As I mentioned in my last post, the following was submitted by Cali Girl as a Guest Post.
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Everything in my Orthodox life was going great. I dropped the kids off with a babysitter and went to run some errands at which point I called my husband to say hello. I would give anything to go back to what my brain was like all my life before that moment. His phone picked up without him realizing and I listened to him and his co-worker having sex for fourteen minutes during which I was screaming for him to stop, thinking he might hear me. He didn't, and I only hung up when I couldn't handle their sounds of ecstasy anymore.
Turned out, it was a long term affair. She had even been pregnant at some point but he convinced her to have an abortion. He still cared for her but he ended the affair since not doing so meant losing me and the kids.
After months of learning to live with debilitating post-traumatic stress disorder with the help of some intense anti-depressants, I turned to a friend, shook my head, and said, "I still can't believe this is my life. I can't believe I have to live with knowing this forever. I still can't believe my husband committed...adultery."
I had already lost the life I thought I had, as well as my sanity to a certain extent, now I was about to lose my religion too. "He didn't," she said. "It's not adultery. In fact, according to halacha, it would have been worse for him to spill his seed."
I thought, "There is no way this is true!" "It is adultery and it's one of the Ten Commandments." But I was wrong.
I thought, "There is no way this is true!" "It is adultery and it's one of the Ten Commandments." But I was wrong.
Later that day I picked up a book written by a woman who I looked up to during my transition to orthodoxy, and is known to be the leading rebbetzin among Charedi women, Tzipora Heller, entitled, "Our Bodies, Our Souls." In the book she affirmed what my friend told me. In fact, she went even further. She said that because a woman cannot separate her emotions from her physicality, if a woman has an affair the sin is so grave it is only surpassed by murder. She also writes that because a man has the ability to separate his physicality from his emotions, a husband's affair would not be a complete breech of the union.
Really? I would like to ask Mrs. Heller if her husband had an emotional and physical long term affair with someone who he loved and even impregnated, if she would consider that only a partial breech of their union?
I didn't judge Orthodox Judaism by the acts of my Orthodox husband. I judged orthodoxy by it's values. I researched and researched. I learned and learned more. What I discovered was that it wasn't just adultery. All of halacha regarding women, when considered on a whole has in implied subtext. It reads: Women are objects for the use of men.
Some might argue that this is unfair, since men don't have the green light to do absolutely whatever they want with their women. To those people I say: So what? Halacha also doesn't let you do whatever you want with an animal you own.
Okay, so halacha is discriminatory towards women. They’re second-class at best, property at worst. What does that have to do with whether or not it’s true that God wants us to follow halacha? Maybe, as the Chumash says, God created women to be helper for men, and He wants women to submit to men?
ReplyDeleteI would personally find such a Divine attitude abhorrent, but that I don’t like it doesn’t mean that it’s not true.
I wrote about this idea at length here:
http://2nd-son.blogspot.com/2010/02/does-being-wrong-make-something-wrong.html
I get it. This way of thinking is what made it OK for me to live with a lot of halchic things, like the requirement to have your child executed if he hits you after a certain age.
ReplyDeleteI wouldn't say that I stopped believing because I didn't like it. I would say that not liking it opened the door for me to question and research on my own. Before, I just figured that anything an Orthodox rabbi said about halacha was true and within context.
I found that there were just too many things in halacha that do no compute with common sense and basic decency. I can't imagine that if there is a creator, that he gave us common sense and decency but does not have any himself. The only way I can resolve this is to believe that halacha is not divine and that the Rabbis of the Talmud were just incredibly decent for their time and place, and that's about it.
Besides, I know that a lot in the Talmud cannot be divine since a lot is scientifically wrong. But that's a whole other discussion.
> I can't imagine that if there is a creator, that he gave us common sense and decency but does not have any himself.
ReplyDeleteWhy not? And why assume that “common sense” and “decency” are any more real or objective than, say, the human preference for sugar or the popularity of the color blue? Sweet is not a property of sugar, it’s just the way we perceive it. And decency may well not be a property of an action, but also just the way we perceive it. Would you require God to perceive sugar as sweet the way you require him to perceive actions as decent or indecent? If so, why does God have to be moral? Why should He be bound by morals? Perhaps He created us merely to amuse Himself, gave us the Torah, and enjoys rewarding and punishing us according to a set of arbitrary rules. It would be in keeping with the way He’s portrayed in Tanach.
> Besides, I know that a lot in the Talmud cannot be divine since a lot is scientifically wrong. But that's a whole other discussion.
The Talmud makes no claims to being Divine. Divinely-inspired, perhaps, and then there’s the theological mess that is Daas Torah, but still, it’s perfectly coherent to say that the amoraim were fallible human beings, but the way halacha works is that their conclusions are binding.
>It would be in keeping with the way He’s portrayed in Tanach.
ReplyDeleteI agree, but when you read Tanach, do you get the impression that he is just doing it for the sake of amusing himself? Sounds pretty selfish no? In the grand scheme of things, you may be right, but when I read Tanach (sans mefarshim) I don't get the perception that he is just trying to amuse himself.
G*3:
ReplyDeleteRe:The Talmud makes no claims to being Divine.
Are you kidding? Ever heard of the Oral Torah? Also, what about the blessing to light Hannukah candle's? The blessing says that God commanded us to light Hannukah candles but we know he didn't. It's not a daas Torah thing. It's a ruach hakodesh thing. Othodox Jews are taught, just as the blessing says, that what the leading rabbis command is divine and even the exact same thing as god commanding.
As far as your comment about common sense and decency. I don't know that there is a god or not or if there is, how he works. I admit that this belief of mine that if there is a god he has common sense and decency that is relatable to us is just that, a belief. It's entirely subjective based on nothing but my own thinking. Although, I do question even this belief when I see how much innocents suffer in this world.
Cali Girl,
ReplyDeleteNot everything in the Talmud can be considered to be oral law. There are clearly halachot that the rabbis themselves deduced. Miamonides makes this clear.
Holy Hyrax,
ReplyDeleteRe:Not everything in the Talmud can be considered to be oral law. There are clearly halachot that the rabbis themselves deduced. Miamonides makes this clear.
Agreed! But even the added part is considered to be divine as follows: The Torah commands us to listen to the rabbis (although in my opinion, the verse in the Torah can't be talking about the Pharisees who wrote the Talmud). Therefore, what Chazal commands is commanded by god since he commanded us to listen to them. Thus my example about the blessing to light Hannukah candle's. And of course, don't forget about the whole ruach hakodesh thing.
Ya, but now you are making everything into a giant omelette. For practical sense, it would make sense that you follow the rulings of the "governing authority", but that doesn't mean their conclusions are of divine nature. This is a distinction that has importance. There is the divine component of Judaism and the human component.
ReplyDeleteIf you want to talk about the supposedly divine aspects, than don't mix in the Amoraim and Tanaaim into it.
I don't agree with this "logic" anymore than you do. It's totally lumping things together and I think it's looney.
ReplyDeleteI'm just repeating what I heard time and time again during 11 years of shiurim, private discussions with rabbis who I asked to explain to me why all halacha is binding, and shabbos meal discussions with regular FFB folk.
Whenever I disagreed with anything I would be told that I don't understand because I'm into BT Judaism wich compared to FFB, is not the real Orthodox Judaism.
I hear ya
ReplyDelete> I agree, but when you read Tanach, do you get the impression that he is just doing it for the sake of amusing himself?
ReplyDeleteNot particularly, but you don’t’ get any real sense of any purpose, other than the purpose of humans is to do what God tells them to. Then again, there’s Iyov, who God tortures because of a bet.
> Sounds pretty selfish no?
He does come across as pretty selfish. And petty, megalomaniacal, vengeful, …
> Are you kidding? Ever heard of the Oral Torah?
Yes. While the gemara is TSBP, it’s not necessarily infallibly divine the way Tanach is supposed to be. Sorry, I should have been clearer.
> I don't know that there is a god or not
Neither do I, but I lean heavily towards no. There doesn’t seem to be any good reason to think that there is, beyond the human intuition of the divine.
> Whenever I disagreed with anything I would be told that I don't understand because I'm into BT Judaism wich compared to FFB, is not the real Orthodox Judaism.
Now that’s funny. I would bet that the average BT has a much better understanding of the theological underpinnings of Orthdoxy than the average FFB. Not that I think the average BT has a good grasp of Orthodox theology, but FFBs are actively discouraged from exploring theology and philosophy in any meaningful ways. I certainly was, and so were many others I’ve met in the blogosphere.
>the purpose of humans is to do what God tells them to
ReplyDeleteThat goes without saying, or else you wouldn't have a Book. I just don't see a selfish yearning for amusement coming out of my reading.
If God exists, but is not good, than we would have no obligation to follow his Laws or his Books, because we couldn't expect any fair reward. So God must a) exist, b) be good, and c) his Laws must be therefore good...if any one of those things is not true, than we can have no reason to feel obligated to uphold or justify halachot. So if we can see clearly that halachot are not good, then either they are not his laws and therefore we are not obliged by them, or they are his laws, and he is not good, so we are not obliged by them...at least not by any purely religious logic.
ReplyDeleteThis post is fantastic evidence of the fact that halachot have no divine authority. That's very clarifying for me. Thanks.
> Whenever I disagreed with anything I would be told that I don't understand because I'm into BT Judaism wich compared to FFB, is not the real Orthodox Judaism.
ReplyDeleteI got that line A LOT. I think it's standard Aish. And also: "practice first, believe will come." Really preying on insecurities and very manipulative.
>Now that’s funny. I would bet that the average BT has a much better understanding of the theological underpinnings of Orthdoxy than the average FFB.
As a wise man once said - SHHHH - we're not supposed to know that!;)Not knowing the education system of the FFB, and the communities being rather segregated, the secular BT rarely knows this, and few FFBs would admit to it!
*belief
ReplyDeleteHH: can you pls define mefarshim. just doing teh glassary, thx :).
ReplyDelete> If God exists, but is not good, than we would have no obligation to follow his Laws or his Books, because we couldn't expect any fair reward.
ReplyDeleteWhat does reward have to do with anything? You do what God tells you because if you don’t, He tortures your family.
Yeah, but if God is not good then He'll torture your family even if you do listen so there's no added benefit point in listening.
ReplyDelete