Comments on “Sexual Immorality Within”

PersianRabbi.com has an excellent article by Mr. Micheal Naim titled “Sexual Immorality Within”. I provided some short omments in the Comments Section of the article.

Here is the long version:

Many thanks to Mr. Naim who has clearly pointed out some important maladies of the Jewish Iranian community. Initially it seems that it is just about our community's pervasive double-standard that men can do as they wish, while women are restricted and held back, but in fact this article points out to much more. Mr. Naim has further elaborated on the bigger issue of social promiscuity among us.

It is self-evident that the double-standard of men’s relative freedom to do as they please is a moral blemish on our collective conscience. It goes without saying that the solution is not to lower the bar and encourage the women to follow their brothers, fathers and husbands. As Mr. Naim has so elegantly suggested, we need to reorient our moral compass.

He has pointed out that we the Jewish Iranians, along with our other Jewish brethren in Diaspora are sitting right at the very epicenter of the industry that promotes and produces free and tantalizing sex as well as eschewed moral values; Hollywood. He has asked the question as how we can fix the problem. Mr. Naim has pointed towards "our own traditional Jewish norms" as remedy, and has cited our biblical heroines and their heroes as role models that we need to emulate. I could not agree with him more.

The objectification of the female body and trivialization of human relationships have been going on since biblical time and are of course universal phenomena. The Torah has absolutely clear instructions on the type of permitted physical relationships. Further, our sages and rabbis have codified and expounded on Torah’s instructions to develop in the Oral Law the relevant halachot; complex and intricate, yet powerful, sensible and practical code of conduct that govern us Jews to live upright, modest, healthy and happy lives.

So, we can expand on what Mr. Naim refers to as "our own traditional Jewish norms", and re-emphasize that without adherence to Torah laws on permitted relations and modesty, and halachot on living moral and upright lives, our community will continue to accelerate on a path of moral decline and self-destructiveness. Teen pregnancy, drug abuse, suicide, obsession with weight loss and good looks, divorce, opting out of getting married all together, extra-martial relations, etc., are all symptoms of our ever sliding moral decline.

But why is it happening to us? A closer look at our life styles might provide some of the answers. I am only expressing my own opinion of course.

First, we have brought lots of baggage with us from Iran; the notion of “Mard Salari” is a major one, which can explain the first point that Mr. Naim pointed out to. We groom and encourage our boys to act in a certain way, which later on in life leads to tendency to become domineering and to behave in promiscuous manner. On the other hand, although we might preach virtue with our girls, in practice we send them mixed messages. For example, the practice of throwing lavish birthday parties from an early age and encouraging “Baba-karam”, “raghse’ shekam”, “gher”, “eshveh”, etc., instills in our girls a sense of objectification from an early age, and worst of all it erodes from within them, their God-given and innate sense of modesty.

Second, we are immersed in a Hollywood life style with all its physical trappings, and we do not live wholesomely with our Torah-based traditional values as our guiding principles. We are bombarded from all directions with messages that: life is too short and enjoy it while it lasts; the guy with the most toys wins; the boy with the nicest car and home takes the girl, etc. This life style has rendered our neshamas insensitive to spirituality and pursue of higher meaning, and in its place encourages the body to pursue pleasure and have a good time.

The above factors have resulted in many of the problems that we face in our community that Mr. Naim has alluded to. Of course, the mind has the power to rationalize and deny. I can almost hear the voice of sarcasm accusing me of narrow-mindedness and short-sidedness. I am not naive to suggest that one’s daughter’s birthday at age six has resulted in her drug problem or pregnancy at UCLA at 18! What I am saying is that the result of our collective behavior as a secular-traditional community, having put our emphasize and collective efforts on pleasure, comfort and material success, with minor emphasize on our traditional Torah-based values, is that we identify ourselves more as bodies and not as souls, and as a result we are more in pursue of physical than spiritual. The concept of identifying ourselves as souls and not as bodies is an established Jewish principle, for example, see here.

Observant Jews (the ones Mr. Naim refers to as “others, in this very town“) live their lives in such a way to de-emphasize the body and emphasize the soul, in a reasonable manner as prescribed by Halachah. One component to accomplish this is modesty. That is, modesty in dress, manner of speech, etc. And what is modesty? In brief, modesty is to conduct oneself in a manner in order not to invite unnecessary attention to oneself. For example, if your net worth is $100 million (and you should have even more), enjoy your money but do not go out of your way that the entire planet knows about it. And if you posses figure of a super model, stay covered and respect the holiness of the God-given body. This is a vast and complex subject and at the risk of being taken out of context, I will not say more. Suffice it to say however that modesty does not just apply to women, but it also applies equally to men. However, the domain where men and women need to exercise modesty is different. Please consider reading this insightful article about modesty. As is said in one of the comments on this article what used to be lingerie, has become appropriate fashion. How true!

Mr. Naim has suggested that we need “a Rabbi – a real Rabbi – to teach us the beauty of …”. In other words, we need to go back to our roots. We need to become curious about the wisdom of Torah and try to find out whether Judaism is relevant to us in 2006. Perhaps we do not have that real rabbi to teach us, but let us not despair. I think that we already have several wise, trained and capable rabbis in our community, but we probably do not appreciate them as much as we could and should. Perhaps since we have some pre-conceived notions about rabbis - part of the baggage from Iran where we called the rabbis “Molah Roghani” - we have not come to really appreciate what we have got. We have to work with what we have got. A community that does not value Torah scholarship cannot and will not produce Torah scholars. The ones, who have become rabbis, have succeeded on their own and despite of our community and not because of it.

Our community is probably one of the wealthiest immigrant communities in America, and I think that there has never been in the long history of the Jewish people, any group of Jews who were dispersed and managed to regroup and re-prosper in such manner as we have accomplished, Bli Ayin Hara. Therefore, let us take advantage of the God-given opportunity and put our good fortune to proper use. Let us support Jewish schools and Torah institutions and also give respect to our Torah scholars and those who want to pursue more serious Torah learning. Is it surprising that our community has produced so many doctors, dentists and successful business people? Not at all, because secular education and material success are what we value the most. And don’t get me wrong, we need secular education and material success as well. My point is that since we encourage our kids to take a certain path, and since secular education is primarily what we give respect to, this is the path that our children take, and this is what we produce as a community. As long as we don’t respect Torah scholarship and hold those who pursue it in high esteem, we will not be able to produce great home-grown rabbis.

So on practical level, let us start a spiritual revolution! Let us make study of Torah and Judaism fashionable in our community. How? Let us open our homes and invite rabbis and Torah scholars to teach us. Let us set aside one night, for example Wednesday nights and dedicate it to Torah learning in all Jewish Persian homes across all towns. Let us support and encourage our kids to get involved with Judaism and proper Torah learning. It is only through our collective and sincere efforts that we will be able, with the Almighty’s help, to become a model community and emulate our spiritual heroes and heroines. I believe this is the path that Mr. Naim charted in his article.

Now, these were my comments. I would like to invite every one to join in and participate in the dialog. As always, you can comment on the blog, or write to jewishirani@yahoo.com