whether at the end of her menstrual cycle a woman has gone to the mikveh, the assumption must be that all women are in a state of uncleanness. Nowadays, when I stop and think about this, I find it truly abhorrent. I can’t honestly imagine thinking that half of the world’s population are unclean, and thus essentially dirty to touch.
Jewish tradition goes further than just not touching, though. In an effort to put a fence around the law, we learn (Jerusalem Talmud: Kiddushin 81b) that not only are we not allowed to touch someone who might lead to ritual pollution but that “it is forbidden to be alone with someone with whom relations are forbidden by the Torah, even with an animal!” You’re not allowed to be alone with your dog, just in case you cannot control yourself sexually. That’s really disturbing. Let’s not gloss over this – that is really disturbing. That is men who are totally unable to control themselves. At the same time, that is men who view everything as potential polluting.
In discussions of Shomer Negiah, Rabbis from Maimonides to Moshe Feinstein consider whether or not hugging is permitted, whether or not shaking hands is permitted, whether any touch is permitted. For example, the Jerusalem Talmud (Sotah 3:1) says that even a young man is not stirred sexually by a momentary act such as shaking hands. From my early experience of shomer negiah during my more…. excitable… years, I’m not actually sure that I agree! Young men who are deprived of female contact for extended periods are very easily triggered sexually. Regardless of that reality check, though, many Rabbis write that shaking hands is not a sexual act, although others say that we either should or may be machmir, strict, about not even touching women even in that seemingly harmless way. I can’t help but ask, though, why would anyone want to be strict about that, or need to be?
Earlier in our service we deliberately read the passage on page 39 that says that there is no way to reach the better place in this world, the proverbial promised land, “except by joining hands, marching together.” We can hardly reach redemption by having the men hold hands only with other men and the women just go and do their own thing… we have to do it together. But how is that possible in a world of shomer negia, a world in which men don’t even want to touch women for fear of uncontrolled sexual urges surging through their brains, or for fear of ritual pollution? The answer is that it’s not possible, obviously. So then I believe we have to reassess the whole concept of not touching.
And yet, in my wildest imagination, I never would have imagined sharing a sermon to an empty room and to a community whose members I had specifically told not to come into the Sanctuary for fear of biological pollution from each other. And yet here we are. So, what can we learn by bringing together the halakhic concept of shomer negia and the reality of a declared national emergency due to the spread of the COVID-19 virus?
Returning to Rabbi Moshe Feinstein, he says that there are two elements of shomer negiah that I believe are relevant to today’s pandemic – negiah (which is touch) and hirhur (which is thought). Or, to put it another way, pollution and perception. With shomer negiah one might say that refraining from touching certain individuals is an attempt to avoid spiritual pollution. With the Social Distancing that we are all now having to very quickly learn, refraining from touching all individuals is an attempt to avoid physical pollution. In a dualistic mindset, one might say that one avoidance of touch keeps the soul from harm, the other keeps the body from harm. In both cases – ritual and physical pollution – such pollution is transferable, and therefore the duty to think of the spread of pollution to others becomes an essential consideration. In both cases, while we cannot know for sure whether or not the person we’re touching will lead to physical or spiritual pollution, so it is wise to be machmir, to be strict, just in case.
This is not just an issue of pollution, though, this is also an issue of perception. Let’s start with those horny men who simply cannot control themselves. I know from personal experience that in their mind, it’s all about them. The world revolves around them. How other people feel is irrelevant. Who cares if the woman on the sheirut is offended by his physical repulsion to her? What matters is how this affects him and only him. The perception is of him coming to potential harm and not of him potentially causing harm to others because her harm to him far exceeds what he perceives as his harm to her. In fact, the idea that he may be causing harm to her almost certainly doesn’t enter his mind because her needs are irrelevant since they do not share the same moral code. Anyone who has been shopping this week will, sadly, have seen exactly the same mindset in most of the people present. As they hoard items in insane quantities, their thought seems to be that the potential harm to them is substantial and the potential harm that they cause to others is literally irrelevant. Just like the man on the sheirut – “You stay unclean, I’ll stay clean, and then everything is good in the world.” But, of course, we know that it is not.
The second aspect of perception of ritual and biological contamination relates to experiencing something that we have determined (rightly or wrongly) as taboo and then use that determination to reinforce our own social biases. Thus, just as a racist President can describe this as a “foreign” virus, so too our patriarchal tradition can talk of a woman being “unclean.” If our humanity is to remain intact after this extraordinary time, we have to ensure that we do not use this time of heightened concern to promote our own social biases. If nothing else, the very concept of a pandemic - of a virus that spreads around the world at the same time - should quash any perception of human difference. This is not a time for racism or sexism or any other kind of human differentiation. This is something that should totally unite us all, everyone across the planet. Indeed, if this virus teaches us anything, surely it should be the realization that the way that we have inequitably structured our society makes some more liable to harm than others for deeply immoral reasons that are usually purely arbitrary and that are based solely on ignorance and prejudice. It should not be that we only realize this during times of crisis, but God help us all if we do not even realize this during this time of crisis.
By bringing together shomer negia and COVID-19, I learn that there are times when we should touch and times when we should not touch. For me, a time of potential biological pollution is a time where not touching is appropriate, whereas a time of potential ritual pollution is not. That is because the biological pollution is based on actual science whereas the ritual pollution is based on patriarchal domination by men with no self-control or no care for the authentic expression of femininity.
Moreover, bringing these two things together reminds us that through touch or the lack of touch, we can and must learn to respect the other, to consider their feelings, to consider not just their potential negative effect on us but also out potential negative effect on them. So, this Shabbat, as we start our Social Distancing to avoid biological pollution, let us use this time to reflect on how we can touch the lives of others in the most positive way possible. And let us say, Amen.
Weeks later, though, I was heading home. I was on a sheirut from Jerusalem to Ben Gurion airport in Tel Aviv. I was sitting next to a woman and was thinking nothing of it, just two human beings sitting next to each other. We made a stop and she got out to let a Charedi Jew get in. She then sat down next to the window so that he was in between the two of us. As we drove, he started leaning more and more into me. It became deeply uncomfortable as he pressed against me. After a while, he was really pushing against me. I realized that he was shomer negiah, that he didn’t touch women. But this wasn’t just not touching out of respect for reserving contact for one special person, this was offensive. It wasn’t that he chose to avoid women, he was repulsed by them. I was young and impressionable and was in a place of really respecting the ultra-orthodox path at the time, so as we pulled into the next stop, I asked if he wanted to swap seats. He was so grateful, and then we carried on our way. Had that happened today, I might have pushed him off me and onto her deliberately. Or, I might have been more tolerant and merely informed him that Rabbi Moshe Feinstein (probably the leading Orthodox halakhist of the modern age) specifically said that "regarding the permissibility of traveling in crowded busses and subways during rush hour, when it is difficult to avoid being pushed by women: Such physical contact involves no prohibition, because it does not contain any element of lust or desire." My guess is, though, that he was too strict for even that halakhic opinion, or that he was thinking more about ritual impurity than about lustful thoughts.
I am in two minds about shomer negiah. It can be deeply empowering, reserving ourselves for that special person and truly celebrating their touch. But it can also be yet another means of patriarchal domination, in particular, a means of reinforcing ancient fears of uncontrolled blood loss that result in the view that women are often impure and thus somehow abhorrent or disgusting. As a fairly conservative young man with limited exposure to women, it was quite a revelation to me later when I first learned that women don’t actually view their own menstrual cycle as impure, abhorrent and disgusting! I thought that was a given! So, where had I got that idea from?
The answer is Torah. In Leviticus (18:19), we learn that a man should not come near to a woman during her period of uncleanness to uncover her nakedness. Note the word “uncleanness,” as though that is assumed. Rabbinic commentary on this verse makes it clear that this mitzvah does not just apply to one’s own wife, but also to all other women. Since we do not know where in their menstrual cycle other women are, and since we cannot know whether at the end of her menstrual cycle a woman has gone to the mikveh, the assumption must be that all women are in a state of uncleanness. Nowadays, when I stop and think about this, I find it truly abhorrent. I can’t honestly imagine thinking that half of the world’s population are unclean, and thus essentially dirty to touch.
Jewish tradition goes further than just not touching, though. In an effort to put a fence around the law, we learn (Jerusalem Talmud: Kiddushin 81b) that not only are we not allowed to touch someone who might lead to ritual pollution but that “it is forbidden to be alone with someone with whom relations are forbidden by the Torah, even with an animal!” You’re not allowed to be alone with your dog, just in case you cannot control yourself sexually. That’s really disturbing. Let’s not gloss over this – that is really disturbing. That is men who are totally unable to control themselves. At the same time, that is men who view everything as potential polluting.
In discussions of Shomer Negiah, Rabbis from Maimonides to Moshe Feinstein consider whether or not hugging is permitted, whether or not shaking hands is permitted, whether any touch is permitted. For example, the Jerusalem Talmud (Sotah 3:1) says that even a young man is not stirred sexually by a momentary act such as shaking hands. From my early experience of shomer negiah during my more…. excitable… years, I’m not actually sure that I agree! Young men who are deprived of female contact for extended periods are very easily triggered sexually. Regardless of that reality check, though, many Rabbis write that shaking hands is not a sexual act, although others say that we either should or may be machmir, strict, about not even touching women even in that seemingly harmless way. I can’t help but ask, though, why would anyone want to be strict about that, or need to be?
Earlier in our service we deliberately read the passage on page 39 that says that there is no way to reach the better place in this world, the proverbial promised land, “except by joining hands, marching together.” We can hardly reach redemption by having the men hold hands only with other men and the women just go and do their own thing… we have to do it together. But how is that possible in a world of shomer negia, a world in which men don’t even want to touch women for fear of uncontrolled sexual urges surging through their brains, or for fear of ritual pollution? The answer is that it’s not possible, obviously. So then I believe we have to reassess the whole concept of not touching.
And yet, in my wildest imagination, I never would have imagined sharing a sermon to an empty room and to a community whose members I had specifically told not to come into the Sanctuary for fear of biological pollution from each other. And yet here we are. So, what can we learn by bringing together the halakhic concept of shomer negia and the reality of a declared national emergency due to the spread of the COVID-19 virus?
Returning to Rabbi Moshe Feinstein, he says that there are two elements of shomer negiah that I believe are relevant to today’s pandemic – negiah (which is touch) and hirhur (which is thought). Or, to put it another way, pollution and perception. With shomer negiah one might say that refraining from touching certain individuals is an attempt to avoid spiritual pollution. With the Social Distancing that we are all now having to very quickly learn, refraining from touching all individuals is an attempt to avoid physical pollution. In a dualistic mindset, one might say that one avoidance of touch keeps the soul from harm, the other keeps the body from harm. In both cases – ritual and physical pollution – such pollution is transferable, and therefore the duty to think of the spread of pollution to others becomes an essential consideration. In both cases, while we cannot know for sure whether or not the person we’re touching will lead to physical or spiritual pollution, so it is wise to be machmir, to be strict, just in case.
This is not just an issue of pollution, though, this is also an issue of perception. Let’s start with those horny men who simply cannot control themselves. I know from personal experience that in their mind, it’s all about them. The world revolves around them. How other people feel is irrelevant. Who cares if the woman on the sheirut is offended by his physical repulsion to her? What matters is how this affects him and only him. The perception is of him coming to potential harm and not of him potentially causing harm to others because her harm to him far exceeds what he perceives as his harm to her. In fact, the idea that he may be causing harm to her almost certainly doesn’t enter his mind because her needs are irrelevant since they do not share the same moral code. Anyone who has been shopping this week will, sadly, have seen exactly the same mindset in most of the people present. As they hoard items in insane quantities, their thought seems to be that the potential harm to them is substantial and the potential harm that they cause to others is literally irrelevant. Just like the man on the sheirut – “You stay unclean, I’ll stay clean, and then everything is good in the world.” But, of course, we know that it is not.
The second aspect of perception of ritual and biological contamination relates to experiencing something that we have determined (rightly or wrongly) as taboo and then use that determination to reinforce our own social biases. Thus, just as a racist President can describe this as a “foreign” virus, so too our patriarchal tradition can talk of a woman being “unclean.” If our humanity is to remain intact after this extraordinary time, we have to ensure that we do not use this time of heightened concern to promote our own social biases. If nothing else, the very concept of a pandemic - of a virus that spreads around the world at the same time - should quash any perception of human difference. This is not a time for racism or sexism or any other kind of human differentiation. This is something that should totally unite us all, everyone across the planet. Indeed, if this virus teaches us anything, surely it should be the realization that the way that we have inequitably structured our society makes some more liable to harm than others for deeply immoral reasons that are usually purely arbitrary and that are based solely on ignorance and prejudice. It should not be that we only realize this during times of crisis, but God help us all if we do not even realize this during this time of crisis.
By bringing together shomer negia and COVID-19, I learn that there are times when we should touch and times when we should not touch. For me, a time of potential biological pollution is a time where not touching is appropriate, whereas a time of potential ritual pollution is not. That is because the biological pollution is based on actual science whereas the ritual pollution is based on patriarchal domination by men with no self-control or no care for the authentic expression of femininity.
Moreover, bringing these two things together reminds us that through touch or the lack of touch, we can and must learn to respect the other, to consider their feelings, to consider not just their potential negative effect on us but also out potential negative effect on them. So, this Shabbat, as we start our Social Distancing to avoid biological pollution, let us use this time to reflect on how we can touch the lives of others in the most positive way possible. And let us say, Amen.
