Mild Frustration, or On Keeping Your Word

[debka_notion]

A bit over a month ago, I asked one of my teachers for source materials on a particular halakhic issue because it is something popularly observed in certain significant parts of the Orthodox world, and by almost no one in the Conservative world, and I realized that I have no particular reasons for not observing it, although I also don't have any particular reasons for observing it. I just don't know so much about it in general, besides how it applies once one assumes that it is obligatory.

The teacher said the sources were primarily late enough that he didn't see reason to follow it, and promised to bring me sources the next week, and maybe to go over them in class (this class doesn't have such a set syllabus).

THe next week, no mention is made of the source materials. The week after that, we find out said teacher's grandfather had passed away recently. Clearly, I'm not going to bother him about some source materials.

But it's been a while, and he's made no mention of anything. So after class, I inquire about the source materials, and he a. didn't remember that he'd said he'd bring me sources, b. said he didn't really know about the topic, and c. said he was too busy to look into it and then referred me to a couple of books that would tell me why it Was required, when part of what I'd been asking him was why he thought that it wasn't. I'm a little miffed.

Comments

[hatam-soferet.livejournal.com]

I think observing yihud makes a good deal of sense when alone with strangers, on the whole. In various jobs, teaching specifically, rules of yihud apply in the secular world also - never ever be alone with a student, etc, including bat mitzvah students and so on.

On the other hand, carrying the formalism over to one's friends seems rather unhelpful. When MG comes round to our place and W is out and MG insists on propping the door open, I tolerate it because I'm nice like that, but it's a terrible message from MG - either "I don't trust myself not to rape you" or "I don't trust you not to rape me" - neither of which is particularly cheering. One wants to trust one's friends to a greater degree than one would strangers. On the other hand, if two people are determined to behave badly they can still do it whilst being fully yihud-compliant - if we wanted to make out on the couch (chas veshalom) no-one would notice even with the door propped open, since there is rarely anyone in the hallway and they wouldn't come in even if they were. Ergo, propping open the door in such a situation is of little use. If I didn't trust MG I would not let him go so far as to come to the flat in the first place. On the other hand, I understand that most rapes happen between people who have prior acquaintance. It's about where one places one's social boundaries and default expectations, and how one goes about expressing that in halakhic language.

I'm procrastinating a bit. Back to the Torah.

[debka-notion.livejournal.com]

It's funny, I never thought about it in terms of davka rape- more in terms of seduction/other inappopriate sexual behavior. Maybe strengthening the image that bit more makes the situation clearer. But well- something about what you wrote was very helpful. I don't find yichud compelling: I feel like it, rather like shmirat negiah, teaches the opposite of what it's trying to enforce: that without artificial and external boundaries set up in unusually stringent and difficult ways, we have no self-control. This feels like the opposite of what halakha generally teaches: that we have to have self-control and we need to make the right choices. So instead, in the area of sexuality, which is an area that generally freaks the rabbis out some, we have these rules that tell us that we don't have the capacity for self-control and therefore we need to avoid all situations where we might need to have any at all. And yet we're trusted to be alone in a room filled with pork, pork and more pork, as far as I can tell (ok, outside of issues of ma'arit ayin, which yes, I know is a serious concern).

So- I guess I have an investment in finding a way to look at this and see it as something not so intrinsic to the halakhic system, because it feels like a perversion of the system to me in some ways. (Sorry that sounds so strong- I just don't have a nicer way to say it right now. I don't mean to be offensive to anyone reading this.) And if I were then to go to a posek and say "do I have to do this" and they said yes, I'd be in a pretty awkward position... I mean, that's how the system works, but well- I'm not ready to set that scene up at this point. This has turned into a response not only to what you wrote but to other stuff as well, that I couldn't quite respond to on its own... Oh well.

[hotshot2000.livejournal.com]

Sexuality seems to be a pretty tricky thing, and is probably in a different category of human experience than eating pork. (The recent CJLS teshuvot had to grapple with this fundamental difference, otherwise kevod haberiot would allow any issur as soon as it became psychologically painful.) So while I share your intuitive understanding of what at least some of halakha is at least partly about, namely, learning to control one's yetzer, I think this needed and needs to be balanced against the reality that not all yezters are created equal, and that perhaps there was an assumption/realization/fear that all the self-control rhetoric in the world can't stand up to this particular yezter. (Which was also viewed as absolutely crucial to human existence -- see Yoma 69b.)

All that being said, I do basically agree with hatam_soferet about yihud, although I would add that in addition to the fear of sexual violence (which women were presumed to be unable to stop, hence the halakha about being `over on yihud with 2 women + 1 man), there seems to be a component of regulating relationships in general between the genders, i.e., issur yihud will prevent the development of even close platonic friendships between men and women (something I keep meaning to research is whether Haza"l and/or their contemporaries even had the concept). To put this in halakhic language, perhaps one could compare the heterim of ba`alah ba-`ir to create a category of heter in a situation in which one is confident to a reasonable degree that the sorts of things one wants to prevent (sexual violence, sexuality impinging on a platonic friendship) will in fact not occur. (I.e., if yihud is permitted when the woman's husband knows where she is, then obviously we're afraid of something other than spontaneous sexual violence, since that could still occur whether or not her husband knows where she is; if we can figure out what that "something else" is, perhaps we could create this other category that I'm suggesting.)

[margavriel.livejournal.com]

Sexuality seems to be a pretty tricky thing....

Oh, is it?

But seriously-- for a good discussion of the prevention-of-rape aspect of yihud (which seems to be the primary one, at least if we focus on the sugyo in Sanhedrin, about Amnôn and Tomor), read the relevant chapter in Prof. Judith Hauptmann's book Re-Reading the Rabbis.

[debka-notion.livejournal.com]

Is it that her husband knows where she is, or that he could bop by to check in any time, and therefore both she and her visitor will behave appropriately out of the knowledge that he could show up at any point? The latter is how it was explained in what I was reading...

[hotshot2000.livejournal.com]

I think I remember seeing a more wide-ranging heter either in Halikhot Beitah or Entz. Talmudit that as long as the husband can contact her at any time, it was as if ba`alah ba-`ir. But you're right, that's still a less far-ranging heter than simply knowing where she is, about which I might be misremembering.

[hatam-soferet.livejournal.com]

This feels like the opposite of what halakha generally teaches: that we have to have self-control and we need to make the right choices.

Yes, spot on. Nicely put.

I think it's one of those things which is very heavily affected by social contexts, like negia, so there's probably a basis for removing some of the stringencies based on societal expectations of self-control - in which case it's easier to stomach. But I haven't learned the sources - better persuade W to free up some time :)