becoming pregnant while engaged

Ruchel

Thu, Feb 04 2010, 11:27 am

bailalinda wrote:

Ruchel wrote:

Shoko wrote:

Why would we want to close the community mikvahs to them or have mikvah ladies ask for a ketubah? it doesn't ruin the mikvah for the rest of us if non-married women use it. and wouldn't we want to encourage them to keep more mitzvot, not tell them they're not doing enough so they're not welcome??

I don't feel like toiveling where non kosher couples toivel, personally. Like I wouldn't toivel in a kosher mikve where reform conversions happen.

I think by allowing them to toivel we allow them to have this situation going on and on. If th is important to them, let them get married. If they prefer not toiveling to getting married, maybe we're doing them a service by making them realize it...

Really, Ruchel? I lived in a town for a while that only had one kosher mikvah. Yes, the Reform rabbi once or twice used it to do conversions. yes, the Orthodox congregation was a little taken aback but better to use a mikvah for a non-kosher conversion that might lead someone to become more observant (which happened to several members of that shul) than not know what a mikvah is for at all.

And yes, we all used the mikvah for TH and keilim afterwards.

When you have, you have to.
I can only say BH in my part of the world, reform is something you have to look, as opposed to some places I have visited where there was a reform, a conservative, a reconstructionist (!) place, but no traditional...

Ruchel

Thu, Feb 04 2010, 11:47 am

I think there is something unhealthy in single communities, as opposed to singles living in family.

As a shadchan I have had older girls and older boys fearing all those they met were not virgins anymore. It is a common worry. I tell them, if you are, why wouldn't there be others! and indeed there are others, including among those who always get thebad stereotypes, like BTs or very very modern.

Maybe it is an extreme, but some time ago there was a wedding with a wife in her 40's and a man in his 50's and (someone very close to them is very close to me) both were virgins. And BT. Ok, they didn't live in the average circles, but one of them had never set foot in a shul or heard a word in Hebrew before like 2 yrs ago.

saw50st8

Thu, Feb 04 2010, 11:56 am

Ruchel wrote:

There are some single communities that function very well. Washington Heights (in NY) is a great example. They have formed a community where single people move in, socialize, meet, some get married and they have a real community. A community doesn't have to just be about families. I know a few people who went OTD and said that its just too hard to be frum, single and on your own.

saw50st8

Thu, Feb 04 2010, 12:13 pm

Ruchel wrote:

Maybe it's just that I'm not familiar with single communities or really with moving out of the house (except sem/yeshiva) as a single...
Of course being frum single and on your own is hard! it must be awful!

I think in WH its not awful. People have friends on similiar wavelengths living similiar lifestyles. Its like going to a shul for young families or a shul for older families - you pick the one you associate with best. Its a real community. My SIL lives there and she loves it. She recently got married and stayed there. Its a more transient community, but people stick around for about 5 years or so on average. Its a really lively, friendly community that is mainly single but still has young married couples.

I moved at at 19. I had a great relationship with my family, but the commute to school was just way too hard. So I lived in an apartment in Brooklyn wtih a bunch of other single girls. It wasnt a community though.

su7kids

Thu, Feb 04 2010, 12:19 pm

It was always interesting to me that in South Africa, certainly many years ago before Mikvah was popular (things have changed there now), some women were told to have this "bath that you do before you get married" and that was it. They were never taught halochas, and yet, even those who ate treif at home, when they got married, or had a bar or bas mtizvah or a bris, they were 100% kosher. Also, it was UNHEARD of that a boy born to a Jewish mother would not have a bris. It always happened. and another thing that was kept to some level or another, was Pesach.

In my home growing up, my mother's home was treif, but she would salt and soak her treif meat. She kept 100% pesachdik, but the same keiling for milk and meat, but nothing would come into our house that didn't have a "kosher for pesach" sticker, even the meat.

She was not unusual, by the way.

So, to condemn people who have sx out of wedlock and then want a kosher catered bris with a recognized mohel, is out of line. Whatever is done, keeps the connection, and eventually, it pays off.

My cousins who were not frum at birth, became BTs and would have been devastated to realize they may have had to have their bris again. (and it had to be a bris, by the way, not just a circumcision).

When I grew up -- its changed now -- intermarriage was hardly a factor.

mltjm

Thu, Feb 04 2010, 12:40 pm

Oh G-d it seems like almost everyone on here has totally missed the point. I just read through 5 pages in total frustration.

I believe everyone on here is aware of the fact that in secular circles having secx before marriage is completely the norm. In that case, yes, BH the child has 2 Jewish parents, if they get married, even better, if they give it a bris, BH, if they give it kosher food once in a while, BH as well.

What we're talking about on here is FRUM couples having secx before marriage, and nuch, going to the mikvah beforehand to do it. Why are people on here who seem to think its ok??? Yes, it's hard from engagement to marriage. That's why your supposed to have a short engagement. But why on earth are there frum women on here who say it's ok for frum people to have secx before marriage??? shock

ETA: PS Ruchel finally we're agreeing on something!

Last edited by mltjm on Thu, Feb 04 2010, 12:51 pm; edited 1 time in total

Hashem_Yaazor

Thu, Feb 04 2010, 12:49 pm

su7kids wrote:

(also upsherin was a custom kept in SA even in the non-frum population)

imaima

Thu, Feb 04 2010, 1:33 pm

mltjm wrote:

ETA: PS Ruchel finally we're agreeing on something!

did OP say, the couple was frum? I omehow missed that part..

Peanut2

Thu, Feb 04 2010, 2:18 pm

Ruchel wrote:

It's amazing! I loved it - at least for a while. I am very grateful for the amazing experiences I had and for having time to learn and grow. Of course, I'm delighted to be married to DH! But I would be even more incompetent as a homemaker if it weren't for those few years or learning to cook and clean and do laundry Smile

I actually think that it's very healthy for young people to have some time to be independent adults before starting a family. It's not a requirement, but it can be a useful time in someone's life. I think it becomes difficult when people feel pressure - whether internal or external - to get married before they are ready or before they find the person their heart desires.

It's also important to live in a place that makes you happy when looking for your bashert.

freidasima

Thu, Feb 04 2010, 3:50 pm

What I love about this thread is that almost everyone posting used a simple, basically halochic question as a soapbox to either defame, bash, speak loshon horo about, or share experiences that had absolutely nothing to do with the question asked.

That's what threads are all about, and except for a few pointed posts - including an amother who for some G-dforsaken reason tried to turn my words about "all Jewish babies are welcome after losing millions during the Holocaust" as if I were condoning premarital relations - no one personally tried to bash any other poster.

But what I don't understand here is the judgementalism of the non frum lifestyle or at least what appears to me as judgementalism by some of the posters. Either the Ribono Shel Olam appointed them his policewomen while I was sleeping or I missed something here. Everyone knows that in the western world the age of marriage has risen and since the ubiquitousness of the birth control pill since the 1960s fewer and fewer men and women - no longer fearing unwanted pregnancies - hesitate to engage in relations before their marriage which is at a later date. So? We aren't talking the average frum couple, we are talking the average couple, period, with orthodox Jews not being part of the equation.

That there are modern orthodox couples who aren't getting married, are living together? Even covertly? Yes it happens. Why? Ladies...ask the guys. In most cases that I have heard of like that, the girls would love to get married but the guys aren't so quick at asking. The girls figure that this is their last chance, maybe it will work out and the guy will eventually marry them. They aren't the ones who prefer living together over marriage, but no one is asking them to get married!

And so? If you don't like the situation, instead of condemning these girls for what they do, or condemning them to singlehood (or marrying frei guys who want to sleep with them before marriage anyhow), maybe do something about it. Closing the mikvah's against single women won't make these frum guys marry them. Having all the frum girls refuse to sleep with guys before marriage won't stop these guys from sleeping with non frum girls who they don't plan to marry. Because these guys aren't into getting married so fast. First they want a "single life". They don't want to commit. They don't want to settle down.

And who gets blamed for wanting to try and catch one of these guys nevertheless? The single religious girls, who otherwise have come to the conclusion that they are doomed to spinsterhood. Because there seem to be a heck of a lot more single older religious girls than there are single older religious guys.
Lots of reasons for that. The guys sometimes marry only traditional and not frum girls, or they take off the kippa and aren't religious anymore, but statistically lots of single girls at a certain age, many fewer religious single guys.

So...at least try not to be so judgemental and condemning of these poor girls. They just want - on the most part - to have a chance at getting married and they are desperate enough to be willing to go this route. It's not their first, or second or even third choice of lifestyle in most cases. But for those who do it, it's better than spending the rest of their life alone.

Last edited by freidasima on Thu, Feb 04 2010, 4:01 pm; edited 1 time in total

sarahd

Thu, Feb 04 2010, 4:06 pm

freidasima wrote:

Closing the mikvah's against single women won't make these frum guys marry them. Having all the frum girls refuse to sleep with guys before marriage won't stop these guys from sleeping with non frum girls who they don't plan to marry.

So the frum girls should sleep with them to...save them from sleeping with non-frum girls? To get an edge over those non-frum girls?

Good try, but no cigar FS. There is no justification for this behavior, no matter how single you are and no matter how slim you think your chances at marriage are. S-x outside marriage just in order not to die a virgin? It's really not okay.

(And please don't think I can't understand what these girls are going through. I married at 34 and many was the time I thought I would never find my beshert. But sleeping with someone before marriage never entered my mind.)

freidasima

Thu, Feb 04 2010, 4:07 pm

First, as far as I know there is no "sin" in a poor person who is starving stealing food. "Lo tignov" of the ten commandments is kidnapping, not "stealing" as we know it.
It is not nice to take someone elses possessions, however if someone is starving and it's steal food or die? You steal food.
Now these girls.
They live in a world in which single girls are as good as dead. And people without children are as good as dead. Didn't chazal say that? A person without a child, a poor person and (don't remember third category, maybe blind or deaf?) are considered as good as dead?

And in practice. We the good frum Jewish communities treat single girls, older single spinsters, like dirt.
We don't turn ourselves inside out trying to be kind to them, trying to find them a shidduch etc. So they pick up the message. Better to be a non virgin than to be "dead" in your community.

Who exactly did the sin? I would say that we are all more guilty than they are.
Is it a "sin" to have a child out of wedlock? Not that I know of. And if you keep niddah? Then you are a concubine. If you are in a long term relationship in which you commit (even if the guy didnt) and are keeping TH you are a concubine and your child is not born in sin.

How are we to know who lives how? Who said that these girls committed a sin?
Be charitable towards them. And if it hurts you so much, don't post on Imamother about it, try to find them husbands. I do it all the time.

freidasima

Thu, Feb 04 2010, 4:17 pm

Sarahd you live in a world in which it isn't an option. Meaning do the kind of guys you wanted to marry even proposition you to go and live with them without marriage? I assume not.

But in the very modern sectors of the frum world, and I emphasize the VERY here and not the modern, because in the mainstream MO world this is not acceptable behavior for either boys or girls, at a certain age the girls realize that if they aren't willing to go and live with these guys, they have missed the boat.

You say you married at 34. But what if you were already 44 and 54 and still single and a nice guy came along and said "I like you, I'm not interested in marrying now but maybe let's live together for a while and see what happens. Maybe if it works out I might change my mind about not getting married"...

That's what happens to these girls. Not necessarily at 44 or 54, but at an age when they realize that their choice is between never having a family and this. Because they want a husband. And they want children.
They don't want to die alone.

I know someone in our kehilla who is frum and spoke to a rov and said that at this rate (she was close to 40) she is never going to be married, no one has even asked her out on a date in a few years. She is not rich and she is too old. She wants to have a baby, can she use artificial insemnation by a [gentile]. The rov she spoke to tried to dissuade her for several years and when she was over 40 obviously she found a rov that said it was ok as she did just that. She is now 45, has a four year old daughter who she is raising alone. She is frum. The daughter is frum. The kehilla has totally ostracized her and her parents (with the exception of dh, myself and one other family). This nice MO kehilla.

Yes well. Her comment to me was once, "I could have gone and lived with a guy in my 30s when they were still asking me. I could have had a baby with them and the child could have been raised with two parents. If then I would have been ostracized and my parents would have been ostracized at least there might have been a chance that he would have married me and we would be a family. So now, what do I have? My "good name"? Because I didn't sleep with anyone ? Because this was a virgin birth? People gossiped that I slept around anyhow, my parents are pariahs, I'm a pariah, and for what? I should have gone to live with X when he wanted me to fifteen years ago".

When I hear something like that my heart breaks.
Basically you are saying, die a virgin, die alone, but don't sleep with someone (even with mikva) before marriage? Which may lead to marriage?
Sorry. I don't buy that.

Barbara

Thu, Feb 04 2010, 4:27 pm

mltjm wrote:

ETA: PS Ruchel finally we're agreeing on something!

I think that you need to go back and read the thread, because that's only one thing that's being discussed here. Another thing is laughing at people who would have a kosher wedding and a kosher bris with less than 9 months between.