Sex and the Duggars: the fundamentalist Christian vs. the liberals
You may or may not be familiar with the Duggar family of the reality TV show “19 Kids and Counting.”
I don’t watch the show often, but I’ve seen it now and then, and one theme that began a while ago—the courtship of two of the young adult daughters of the clan—fascinated me into watching quite a few episodes that dealt with it.
The Duggars are Christians of a strict sect practicing modesty and sexual abstinence before marriage, and who believe in giving birth to as many children as God sees fit to bless them with after marriage and not to use birth control. Thus, the 19 kids of the title.
Not everyone would want this, nor could everyone handle the extremely major task of parenting that the Duggars have taken on, but I’ve been impressed by their intelligence and organizational skills. I’m no fundamentalist Christian, but what I perceive in this family is a grounded, loving, thoughtful, and respectful environment. Their courting rules seem extreme, and they are. Lots of people mock and revile them online for them, and consider their kids to be brainwashed and their methods repressive. But what they ignore is the context of love and the fact that these people are not at all anti-sex.
Au contraire. It’s because they have such great respect and awe for sex’s power and force that they want to harness it in the service of the spiritual and transcendent. Does the opposite—engaging in uncommitted sex with perfect “freedom”—invariably make people sexually happy? Of course not, although I suppose it does for some, especially for a while. But postponing all sex—including even kissing or frontal hugging, as the Duggars do, until marriage (their first kiss is on the altar after the ceremony)—while most definitely not for everyone, serves to build sexual desire to a peak most of us probably can hardly imagine. Then, after marriage, with the blessing of family, friends, and church, that desire can be fully indulged.
From what I see of the three young couples in the Duggar family so far (and the parents), they are very happy indeed within marriage, and sex is the least of their problems and constitutes a deep and lasting bond. It’s not their only bond, however. Their overtly-stated reason for sexual postponement while courting is the realization that sex is so powerful it can cloud the issue of whether two people are compatible enough in other ways to have a successful and lasting and happy marriage, and their abstinence gives them time and space to fully explore the extent of that mental, emotional, and spiritual compatibility. Watching the couples together, it is hard to avoid seeing their great love and attraction for each other (it doesn’t hurt that the Duggars are all very attractive physically, as well).
Which brings us to the need to tear down and mock them. I understand that their position is so extreme that few would embrace it or be able to go through with it even if they wanted to, and it invites satire. But I contend that much of the satire comes not only from a misunderstanding of the Duggars and why they take the stance they do, and/or a hatred of religion in general, but an envy for what is so obvious—their personal happiness in the sexual, emotional, and spiritual aspects of their lives.
[NOTE:Here’s an example of the sort of thing I mean, which appeared in The New Yorker.]
I watched about a dozen episodes of the show over the last years.
There are many things I do not like about the Duggars, but I think they have an overall wholesome approach to sexuality. Perhaps a tad bit exaggerated (the insistence on chaperons at all times before the couple is married, no hugs etc.), but overall greatly preferable to the mainstream culture of “empowerment” which results in regrets (especially for women) and too strong but precarious emotional bonding with too many partners in youth (it impairs one’s ability to form a proper lifelong relationship). I think they do it well – I could never subscribe to their particular brand of Christianity, but apparently they are producing adults capable of boding properly and forming stable families, so chapeau.
I only read a little of the New Yorker piece; I wish I hadn’t read any. I’ve never heard conservative Christians act as snotty toward libertines as that article was snotty toward the Duggars. I am getting so sick of hate. It’s just so ugly and monotonous.
Part of the Democrat hook on their entitlement groups is
Giving free rein to all manner of sexual expression &
Having the birth control part of it government provided is
Essential. A pregnancy that may ensue may result in a
Benefits kick up if the baby is born or eschewing that a
Gov paid abortion what s a Lefty not to love ? So many
Choices
I haven’t watched the show but I can’t help but relate its reported sexual limitations with a wonderful old movie that was both actor John Wayne and director John Ford’s favorite; “The Quiet Man”. Wayne returns to his ancestral home in Ireland and ‘courts’ Maureen O’Hara and they are closely chaperoned by the town ‘matchmaker’.
They sneak some kisses but emphatically do not have ‘relations’ prior to or even on their wedding night (she wants her rightful dowry before she considers herself married). She locks herself in their room and he breaks the door down, sweeps her off her feet, says “they’ll be no locked doors between us Kate”, kisses her and then tosses her on their bed, which collapses and he walks out of the room for the night.
They’re visited the next morning by well wishers in a celebratory mood and the matchmaker sees their broken marital bed, where Wayne had tossed O’Hara upon it in disgust at her ‘mercenary heart’. The matchmaker’s reaction upon seeing the bed, believing it to be evidence of unbridled passion is to mutter… “impetuous!”;-)
GB, the actual line in The Quiet Man, delivered by Barry Fitzgerald, is, “Impetuous… Homeric!” It gives just the right touch of Irish poetic and classical sensibility. Thank you, Neo, for your deft and gracious observations regarding this show, which I have never watched and only heard about. It reminded me of something I have observed with great interest over the past few years as I have bicycled for days at a time through Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. The Amish (or Mennonites, or whatever sub-sects there may be) I have encountered have a wholesome earthiness about them and seem far wiser to the ways of a man and a woman than the generally uninformed person would think. And they are a happy people in general, as well, and remarkably well-grounded and aware. Your point about the hatred of such people’s ways spurred by envy is an exquisite point. Envy! The only sin that has no pleasure in it. (Unless one takes pleasure in hating.)
For the record, my sister’s oldest child, my niece, did not kiss her husband until after the minister said “man and wife”. They were both committed to the idea of waiting until marriage for sex and were worried-rightly so- that kissing could easily lead them along a path that they had chosen not to follow. Sexual desire is quite strong after all. As of this message, they’ve been married for more than a decade and my niece is pregnant with her 5th child. She and her husband seem extremely happy and content.
I would add that in the case of the Duggars and their spouses, and all who follow the same path re sex and marriage, they are already an unusual and pre-selected group—they already know they share a dedication to certain basic values and a religion.
Alinsky rides again.
Ralph,
Thank you for the clarification and astute observations. I too thought neo’s point about envy to be an exquisite one.
Hatred is at base, the Left’s most basic motivation, its intellectual protests and claims, the rationalization used to justify their resentment.
Eleanor Roosevelt is reputed to have said, upon first seeing a picture of Whitaker Chambers, “He’s just not one of us.” The liberal hatred of Chambers, Palin and the Duggars is really that simple; hatred for those not part of the intellectually and morally superior liberal elite.
Well, a couple that has 19 kids must really hate sex.
“Well, a couple that has 19 kids must really hate sex.”
*snicker*
I have to date seen no advantage to the unmooring of sexual intercourse from marriage. Of course, now, the unmooring has had the (un?)intended effect of mutating the definition of marriage as well.
Thanks for choosing to feature this family in one of your thoughtful posts.
Well done. You continue to impress me.
And this Duggar family is worthy of the way in which you treated their story.
“I understand that their position is so extreme that few would embrace it or be able to go through with it even if they wanted to, and it invites satire. But I contend that much of the satire comes not only from a misunderstanding of the Duggars and why they take the stance they do, and/or a hatred of religion in general, but an envy for what is so obvious–their personal happiness in the sexual, emotional, and spiritual aspects of their lives.”
Their position is not “extreme”. It is normal. Absolutely “extreme” is the historically recent, biologically as in a few seconds ago is the contemporary view that sex and children are matters of personal taste and individualistic choice – and that a few are maybe about right.
A truer and more real and much happier world existed 6 miles from where I currently live and just 40-50 years ago. I know it existed because I was there.
In my family there were 14 (now 43 grandchildren). Down the street and around this or that block were families of 16, 12, 11, 10, etc. Small families had five or 6.
That was real. That was normal. That was good. That paid for all these smarmy and degenerate liberls social security, rods bridges and taxes galore for transfeministgenderbending freaks and all the people who now call what is really normal, “extreme”.
Has America gone bonkers on the matter of sex and children? Has ISIS gone bonkers on the matter of burning people alive.
The answer to both is “Yes” and in not very dissimilar ways.
Rudnik’s unfunny and snide piece in the NYer is evidence firstly of how low the NYer has fallen; and secondly of why smart-ass Jews (presumably) reflexively hostile to practicing and sincere Christians are sorely stressing the patience and goodwill of the only fraction of deepest American culture that bears us zero animus.
Mike:
Actually, the Duggars’ attitudes about physical contact before marriage are fairly extreme even compared to a lot of attitudes in the past. Remember, the Duggars do not even allow frontal hugs or kissing as engaged couples.
Of course, in some cultures with the type of arranged marriages where couples are not even allowed to meet before marriage, that’s stricter than the Duggars. But most of the time standards have not historically been as rigid as that.
For example, it was not unusual for engaged couples in Victorian times (especially from the lower classes) to have intercourse when engaged. Even among the upper classes, kissing was probably not unusual for engaged couples (see also this). In America, the curious custom known as “bundling” was certainly not intercourse. But it all represented more physical intimacy than the Duggars allow. The Duggars are extreme, and not just for today.
Alan Potkin:
It ain’t just Jews, believe me. In fact, many ex-Christians are the nastiest of all towards devout Christians.
No doubt true, Neo, but until the Jihadis really start calling the shots in the West, secularized ex-Christians (and not converts to Islam, etc.) don’t yet need all the help –and all the allies– that they can muster.
Hi Neo,
I love Michelle and Jim Bob Duggar and their family! And as a Christian, I am awed by their example of living in accordance with the Word. They don’t do it effortlessly and it’s as much a struggle for them as it is for the rest of us, but I am uplifted by their faith and example.
Great article! Thanks.
I’ve never watched the Duggars.
Others have already pointed out that the present age of promiscuity is the deviation not the norm. I don’t believe anyone has mentioned that until birth control pills and antibiotics came along promiscuity especially by women was strongly censored by society as irresponsible and dangerous behavior. And it was.
The consequences of our promiscuous age has now come to fruition in our inner cities in which 70% of the babies are born out of wedlock. It shouldn’t be a surprise that these behaviors are accompanied by crime and poverty. The upper class have avoided some of these bad consequences so far but of course they are not immune either it just manifests itself differently. Hello rape culture.
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I wonder what the highbrow liberal minds at The New Yorker fear so much about the Duggars? I hardly think their lifestyle will be imitated widely. Yes, I understand it was a light hearted humorous piece. Fine, then next month let’s see a humorous piece on African-American families on welfare with multiple non-resident baby daddies. Not going to happen.
Does anyone doubt the Duggars have a much better sex life than Paul Rudnick, the New Yorker guy?
Dan:
I have a theory that on some level these people understand that they are voting themselves out of existence with their choice to have fewer (if any) children. Even if their own and their children’s generation will not be much “affected” by it yet, the long-term trend would naturally be that stable, religious, patriotic families with traditional values increase in numbers, and that the _whole_ of society thus be influenced by it. You could argue that there is always some degree of cultural “conversions” – that some, even many children who are growing up in such families will end up embracing values and lifestyles more to the left – but the reverse holds true, too, i.e. there are young people with more liberal family backgrounds, from small families, who are choosing more Duggar-like lifestyle and values for themselves. So however you look at it, the sheer _numbers_ of people like the Duggars are bound to increase long-term, while the numbers of those who mock them are bound to decrease (especially if you factor in that they abort many of their children in the first place).
There is even no need to get to the double-digits numbers of children per family, all it takes for a long-term trend is that the religious families regularly have “only” 3-4-5 children instead of 1 or 2 – give it a couple of generations and you are likely to have a society that, other than literally, is also much “regenerated” as far as its _values_ are concerned.
That seems to be an inner contradiction of the libertine revolution: it is bound to ultimately exhaust itself, to implode. It seems to me that over the last generation or so we have had what in many ways was an _anomaly_ in the West, but that it is already “correcting” itself. There will naturally be _some_ people who opt out and embrace libertinage, but it is a segment of society that is ultimately bound to grow smaller, I think – and the reason why we are faced with so much hysteria about it in the MSM seems to me, quite simply, because they are very _loud_ which gives an impression of a greater numeric presence than there really is (i.e. trying to impose their personal degeneration as something “inevitable” for the whole of society).
I think it is a sort of envy mixed with terror of realization that they are members of the “losing” cult that ultimately motivates some people to denigrate big stable families.
Which brings us to the need to tear down and mock them. I understand that their position is so extreme that few would embrace it or be able to go through with it even if they wanted to, and it invites satire.
It must be a testament to my own cultural acclimation, that they do not seem extreme at all to me. Merely more conservative and traditional than some, because I’ve been looking outside the American culture for what Americans lost in the 1920s, the 1950s, and the 1960s.
Americans have lost more than they can imagine, when this cultural contextual rules are deemed “extreme”, even by supporters.
birth control, de Gaulle exploded to Peyrefitte: ‘The pill? Never! One cannot reduce women to a machine to make love! You would be going against what is most precious to a woman, fertility. She is made to have children! If one tolerates the pill, nothing will hold any more, sex will invade everything!’
When the pill came out I was 22 years old. The contrast in behaviors before and after was amazing to me… Couldn’t believe my good fortune then.
1974 to about 1986 were the swinging years then … AIDS. Calmed things down a tad.
Those at the Frankfurt School are smiling …..
1974 to about 1986 were the swinging years …
Instinctively I mostly refrained. It was clear there were no casual encounters. Each time the heart got wounded…
Portrait of Dorian Grey …
Uh, I don’t know how normal and wholesome it is to stamp down on sexuality as hard as the Duggars do, especially that part about the no-hugging, no-kissing thing. I don’t know how to articulate it well, but it makes me think about how women in any very strict religion have to cover up (Hasidic Jewish women, Muslim women who wear the burquas) mainly because of the ‘temptation’ they cause. It seems like that, to me. Which feels skewed, to me.
NYer:
US american women bought 25 millions copies of 50 Shades of Grey ….
Doesn’t fit the left’s narrative …
http://www.patheos.com/search/jsp/templates/primaryJSP/fullview.jsp?Submit=Search&keyword=50+shades+of+grey&advancedmatchselect=none
dugs = Transcendent sexual love as a glue and gift
liberals = selfish animal love that unbounds and exterminates its accidental offsprint
what else is there to say?
g6loq
and erin pizzey pointed out that lots of women crave abuse, and so enter abusive relationships to get their fix negatively…
she was the person who created the first abuse center, for both men and women… she was run out by communist butch lesbians that forced her to leave her home country for fear of herself and family. her name was stricken from her work and her history erased for not fomenting the narrative..
either you belive in rainbow unicorns with beneficient farts or else…
on another note… Russias war rhetoric is slowly getting bigger and bigger… people are removing their money from banks… generals are threatening WWIII… etc.
now, what time would be the worst for us, and the best for them? not that it matters… better to wait till it starts then pretend to be curious as to how things start… i say pretend because such curiousity should start before the disaster, not after… and there is a whole sh*tload of stuff that is going on that is completely off the radar because absolutly no one wants to look into it… not even…
g6loq – I actually don’t understand the comic you posted in the link — does it mean that churches are embracing more liberal sexual practices, or something? (I haven’t read “Shades of Gray” and only know that its supposed to be a story that includes bondage fetishes? I think?)
I dunno. I was just observing that to me it seemed like the Duggars are motivated in the same way that other strict religions are motivated: that sexuality is some perverse thing that has to be covered at all costs. It makes me a little uncomfortable. Chaperones on every date, for example. I have foreign-born female friends who have told me about how they were not permitted to go on dates without a male relative present. It honestly seems off. Like a female can’t be trusted to handle herself? Or just being a gal out on a date with a guy is some larger, insidious temptation that has to be carefully, fearfully watched? That’s the impression I get, anyway.
i no longer wonder what those who tried to warn of hitler thought as they watched their voices go unheeded, and could stop nothing, not even start discussions… such is the end result of a nothing never been with no standing vs elites who now are discussing how to contrll mens farting as a patriarchal system of oppression…
No hugging or kissing before marriage is extreme within Western society – reasonable, but extreme. Although it’s worth noting that the role of kissing has changed a lot even in the past 100 years, with improvements in oral hygiene. No sex before marriage has been the standard in Western society, but it’s always been imperfectly followed. There have been plenty of babies born 5 months after the wedding, and there have been a lot of teenage girls who disappear to a cousin’s house for a year then come back with a new little “brother” or “sister”.
Standards do not have to be perfectly met to be valuable.
May not fit the left’s narrative insofar as their exalted self-image goes, but if there are that goddamned many psychologically warped and worthless masochists and masochist wannabes in this country of voting age, it is no wonder Obama was elected twice.
How can you share a democratic political space with moral shit like that, and expect to legally retain the right to your own freedom and dignity?
NYer Says:
February 6th, 2015 at 12:39 pm
g6loq — I actually don’t understand the comic you posted in the link …
sorry, tried to keep it short. At Patheos link various Christian views/explanations on this Shades of Grey err ….phenomenon.
Sexual liberation leads to strange things ….
I think the recent vitriol against the Duggars is because Michelle spoke out against a bill that would have allowed people to choose the restroom they use based on what gender they consider themselves to be.
They’ve won the gay marriage war. Transgender rights are next on the never-ending list.
And look at how close the vote was – in Arkansas!
http://cnsnews.com/blog/michael-w-chapman/duggars-win-transgender-bathroom-bill-overturned“
LisaM:
Yes, there has been a recent increase in the vitriol because of that.
But there was plenty of vitriol before that, and I’ve seen it on articles that simply talk about the Duggar girls’ engagements and marriages.
When you extrem you comparing things with what we have today.
But following religion guides and rules whatever believe do not means should tagged extreme as such because differentsexua to others practise or behaviors, so then the opposite sould mor accurate when we call those sexual energy without bounders and ruleless, or gays attitude, they are extreme and more accurate to call them alike
When I first started visiting here I was under the impression that a number of obviously Jewish persons were regular commenters.
I might have gotten that idea because something relating to Jewish history and tradition was being mooted, and blatant self-references were therefore obvious. Or not. I can only remember the impression, not the trigger.
But since then, lacking psychic powers to prove otherwise, and seeing no Yiddish terms being bandied casually about, I have surmised that either Neo’s acquired gang of upper south anarcho-libertarian fanboys have driven everyone else out, or, “gasp” that you actually cannot tell a man’s religion when he talks baseball.
And which, speaking of baseball, especially the “inside” type, can anyone who might be Jewish, tell me why an even moderately religious or observant Jew, would continue to speak of left-wing atheist progressives, as “Jews”?
Not that you would necessarily know. I just have no one else to ask.
On the other hand, please don’t ask me how my mother’s church got taken over by lesbian liturgists and gay priests working out their theatricality compulsions in the sanctuary and on the altar. How could I be expected to know, just because … ?
DNW:
I think I’ll try to write a post in answer to your question.
Not today, though. Perhaps tomorrow.
Anna:
This issue, of religious people with a strong moral code having more children, is well known among the elite… and is referred to by them, disparagingly, as “the crisis of the marching morons”. (Yes, the title refers to lower percentages of such people going to college and such, but I believe my point stands.)
My co-workers are mostly liberal, in the classical sense. Two of them were in KY on a business trip and visited the Creation Museum. They did it for laughs and continued to hoot and howl telling everyone about the exhibits and other visitors. It sounds like they disrupted the place, posing for selfies and laughing. One in particular is an extremely nice person who wouldn’t hurt a fly. Fundamentalist Christians are so Other that their feelings are not even considered.
Yes, unless that is, they, the libertine and nihilistic left can successfully undermine and wreck the economic underpinnings and liberties that support traditional nuclear families; forcibly indoctrinate the kids of conservative families; cleverly exclude their youth from entre to educational opportunities which can be leveraged in a bureaucratically dominated society; and introduce a disruptive and draining alien lumpen proletariat class to demoralize and burden everyone it touches.
Unless that is they can pull off what they are pretty much admittedly trying to do in fundamentally transforming America.
If they can manage that, they might be able to partly drag down and destroy those whom they cannot intimidate socially.
And don’t think that they are not willing. One already sees such references casually made with regards to admission to study in university departments. The left is fine with this. It’s just Darwinism of a kind they like. The left knows no moral or ethical limits. That is what makes them who they are.
Speaking of “relationships”
There’s something really odd with this AP reporting from the AOL HuffPo …
Notify the “other person’s family”?
It was the professor who was the victim, not the killer.
Why this bizarre delicacy in identifying the murderer?
I suppose we will eventually find out.
Sex before marriage used to be a no-no — not always honored, of course, but a no-no nonetheless. It seems to me the Duggars are just, as we Jews say, “putting a fence around the Torah” — in the uber-sexualized society of today’s America, they are trying to keep their kids from even beginning to slide down the slippery slope. I’m can’t say that I blame them.
I grew up in a Catholic neighborhood in the 50s – early 60s. If a girl in my high school got pregnant, which happened maybe once or twice every couple of years, her father would grab her by the ear, the boy’s father would grab him by the ear, drag them to St. Coleman’s to be married by the parish priest. So the boy had to drop out of of high school and work as a gas pump jockey or construction laborer? Too bad, you should have thought of that. Worked very well as a way to keep teenage pregnancy to a low level.
DNW, the answer is that Jews are both an ethnic group and a religion. Simultaneously, sort of like a Venn diagram of two circles overlapping — not exactly, though, because while there are ethnic-only Jews (although their numbers are declining rapidly and they probably will have virtually disappeared in 50 years), and there are ethnic and religious Jews, there are no religious-only Jews — once you’ve signed up, you’re in the gene pool. Don’t ask me how that works from an anthropological point-of-view; I have no idea. But, as I said, I think it’s a short-lived phenomenon, lasting from Napoleon’s granting the Jews full French citizenship to about 50 years from now — the Haskalah (“Enlightenment”).
Alan Potkin Says:
February 5th, 2015 at 11:23 pm
….and secondly of why smart-ass Jews (presumably) reflexively hostile to practicing and sincere Christians are sorely stressing the patience and goodwill of the only fraction of deepest American culture that bears us zero animus.
Unfortunately this patience testing has been going on for quite a while. This:
http://www.orthodoxnet.com/articles/Lapin/Our_Worst_Enemy_2005-01-24.php
The lady who cleans my house once in a while belongs to a somewhat less strict, but more traditional christian tradition – called “Old Apostolic Lutheran”.
She has 11 kids, and nearly 30 grandkids with 3 still at home.
Old Apostolics don’t watch TV, drink or listen to music. They are sort-of Amish light. They drive cars, use machinery, but generally work in the trades or nursing. College isn’t very popular.
Their kids go to school and date in high school – generally within the church – but aren’t constantly supervised on dates and (I imagine) kiss and hug their dates quite a bit.
I read a statistic somewhere that in 1915, there were about 3000 Amish in America. There are now 300,000. A factor of 100 in 100 years is quite impressive, another 100 years and they will dominate the country. Interesting path to cultural supremacy.
The Duggards are probably too strict on the sexual control aspect of things. The key to keeping sex inside of marriage is to get married young. Most kids who get married at 20 can be virgins if they are raised in a religious household with loving support. The Mormons mostly do it that way too.
I would put the “Jewish problem” this way:
Religious Jews accept upon themselves the halakha (= Jewish law). There is a halakhic definition of who is a Jew, and _that_ definition is, therefore, the binding one for them. The definition has it that a Jew is a person born to a halakhically Jewish mother or a person who has properly converted to the Jewish religion (= accepted the halakha upon himself). So, there is an “ethnic” way of becoming a Jew and a “religious” way of becoming a Jew. Regardless of HOW the person got there, by choice or not, once they are in, the halakha considers them as bound to the halakha, as having to observe the Jewish law. It does not matter if _they_ do not wish to be bound, the halakha still binds them, and all people who accept the halakha, the halakhic definition of who is a Jew and what Jews are bound to do – that is, all religious Jews – HAVE TO continue to consider these people (the atheists, the converts to other religions etc.) as Jewish and as bound by the halakha, because the halakha _demands_ that they continue to do so. So, the religious Jews cannot “unconsider as Jews” those Jews who are not observant, who have left the fold or who have converted to other religions. And, in case of women, their children too, and their female children’s children… as long as the line can be drawn. And nearly all of Jewish outreach is geared towards those descendants – people whom the religious Jews consider as Jews. Judaism is not proselytizing, conversion is actually discouraged, but it has an interest in getting all the _Jews_ – as defined by the halakha – as observant as possible. These people are already Jewish, the outreachers only want to instruct them to adhere to a law to which they are _already_ bound according to that same law. I imagine all of this must sound terribly autoreferential to somebody who hears it for the first time, but those are the systemic inner workings of Judaism.
The Jews are considered as a people by the halakha, but the criteria of who “counts” as a part of the people are _different_ than the criteria for most other nations: the matrilineal descent OR the religious conversion.
The ideas that one accepts a religion exclusively by personal choice and that one is a member of a nation through either parent are both _extra-halakhic_ ideas. These are the ideas _other_ nations and belief systems propose, and the halakha cannot accept them.
This conflict between the halakhic criteria vs. the standards of much of the rest of the world creates much pain, of course. There are people who have been raised to consider themselves Jewish due to having a Jewish father, only to learn that _their own people’s_ criteria for who “counts” actually exclude them, there is no such thing as a half-Jew or a quarter-Jew. There are also people who do not wish to be considered as Jews and they _reject_ the halakha as the conceptual framework which defines them or imposes obligations upon them – so what do I care if a law _I_ do not subscribe to “subscribes” me and “counts” me against my will?
And all of that creates a very interesting situation for a group of people who have rejected the halakha, but the halakha did not – CANNOT, its mechanisms do not allow for it – reject _them_. If asked about their own Jewishness, they will deny it – they will not agree to be bound by standards and definitions of a worldview they do not accept as theirs; but if religious Jews are asked about those same people’s “status”, they will _have to_ call them Jewish (_and_ consider them bound to be observant of the Jewish law, which creates additional tensions). And both of these views will simultaneously be correct: such people are Jews in the eyes of everyone who accepts the halakhic definition, but they are not Jews in the eyes of those who do _not_ accept it, including their own eyes. Some of them have accepted other worldviews with their own systemic polarities of who is in and who is out, and they define themselves in accordance with that. But it does not change that for the halakha and for everyone who accepts the halakha they are Jewish, whether they like it or not.
I am not sure I would agree with mr. Saunders that this phenomenon – people who define themselves as “outsiders” to Judaism, but Judaism defines them as “insiders” – will not continue to exist. It will be in a flux, it may subside in numbers, many of the descendants of such Jews will certainly ultimately be lost through assimilation, but as long as people are free to leave, _some_ will and this paradox will continue to exist.
Do not ask me how I know all of this. I am not Jewish. But then again, _I_ do not accept the _Jewish_ definition of who is a Jew and I do not define myself according to the halakha, so even if I am Jewish, I am not. That is the paradox.
I am sorry for the “essay”. I know I need to downsize my comments, but I thought the question was interesting so I wanted to elaborate.
There is much pending enthusiasm:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2943158/Theaters-ask-moviegoers-leave-whips-ropes-home-ahead-Fifty-Shades-Grey-world-premiere.html
Thank you. I appreciate your elaboration. And, assuming that the persons acting or affected are even somewhat conscious of the principles, or even psychologically conditioned to act and judge according to them, then, I suppose, it follows that the consequences you describe are to be expected.
Thus, if the cradle encounter with the law had this everlasting conditioning effect; and, if the more observant and faithful Jews were forever unwilling to cut ties with the reprobate, then what you propose would have real psychological as opposed to legalistic explanatory power.
For my own part, I am not familiar with, or don’t remember much of any encounter with “the halakha”. The one-term focused course of study of the Jewish religion I undertook more than 30 years ago in school, wrapped up with the formation of the Talmud and the rise of Rabbinic Judaism. It was taught by a local and socially prominent conservative rabbi who operated as an adjunct professor.
I do however remember being very disturbed by what I read of the Talmud and its principles. Of the half dozen texts we used, one thin little supplemental book in particular, one we never got to in class, and called something like, “The Wonderful world of the Talmud” ( written by a Detroit rabbi who had been killed by a mentally disturbed member of his congregation) annoyed – actually infuriated – me so much that I literally threw it across the room as I tried to digest it.
It seemed a recipe for coddling male eff-ups weaklings and cowards, and destroying every moral principle related to individual responsibility and choice, free-will, everything related to personal honor and integrity, and ultimately freedom of action.
I still have the book somewhere and even glanced at it only a couple months ago. Just long enough to groan at all the suffocating communitarian solidarity shackles it joyfully described.
God, I hope that that is not really the essence of modern Judaism.
OK correction:
The little supplement book we never officially got to was: “The World of the Talmud”, and not “The Wonderful World of the Talmud”, like some deranged Disney title.
Author, Morris Adler.
Killed in 1966, about 14 years or more before I first read the book.
DNW:
Thanks for the reference.
Strange culture that generate so much self-hate.
Can’t be all the goy’s fault ….
As young South Asi
As young South Asians (that’s the politically correct term for “Indians”), my spouse and I grew up here in the States. Every 1-2 years as kids we accompanied ou parents to India to visit our large extended families where we saw arranged marriages, the joint family household (and some of our cousins rebelling against the same) and we determined that we were “so lucky” to live in the sexually liberated west (and so did those same few rebellious cousins).
Now that we are pregnant with our first child we are making plans to relocate to India before he or she reaches school age.
We want to raise a family properly – in a joint household with classical Hindu values.
Vikas and Priya,
What an interesting story. Best of luck to you!
neo-neocon asks:
Great topic. In the Duggar example, are they servants to sexdrive, or does sexdrive serve them . . . and serve their vision for cultivating family in a troubled world? I don’t think the answer is confined to measures of happiness; it needs to extend into endurance measures of marriage and of grandparent, parent, child and sibling relationships.
And the answer needs to evaluate the notion of freedom. I wonder if the compelling need to ridicule the Duggars is a mechanism to keep masking the inner truth about how manipulated and confined we are by our unlimited license for sexual indulgence.