[Cross-posted in the Madness Watch thread of www.endthemadness.org.]
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/136077
A three-member panel of Supreme Court judges issued a restraining order against adding more bus lines to the separate-gender bus routes.
The judges – Elyakim Rubenstein, Yoram Dantziger and Salim Jubran – ruled that the State must also make sure that on the existing “mehadrin” buses, as they are called, separate seating for men and women are not enforced. Men and women may be directed to get on and off the bus via separate doors, however.
The “mehadrin” lines are popular in areas populated by hareidi-religious Jews, but have caused controversy even there on occasion. Several women have reported being disgraced or even assaulted when they “dared” to sit in a spot reserved for men.
The judges acknowledged that the option of separate-seating bus lines in certain neighborhoods should be considered, where there is a demand for such.
The judges noted that the word “mehadrin,” referring to going beyond that which is required by the letter of the law, “might apply to Chanukah candles, kosher laws or an etrog, but apparently does not necessarily mean that whoever is mehader in the laws of modesty and inter-gender mingling is also mehader in the laws of respect to others.”
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Emphasis mine.
Few seem to realize that every chumrah is also a kulah in some other area. You can't put more emphasis in one area without concurrently putting less emphasis somewhere else. And sometimes one loses a great deal more than he gains.
Favor extreme approaches to tznius that place single men and women far from one another? Sure, fine. But you're also favoring an extremely lenient approach to providing sufficient effective opportunities for men and women to successfully meet and marry. Hello shidduch crisis.
Favor extreme approaches to Torah study and filtering out inappropriate influences? As you wish, but you're also favoring an extremely lenient approach toward producing well-rounded, capable, self-sufficient human beings who can deal with ordinary life challenges and think for themselves. Lots of Torah book knowledge won't compensate, either. Torah ethics will ultimately suffer as well when times get tough. Final score? You lose.
These are just two prime examples of many; hopefully food for thought.
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The rav of our shul gave a shiur about mehadrin buses. He said that mehadrin buses would be buses that are run by companies that pay fair wages to the employees and that the buses are inspected to make sure that there are no defects that could cause people to get hurt and that the drivers are mehader to drive safely.
Good stuff. I would add that the passengers on mehadrin buses would be quick to offer their seats to the elderly and infirm, wouldn't have loud conversation on their cell phones, and wouldn't put their feet up on the seats.
If we wanted to be super-glatt mehadrin, we could have single men and women sit next to each other and enjoy pleasant conversations that might lead to relationships.
I am just curious: you think frum Jews meeting in a bus is appropriate? You don’t see any value at all in creating a little distance at the initial stage of the shidduch (to be able to rule out things objectively)?
I agree with the paragraph about shutting oneself off from literature other than Torah. I understand the opposite point of view too and see a good source for it, but I think it has been shown to be unrealistic (in terms of producing menchlach Yidden).
On the contrary, I don't see what you find so threatening about people meeting on a bus, in a grocery store, in a classroom, at a wedding meal, at a shul function, at a concert, or anywhere else besides an awkward, contrived shidduch date.
What exactly are you so afraid of? That not everything about who meets whom and under what circumstances will be rigidly controlled by third parties who likely don't have their priorities straight in any case?
Why is striking up a conversation with someone on a bus so much more scary to you than having the same conversation with someone in a hotel lobby? Because the former lacks a foolish shadchan arranging it?
I can think of many ways this world would be a better place and dating would be so much easier and more pleasant if it weren't taboo to meet people through the normal course of life. I don't see how the situation would be worse -- unless you believe adult singles should have authority figures managing their personal lives for them. As if that's producing legions of high-functioning, responsible, clear-thinking Jews...
The danger that I see is two-fold:
1. When people meet in person before they find out information about each other through a third party, they can have a subjective opinion formed about each other before they form an objective opinion.
Now, this part is poshut common sense. I know from personal experience, this is a real worry.
2. It is considered improper for a man and a woman who are not a husband and wife to be attracted to each other. (Other dangers, such as machshovoz zoros, etc. are also obvious.) Now, I know that it is natural, and that it happens spontaneously. So, we try to minimize it as much as possible and at the same time strike a balance with other things (like not dressing women in burkas and not drinking bromide all the time).
A sensible thing is to minimize interaction between the opposite genders unless it’s for professional reasons (and even then — keep it professional; i.e., when I have to interact with a woman at work, I talk about work, not about our lives).
Of course, people need to get married. Therefore, they need to interact with each other — in the context of shidduch. This means, they meet and take as long as they need to figure out that they are right for each other objectively and subjectively. After that they get engaged right away and spend as little time as possible with each other until the marriage (for the same reasons listed in 2).
That’s the justification of the “system” as I understand it. Notice that I am not talking about the worry that if a boy and a girl talk in a bus, they will end up sleeping together the same night. Although, in cases like men and women being close friends, etc., etc., it’s not so far fetched. But from what I understand, that’s not the reason close interaction of genders is “past nisht”. There are some things which are not against Halacha which are, nevertheless, considered to be improper in light of the spirit of Judaism.
Now I know that you’ll say that the system is broken, and perhaps it is. (Perhaps the problem is with people themselves. Or with the system of chinuch before people get to the shidduch stage.) But the answer to a broken system is not to pull down mechitza (i.e., break another system), but to fix the system, in my opinion.
By the way, I say “not in Halacha”, but according to Rambam, gazing even at a pinky of a woman... etc., etc. Now, if you know that you can control yourself (in thoughts) and not “follow after your eyes”, gezunter heit. Maybe you can also dance with a bride on your shoulders, as some did back in the day, and feel nothing. It is an assumption that this is not the case for most men, and as a result, it is considered wise to create a barrier between oneself and yetzer horah.
I will respond to your comments, but please not that it is against my policy to engage in an extended correspondence with anonymous people. You know who I am, and I'm invested in my ideas enough to put my name to them. I expect the same from people who engage in discussion with me.
1) When people meet through a shadchan they are definitely meeting with a wealth of preconceived notions and anything BUT an objective opinion. Your claim to the contrary is pure fiction.
2) "It is considered improper for a man and a woman who are not a husband and wife to be attracted to each other." -- nice passive tone. Who considers it improper? On what scholarly, well-supported halachic basis? How can a normal human reaction -- to be attracted to another human being -- possibly be forbidden?
When some groups of Jews innovate something that never existed they are dismissed as Reform or, heaven forbid, Modern. Yet when other groups of Jews innovate something completely foreign and antithetical to Torah values they perceive themselves as more frum. I've never understood how this works or why they've gotten away hijacking Torah-true Judaism for so long.
Some societies have made an Avoda Zara out of tznius -- not to minimize the importance of tznius, but everything has its proper context and proportions.
In deciding they will be machmir to the extreme with regard to tznius they have unwittingly become meikil in many other areas, including providing reasonable, healthy, NORMAL opportunities for young men and women to meet. To me they are not machmir or more frum; they are imbalanced, ignorant of any real concept of a halachic process that takes scholarship and nuance into consideration, and meikel in areas that are no less important without even realizing it.
You cite the Rambam about not gazing at a woman's pinky finger for lustful purposes? What does that have to do with anything? This is more of the same, pulling a source out from left field, taking it out of context, blowing it out of proportion, and making an emotional argument instead of a halachic one to justify extremist behavior that has no logical end to it.
You are very imaginative when it comes to finding things to worry about, to finding some conceivable way someone will sin. That is no reason to set up so many fences around fences that the original issur is no longer even discernible. We have the laws of yichud to prevent frum men and women from sleeping together.
To ban them from sitting near each other on a bus, lest they talk to each other, lest they become attracted to one another, lest they decide to sleep together instead of dating and getting married, is downright preposterous and nothing short of an abuse and corruption of the halachic process. There is no balanced halachic argument here, no logical end to the safety measures, no rational end to the concerns that an imaginative mind can come up with to justify yet another layer of protection. The Torah is here to keep us safe, and also to keep us normal, not to make it inconceivable for a person to sin.
If you are so concerned that your children will fornicate with other frum Jews they meet on a bus then they have greater problems the next geder will be able to fix. And if you do have such concerns, you can't justify any other meetings between men and women, at the workplace, or even on a shidduch date in a hotel lobby. Your gymnastics to make a chiluk based on some fools doing pre-date research just doesn't do it.
The Torah does not support this type of faux halachic process.
>I will respond to your comments, but please not that it is against my policy to engage in an extended correspondence with anonymous people. You know who I am, and I'm invested in my ideas enough to put my name to them. I expect the same from people who engage in discussion with me.
That is unfortunate, since I am invested in my anonymity when communicating in a public forum for a number of very good (for me) reasons. I will respond to you in private, iy"H.
Actually, I can’t find your e-mail. Whatever. Hatzlacha in your endeavors.
"That is unfortunate, since I am invested in my anonymity when communicating in a public forum for a number of very good (for me) reasons."
What is really unfortunate here is that you voluntarily live in a community where you are deathly afraid to express your opinion openly, lest you be ostracized, stigmatized, and have your family punished as well. Why one would voluntarily choose to live in such a community is beyond me. That's not Judaism.
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