An actual Open Door (Photo credit: FlickrDelusions)
I recently had pointed out to me an interesting article on issues in Jewish Law of yichud, specifically restrictions on when people can be alone together. The author of that article contrasts two extreme reactions to not understanding the laws of yichud, although I do wish that the author had been clear that neither such reaction is good, albeit for different reasons. One reaction is to mock and belittle those laws, even if one keeps other halakhot. The other reaction is to blindly follow the stringencies of the laws without comprehension so that one may well not correctly apply the laws. Then the author offers a perspective on yichud laws which makes remarkable sense and discusses how these laws can be adapted and applied in a modern context.
Before discussing that proposed perspective and why I believe it makes a lot of sense, I want to address why the extreme responses to a lack of understanding which the author discusses are both problematic. Dismissing and/or belittling mitzvot clearly undermines the basis of and respect for Jewish Law. We have One Torah, and when one makes fun of Jewish laws, one is ultimately making fun of the Torah. Saying “No, it’s making fun of the rabanim,” is not a valid critique of this notion because the rabanim are established by Torah as the arbiters of Jewish Law, and in the Torah G-d promises to guide the consensus of the rabanim. Hence making fun of the rabanim for laws they have decreed is in fact making fun of Torah itself. Yet, while blindly keeping Torah laws does have a certain degree of merit, it also runs afoul of two specific problems. The first problem with the approach is that Jewish Law has to be applied to actual situations and a person cannot meaningfully and correctly apply something which makes no sense to that person. Moreover, the Torah enjoins in the V’ahavta to have the mitzvot “on one’s heart”. In modern culture, we tend to think of the heart as the seat of emotions but in antiquity, including in all Torah contexts, the heart is viewed as the seat of reason. In other words, a Jew is enjoined to work to understand the mitzvot and that injunction is so fundamental that it is recited as a core part of prayers in morning and evening for shacharit and arvit (maariv for my Ashkenazi readers). In other words, נעשה ונשמה starts with doing before understanding but it does not leave the understanding out entirely.
The approach to understanding of yichud laws offered in the article deals with issues highly relevant in the modern world: the inherent possibility of abuse or rape in situations where power differentials exist. Thus, for example, a notorious statement in the Talmud used too often to dismiss women’s mental faculties is argued, and correctly I think, to really mean that socially women are inherently placed in a position of having less power than a man. From this perspective, in light of a growing awareness in the Jewish community of sexual abuse among other issues, the author makes a compelling and interesting case.
Taryag Mitzvot 