Does the opposite–engaging in uncommitted sex with perfect “freedom”–invariably make people sexually happy?

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.

What an interesting story. Best of luck to you!

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.

Thanks for the reference.

Strange culture that generate so much self-hate.
Can’t be all the goy’s fault ….

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.

Anna Says:
February 6th, 2015 at 7:55 pm

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.”

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.

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.