I Am Very Disturbed by This Gemara

SpottedBanana

Wed, Aug 09 2017, 1:40 pm

marina wrote:

I think it's more accepted in college only if you are young and stupid and drunk or a floozie. The mature intelligent secular kids are not sleeping around at all. In fact there are widely accepted derogatory terms for guys who just want to sleep around - **** boys, for example, and they are regularly discarded as trash.

Current undergrad at Penn here. Um, no. The ones with long term boyfriends/girlfriends don't cheat on them usually, but "floozie" is considered an anti-feminist term and experimenting with various people is approved of by the other people in my major (whom I try to avoid. My friends are mostly in relationships). That term for guys exists, but as a joke, and they are not discarded as trash. And this is Penn -- I don't want to think about what happens at Penn State.

Back to the topic at hand about whether one night stands were approved of by frum people in the times of the Gemara, I really don't think so. The Gemara about a woman baking challah naked does not mean that this is an encouraged practice. Maybe read Be'er Hagolah again, or Ramchal's piece on aggadata. On the other hand, there is also no way that intimacy and marriage was portrayed as "super special" in a world when marriage was mostly conducted as a business transaction or because the FIL was a talmid chacham. That is completely modern and while I believe morality is from the Torah, I don't believe that every fluffy thing written in a pretty Jewish book is a moral value. Slavery though? Jewish slaves are treated with an awful lot of respect, and non Jews were never supposed to be treated with respect. There is no mitzvah of v'ahavta es hagoy.

tichellady

Wed, Aug 09 2017, 1:57 pm

SpottedBanana wrote:

Non Jews were never supposed to be treated with respect???
I find it very troubling that you are a frum educated person who believes this.

marina

Wed, Aug 09 2017, 1:59 pm

SpottedBanana wrote:

1. I dk these people and I judge them. But should I? Is it really that important for 5ex to be meaningful? Why? If it's just a social construct, then maybe it's not. This is getting me depressed.

2. Be'er Hagolah is about fantastical beasts and frogs as high as ten houses, etc. Not about named people who acted in a way we find abhorrent. How many stories are there in the gemara about people who acted inappropriately? So so many. And they're not parables. R Yochanan really became an apikorus and R Elazar really slept with many hookers and Reish lakish was a robber.

There's no reason to think the events in this gemara are just allegorical.

marina

Wed, Aug 09 2017, 2:03 pm

tichellady wrote:

Non Jews were never supposed to be treated with respect???
I find it very troubling that you are a frum educated person who believes this.

This is one of those things that only makes sense in a historical context. If the gentiles around you are anti-semitic and cruel to you, it is understandable that you will seek some way to differentiate yourself from them and will see them as less than you.

But now this is completely unacceptable.

tichellady

Wed, Aug 09 2017, 2:13 pm

marina wrote:

Yes and no. You are talking about gentiles in power, not gentiles in the lowest rung of society.
You can't treat a non Jew in halakha however you want, you can't even treat an animal in such a way. There are rules about how to treat non Jews- you can read the rambam, or listen to the words in kiddush about slaves not working on Shabbat etc. it's blatantly false that according to Torah she bal peh you could treat a non Jewish slave however you wish.

SpottedBanana

Wed, Aug 09 2017, 2:29 pm

tichellady wrote:

Bowing out of the conversation about one night stands because I have things to do today Smile

but when I say "treating non Jews with respect", I mean respect like you have for an equal, not politeness you treat everyone with like saying please, thank you and excuse me. Of course there are halachos about non Jewish slaves, but the fact that you are allowed to own and sell them and fight a milchemes reshus with them, killing people in the process, shows that the level of respect is nowhere near that what we must have for Jews.

marina

Wed, Aug 09 2017, 2:35 pm

tichellady wrote:

I was definitely not talking about slaves.

marina

Wed, Aug 09 2017, 2:37 pm

SpottedBanana wrote:

Bowing out of the conversation about one night stands because I have things to do today Smile

Do you find this difference in respect to be moral? Why?

Also we need to move this discussion to a nonpublic thread.

dancingqueen

Wed, Aug 09 2017, 2:46 pm

I don't find this shocking at all. There's the concept of an esha yifat toar, as well as pilegesh, as well as polygymy in general in the Chumash. Plus the Gemara talks in about a man going out of town to see a harlot, but not in his own town. Clearly men were given a fair bit of slack to have extramarital zex but for women it was considered the worst offense.

Forte

Wed, Aug 09 2017, 3:33 pm

Marina, I don't know where you've seen the idea that 5ex according to the Torah is supposed to be special and exclusive. It seems pretty consistent in the view of 5ex as merely a process of baby making and no more. The Torah does value life, hence the prohibition on zera lvatala and tumas niddah, etc. Another thing the Torah values is keeping the purity of the nation I.e. ensuring that siblings do not marry, this is why women must be monogamous (for fear that we may otherwise not know who the father is). And it's also why men generally cannot have 1 night stands even with single women and why 5ex must be within the context of a committed relationship.

mommy3b2c

Wed, Aug 09 2017, 4:47 pm

octopus wrote:

Well with all of this discussion, it just makes me appreciate cherem d'rabbi Gershom THAT much more. It really was a step up for women's rights. I hate when posters here say to bring back polygamy. Rabbi Gershom did something really wonderful for Jewish women.

I'm also happy that we are no longer allowed polygamy.

But it's not like men were allowed to take another wife without the first wife's permission. So even then, women had rights.

octopus

Wed, Aug 09 2017, 4:55 pm

mommy3b2c wrote:

I'm also happy that we are no longer allowed polygamy.

But it's not like men were allowed to take another wife without the first wife's permission. So even then, women had rights.

I'm not saying women didn't have rights. But this definitely gave women more rights. An abusive spouse can threaten his current wife into allowing another wife. Yes, it is technically not allowed, but people can be bad and abuse laws, which some husbands do anyway without even taking another wife. But at least that option is completely taken off the table.

tichellady

Wed, Aug 09 2017, 5:02 pm

mommy3b2c wrote:

I'm also happy that we are no longer allowed polygamy.

But it's not like men were allowed to take another wife without the first wife's permission. So even then, women had rights.

I have never heard that before. I can't imagine women would actually agree with a full heart to their spouse taking another wife, but perhaps my imagination is limited.

mommy3b2c

Wed, Aug 09 2017, 5:13 pm

octopus wrote:

I don't disagree.

Polygamy is hard for me to understand.

SpottedBanana

Wed, Aug 09 2017, 6:47 pm

imasoftov wrote:

Is there any middle ground between loving some people and turning others into property?

Not sure what you mean. The Torah definitely wants us to be polite to all people, but the attitude is "kabdehu v'chashdehu" (anyone know where that's from? Have seen it a bunch of times re how to treat non-Jews) and the fact that so many people in Tanach had non-Jewish slaves, and that the Torah explicitly talks about how they are yours forever when you buy them, indeed shows me that it is fine and not immoral.

Going back to the one night stand discussion, IMO intimacy is not "special" according to the Torah (which may explain a thread long before I got here, when you grappled with the fact that there is no punishment for rape other than for the assualt + virginity loss) -- however, it does have to happen with a woman who has prepared for it (aka more than just impulsive consent), there has to be kiddushin, and except in cases of pilegesh there has to be kesubah as well. Way more than just a one night stand concept, but the concept of spouses as emotional life partners can only happen in a society in which people marry for love and not for convenience / money (though they are not allowed to be intimate if the husband hates the wife, etc, which is nice).

Last edited by SpottedBanana on Wed, Aug 09 2017, 7:18 pm; edited 1 time in total

marina

Wed, Aug 09 2017, 7:15 pm

Forte wrote:

This is literally the most depressing thing I read today.

As an aside, zera levatala & niddah have nothing to do with life - sperm die even if not released and women aren't tomei unless they bleed.