Standards of Sexual Modesty, Gender Separation and Homosexuality: Rabbinic and Psychological Views

By Seymour Hoffman

This book contains articles authored by rabbis, mental health professionals and scholars on several sensitive and controversial topics in Judaism. The first half of the book deals with the extreme standards of sexual modesty and gender separation in the haredi, Gur Hasidim and Neturei Karta communities and the psychological and sociological ramifications. Also included are the views and reactions of rabbis and mental health practitioners regarding the issue of therapists treating patients of the opposite sex.

In the second half of the book, the issue of homosexuality is discussed: How should one view homosexuality, how should the religious community relate to homosexuals in general and religious homosexuals in particular – and the issue of psychological treatment of homosexuals. Included also is a responsa (religious ruling) by a prominent rabbi regarding “couple” therapy with a suicidal homosexual. I believe that mental health practitioners, rabbis as well as the lay public will find the book interesting, informative and a worth while read.

Frumi Gottlieb, M.S.W.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Mondial
• Release date: Apr 17, 2020
• ISBN: 9781595694065

Seymour Hoffman

Seymour Hoffman, Ph. D. is a senior clinical psychologist who has worked in various psychiatric hospitals, mental health clinics and a university student counselling service in the last 50 years in the United states and Israel. He is presently employed as a supervising clinical psychologist in a mental health clinic in Israel and is in private practice. He has published over 50 papers in professional journals in the U.S., UK, and Israel and co-authored two books and edited one on psychotherapy. He is listed in Marquis Who's Who in Medicine and Healthcare.

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Copyright

Golden Sky

New York

Golden Sky is an imprint of Mondial.

Standards of Sexual Modesty, Gender Separation

and Homosexuality: Rabbinic and Psychological Views

Seymour Hoffman, Ph. D.

(Editor)

© 2020 Seymour Hoffman

Published at Smashwords.

This book or parts thereof may not be reproduced in any form, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means —electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or otherwise—without the prior written permission of the publisher or the author, except as provided by United States of America copyright law.

ISBN 9781595694010 (paperback)

ISBN 9781595694065 (eBook)

www.goldenskybooks.com

Acknowledgement

A well known lecturer was once criticized for his tendency to base his lectures on citations of others rather than trying to think on his own.

He answered with an analogy to two insects: a spider and a bee. A spider produces bothersome sticky webs, whereas a bee produces sweet honey which is much sought after. What is the difference between the two? The bee spends its entire day collecting sweet pollen from many flowers, and produces honey from what it has collected from others. The spider, by contrast, produces its webs all on its own.

This book contains articles authored by rabbis, scholars, and mental health professionals that discuss the sensitive and controversial issues of extreme standards of sexual modesty, gender separation and homosexuality in Judaism from various psychological, sociological and halachic (Jewish law) aspects. The editor wishes to thank the contributors for the interesting and informative articles.

(Cover, credit, Alex Levac, Haaretz, February 3, 2012)

Dedication

This slim book is affectionately dedicated to Rabbis Nachum Yisroel and Avraham Gershon Hoffman and Professor Miriam Rivkah (Hoffman) Sklarz who are involved in Jewish learning and education for many years and who brought much nachas and pride to their parents.

Modesty and Sexuality in Halakhic Literature

The Requirements For Female Modesty*

Yosef Ahituv

Modest behavior in the sexual realm is mandatory for both the male and the female. In practice, such requirements are imposed primarily upon women, and not only in their appearance in public, but also within their homes and in their sexual conduct; maintaining such standards is praiseworthy: This is a fine attribute among women, that they do not vocalize their demands for sexual gratification ( Sekhel Tov, ed. Buber, Gen. 30). R. Hisda ordered his daughters to be modest in their home, along with their obligation to honor their husbands: Be modest before your husbands, do not eat bread before them, and do not evacuate in the place where your husbands evacuate (following BT  140b).

The Rabbinic literature divides the modesty strictures imposed upon the woman into those defined as "dat Yehudit [Jewish practice] and those categorized as dat Moshe [the law of Moses]." The regulations belonging to the first category are more severe than the latter, and a women who violates them is liable to be divorced by her husband and lose her rights.

It is obligatory to divorce such a woman (, Mishneh , Hil. Gerushin [Divorce Laws] 10:22), even against her will, because the regulation enacted by Rabbenu Gershom that a woman may not be divorced without her consent does not apply in such a severe case. There is a lack of symmetry between the husband and the wife on this point. If the husband does not act with the proper modesty, some poskim (decisors of ) are of the opinion that parallel sanctions should not be applied against him.

In practice, there was no unanimity among the legal authorities over the ages as to what constitutes the bounds of modesty. A considerable degree of divergence was to be found in the social norms in this realm, which were significantly influenced by social, economic, and geographic differences. Thus, the strictures were not fully observed in every place and in every time. Oftentimes the public was reproached to change its behavior in these realms, while in other instances the poskim justified such behavior, either after the fact or a priori.

The regulations directed to the woman included as complete a covering of her body as possible, coupled with directives meant to conceal the woman and exclude her, either before or after the fact, from excessive involvement in male society. These restrictions were supported by the expositions of various verses that served as codes that guided the fashioning of the proper social ethos. A central element of this type was the appellation "ervah (licentiousness, nakedness, sexual enticement, and the like) that Amoraitic dicta attached to certain parts of the female body, such as A handbreadth [exposed] in a woman is ervah, A woman’s leg [exposed] is ervah, A woman’s voice constitutes ervah, or A woman’s hair is ervah. Rules governing woman’s modest public garb were derived from the handbreadth and the woman’s leg, as were regulations for men, such as the prohibition of gazing at women. The mention of a woman’s voice resulted in the prohibition of listening to a woman singing; based on this, some even prohibit listening to prolonged speaking by a woman, such as reading the Hagaddah before men on the   night, or even teaching Torah before men. The mention of a woman’s hair" resulted in many  inquiries concerning the manner in which a married woman’s hair is to be covered. There is a very extensive halakhic literature, dating especially from the beginning of the nineteenth century, that discusses female clothing and hair styles in the modern world. These authoritative codes provided the verbal articulation that was a precondition for the public supervision of women’s behavior, while expressing the constant tension with clothing styles and social conventions concerning women’s involvement in the non-Jewish society in which Jews lived.

The verse All glorious is the king’s daughter within the palace (Ps. 45:14), which was taken out of its Biblical context, also served as an authoritative code for removing women from the public sphere in a long series of activities, albeit while flattering the gender-specific glory (or honor) of the woman, who was compared to the king’s daughter. The shifting applications of this concept in Jewish society were in a state of constant tension with the changing interpretation that derived from this verse the norms of proper conduct and practice. Thus, it was used to restrict women’s leaving their house to prevent their going forth to the marketplace as village peddlers to profit; and even to prevent women from going to the rabbinical court. This rationale was also used to prevent women from reading the Book of Esther, and even only to women.

The verse was frequently cited in the major public controversy concerning women’s suffrage that erupted within the Jewish community in Palestine in the early twentieth century. Even after this question had been resolved and women had been granted the vote, the verse still continued to be a proof-text for restricting women’s involvement in political activity or for preventing women from holding public office. Following the establishment of the State of Israel, the verse was employed to forbid the induction of women into the IDF and even to prevent their volunteering for National Service.

Discussions of the prohibition A woman must not put on man’s appa­rel, nor shall a man wear women’s clothing (Deut. 22:5) also found their way into the question of the institutionalized supervision of clothing styles to ensure modesty and continue to the present. As early as the seventeenth century attempts were made to limit this prohibition to instances in which the intent was to obscure the differences between the sexes, or for adulterous ends. As this was formulated by R. Joel Sirkes (Bayit Hadash on Tur, Yoreh Deah 182, and other sources following his lead): But if they are worn as protection against the summer sun, or in the rainy season against the rain, there is no prohibition. Other authorities opposed any flexibility in the interpretation of this ban and severed it from any connection with social and historical contexts. According to this view, the differences between the sexes are essential, profound, and eternal; their blurring is likely to harm societal morality.

The degree of inherent adaptability in the bounds of modesty, based on the perception of their dependence upon social and circumstantial context, is the subject of controversy regarding almost all of these strictures. A patently flexible position in this vein was adopted by R. Yom Tov ben Abraham Ishbili (Ritba, 1250–1320, one of the leading Spanish authorities), who wrote at the end of his novellae on Kiddushin (fol. 81b) that:

Everything is in accordance with one’s God-fearing opinion, and this is also the law, that all is in accordance with what a person is cognizant about himself: if it is fitting for him to distance his [evil] intention, then he prohibits even gazing upon a woman’s colorful garments. [...] And if, according to his self-awareness, his [evil] inclination is compliant and sub­missive to him, and does not raise any stimuli, he may gaze upon and talk with [an otherwise] sexual object [ha-ervah] and greet a married woman.

Ishbili proposes a degree of personal flexibility in the enforcement of the bounds of modesty. Many authorities after him questioned the ability of people to gauge their capacity to contend with sexual stimuli. Yet another view proposes a different criterion for loosening the bounds of modesty. This public-general yardstick is the principle of "regilut," that is, routine. In his book Arukh ha-Shulhan (Orah Hayyim 75:7), R. Jehiel Michael Epstein (1824–1908) permitted praying and reciting blessings in front of [married women] with uncovered hair, since the majority do so at present, and this is like the [usually] uncovered parts of her body. He based this ruling on R. Eliezer ben Joel of Bonn (Ravyah, 1140–1225, one of the leading early Ashkenazic authorities), who suggested relying upon what is commonplace.

Such reasoning also led the author of the Levushim, R. Mordecai Jaffe (one of the leading sages of Poland, died 1612), to oppose the assertion in Sefer Hasidim that the blessing recited after the wedding meal, in whose dwelling is joy, is not to be recited in a place where men and women see one another (see below):

Possibly because now women are very commonly among men, sinful thoughts are not so [likely to be aroused], for they seem to one as white geese, for they are so customarily among us, and since they [men] are used [to this], they pay no heed.

The latter part of this passage alludes to BT Berakhot 20a, in which R. Gidal saw no reason not to sit at the gate of the ritual bath and did not fear the evil inclination, since the women were to him as white geese. Such a relative position has been the subject of controversy from the medieval period to the present, and other poskim (halakhic decisors insisted upon the obligatory formal nature of the modesty strictures fully elaborated by the Rabbis.

In the modern reality in which women are integrated in all spheres of life, the principle of regilut is once again used by the decisors of Jewish law who are cognizant of, and accept, current social changes and accordingly adapt the bounds of modesty. The formal strictures and definitions of ervah were reexamined, based on the estimated intensity in contemporary society of these erotic stimuli. Thus, for example, R. Ben-Zion Meir Ouziel defended female participation in public activity and opposed the exclusion of women on grounds of modesty.

R. Shaul Yisraeli (1909–1995), although opposing military service by women, nonetheless refused to use this line of reasoning in order to completely forbid the induction of women into the IDF.

R. permitted women to recite the Ha-Gomel blessing (Who bestows kindness, recited after emerging from danger) in the presence of a quorum of ten men.

R. Solomon Zalman Auerbach (1910–1995) similarly abrogated the prohibition of a man walking behind a woman.

The Requirements For Male Modesty

The prevalent (although not universal) assumption underlying the strictures incumbent upon men is that the male sexual urge is greater than that of women. R. Ovadiah Yosef states outright: Women do not possess [such] feelings; hence, We need not be as stringent regarding the woman, in relation to the man (see the discussion by Yosef, Yabi’a