Gender

Relationships In
Marriage and Out

Edited by
Rivkah Blau

Robert S. Hirt, Series Editor

THE MICHAEL SCHARF PUBLICATION TRUST

of the YESHIVA UNIVERSITY PRESs
New York

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 THE ORTHODOX FORUM

The Orthodox Forum, initially convened by Dr. Norman Lamm,

Chancellor of Yeshiva University, meets each year to consider major
issues of concern to the Jewish community. Forum participants from
throughout the world, including academicians in both Jewish and
secular fields, rabbis, rashei yeshivah, Jewish educators, and Jewish
communal professionals, gather in conference as a think tank to
discuss and critique each other’s original papers, examining different
aspects of a central theme. The purpose of the Forum is to create
and disseminate a new and vibrant Torah literature addressing the
critical issues facing Jewry today.

The Orthodox Forum

gratefully acknowledges the support
of the Joseph J. and Bertha K. Green Memorial Fund
at the Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary
established by Morris L. Green, of blessed memory.

The Orthodox Forum Series

is a project of the Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary,
an affiliate of Yeshiva University

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 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Orthodox Forum (17th : 2004 : New York, NY)

Gender relationships in marriage and out / edited by Rivkah Blau.
p. cm. – (Orthodox Forum series)
ISBN 978-0-88125-971-1
1. Marriage. 2. Marriage – Religious aspects – Judaism. 3. Marriage (Jewish law)
4. Man-woman relationships – Religious aspects – Judaism. I. Blau, Rivkah Teitz,
1941– II. Title.
HQ525.J4O78 2005
296.7’409 – dc22
2007026007

* * *

Distributed by
KTAV Publishing House, Inc.
930 Newark Avenue
Jersey City, NJ 07306
Tel. (201) 963-9524
Fax. (201) 963-0102
www.ktav.com
bernie@ktav.com

Copyright © 2007 Yeshiva University Press

This book was typeset by Jerusalem Typesetting, www.jerusalemtype.com

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 Contents

Contributors viii
Series Editor’s Preface xi
Robert S. Hirt
Preface xiii
Rivkah Blau
Introduction: The Past and the Future of the Forum on
“Gender Relations” xv
Jennie Rosenfeld
1. Of Marriage: Relationship and Relations 1
Aharon Lichtenstein
2. Marriage, Sexuality, and Holiness: The Anti-Ascetic Legacy
of Talmudic Judaism 35
Adiel Schremer
3. How Jewish Society Adapted to Change in Male/Female
Relationships in 19th / early 20th Century Eastern Europe 65
Shaul Stampfer
4. Sanctity, Sanity and Connectedness: Struggles For
Commitment Among Orthodox Jewish Singles 85
Daniel Rothenberg
5. Perfect Person Singular: Unmarried Adults in Contemporary
Orthodox American Jewish Communities 91
Sylvia Barack Fishman

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 6. Observations on Perfect Person Singular 115
Shmuel Goldin
7. Excerpts from Interviews with Orthodox Singles 121
Koby Frances and Jennie Rosenfeld
8. Premarital Guidance Literature in the Internet Age 131
Yuval Cherlow
9. Thoughts on Teaching Taharat HaMishpahah: The Role of
the Teacher Today 173
Abby Lerner
10. Preparing Modern Orthodox Kallot and Hatanim for
Marriage 207
Devorah Zlochower
11. “So She Can Be as Dear to Him as on Their Wedding Day”?
Modern Concerns with Hilkhot Niddah as Demonstrated by
Anonymous Email Questions 225
Deena R. Zimmerman
12. Life Values and Intimacy Education: Methods and
Messages 243
Yocheved Debow and Anna C. Woloski-Wruble
Orthodox Forum Seventeeth Conference 293
List of Participants
Index 297

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 Other Volumes in the Orthodox Forum Series
Rabbinic Authority and Personal Autonomy
edited by Moshe Z. Sokol
Jewish Tradition and the Non-Traditional Jew
edited by Jacob J. Schacter
Israel as a Religious Reality
edited by Chaim I. Waxman
Modern Scholarship in the Study of Torah:
Contributions and Limitations
edited by Shalom Carmy
Tikkun Olam: Social Responsibility in Jewish Thought and Law
edited by David Shatz, Chaim I. Waxman, and Nathan J. Diament
Engaging Modernity:
Rabbinic Leaders and the Challenge of the Twentieth Century
edited by Moshe Z. Sokol
Jewish Perspectives on the Experience of Suffering
edited by Shalom Carmy
Jewish Business Ethics: The Firm and Its Stakeholders
edited by Aaron Levine and Moses Pava
Tolerance, Dissent, and Democracy:
Philosophical, Historical, and Halakhic Perspectives
edited by Moshe Z. Sokol
Jewish Spirituality and Divine Law
edited by Adam Mintz and Lawrence Schiffman
Formulating Responses in an Egalitarian Age
edited by Marc D. Stern
Judaism, Science, and Moral Responsibility
edited by Yitzhak Berger and David Shatz
‫ למדות‬The Conceptual Approach to Jewish Learning
edited by Yosef Blau
Rabbinic and Lay Communal Authority
edited by Suzanne Last Stone
War and Peace in the Jewish Tradition
edited by Lawrence Schiffman and Joel B. Wolowelsky

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 4
Sanctity, Sanity and
Connectedness: Struggles
For Commitment Among
Orthodox Jewish Singles
Panel Discussion
Daniel Rothenberg

Panel Discussion – Overview

I. Introduction
This discussion acquires significance first, not as an exegesis of sexu-
ality and desire, but as a discussion of Jewish struggles for related-
ness, intimacy and commitment in contexts of kedushah (sanctity),
mutual love and respect. In human terms this subject becomes
poignant as selective testimony is given regarding personal struggles
with loneliness and the need for closeness and companionship with
85

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 86 Daniel Rothenberg

others, and integration of values and behaviors as they are tested by

intimate life experiences through disruptions, losses, absences – both
actual and emotional-occurring in the context of personal relation-
ships. As such, these are issues both compelling and relevant not
just for “unmarried”/ “singles” but also for all members of our com-
munity, married or single – albeit differentially applicable to them
throughout the course of their lives.
These issues summate and acquire foundational relevance to
Orthodox communities, schools, families, leaders, educators and
rabbis because they bear ultimately upon Jewish “drift” vs. survival,
assimilation, sanctity and sanity, and because for many individuals
they represent defining life experiences, on par with, and sometimes
more personally influential than exposure to Jewish learning or ob-
servance. For many individuals attainment of intimate connections
within relationships may be the stuff by which Jewish commitment
is made or unmade. The attainment of committed relationships and
the developmental capacities that enable them are the points where
the bonds of religious and personal commitment intersect, becom-
ing either more frayed or more whole over time.
Perceived silence, unresponsiveness or lack of engagement in
these areas of personal experience by the community, translates/de-
volves into alienation from observance, particularly manifested as
unmarrieds get older or as married relationships stagnate or ossify.
In such contexts, detachment, felt irrelevance and rejection of Jewish
observance among singles, and perhaps in different ways for married
individuals, may follow.
The Orthodox world does well to recognize “at risk” popula-
tions in its midst. Mindfulness of at risk groups, however, must be
broadened to recognize the currents within people’s lives which
place them at risk in less obvious but no less pernicious ways. The
capacities which enable (or in turn dis-able) faith, trust, or com-
mitment, either vis-a-vis G-d or, alternatively, in relationships to
people do not spring up de novo as issues at or near the point of
marriage. Nor are they dispatched or resolved with marriage or
parenthood. Rather, intimacy, commitment, relatedness and sanity
itself – structured and infused with meaning by halakhic frameworks

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 Sanctity, Sanity and Connectedness 87

of kedushah – must be engaged as developmental tasks throughout

life both at home and in our communities.
This discussion is not about the extension or “development”
of the parameters of halakhah. Rather, the need here is to develop
people first in their capacities to listen, to empathize and to better
comprehend these struggles. Single and married members of the
community, leaders, teachers, and lay people must learn to listen
to one another empathically and with modesty. They must set aside
political agendas, and thus become more cognizant of their own
motivations and histories which may influence their faith and their
capacity to change, to progress and to engage others.

ii. Discussion Outline (Possible Areas For Discussion)

Methodology and Approach

Errors to avoid: Diagnostic error in attributing developmental
gaps in individual experience to “the halakhic system”; an equally
damaging methodological error is to do anything but start and stay
with “where the patient/subject is,” i.e., the error of listening with an
agenda; false dichotomies between psychological and religious hal-
akhic development; finally, the identification of singles as suffering
from developmental weaknesses / “commitment phobias,” failure to
consider their lives as a whole – their competencies, achievements,
challenges and struggles.

“Michaela”: An Alternative Case Example

An alternative case example highlighting issues of religious and
psychological development: progress, stasis and fragmentation.

Kedushah (Sanctity)
Kedushah as constitutive of experience, i.e., as the organizing prin-
ciple of development and living; sexuality as a significant subset of
relatedness and intimacy; the need for “kedushah curricula” engag-
ing the development of individuals throughout the life cycle; the
need for trained professionals to implement such a developmental
program in schools and in communities.

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 88 Daniel Rothenberg

Safety in Discussion: Perceptions of Silence and The

Empathic Bond vs. “The Unempathic Double Bind”
What questions may be safely asked in this context/forum without
being boxed into caricatured roles of “singles,” “marrieds,” “rabbi,”
“psychologist”?

iii. Core Factors Affecting Premarital

Development/ Single Life (Partial List)
• Inner experience, developmental history, personal history, his-
tory of the individual with religious/educational institutions
and figures (as influential if not causative).
• The shadow effects of internalized models of intimacy, caretak-
ing, romance, and commitment.
• Relatedness: Disruptions in relational attachments and bonds:
conscious, unconscious, disavowed, or dissociated; distur-
bances of empathy and attunement.
• Dissociation as an emerging factor in response to subtle trauma,
emotional absence, loss, or trans-generational familial disrup-
tions in intimacy.

“Pas B’Salo”:
The basic need for emotional closeness and physical contact and
their integration during transitional points in individuals’ lives, the
latter interacting with developmental lapses in “mirroring,” physical
and emotional contact.

Distortions in time sense.

Note: This case vignette is written in a purposely spare manner. It
represents a composite sketch drawn from actual interviews with
several individuals. It is presented here as a template for discussion
and understanding, but does not represent a clinical case study or
even a full-bodied life narrative. All identifying data have been al-
tered. Resemblance to any individual is incidental.

At the “ripe old age” of thirty-five, Michaela lives alone as she pursues
an active and rich social and professional life. On Shabbat these days,

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 Sanctity, Sanity and Connectedness 89

however, she is only glancingly warmed by Shabbat candles, as well

as by the incandescent glow of a television screen which flickers
from the corner of a study adjoining her living room.
In her late 20s, Michaela began leaving the tv on, “just to keep
me company.” She would either activate it by use of a Shabbos clock
or leave it on altogether in a side room whose door she could easily
open or close. Today, in the privacy of her home, Michaela flicks
the tv on and off almost unselfconsciously, as she does lights and
other electrical devices. Shabbat day for her may be comprised of
an early morning trip to the gym, an occasional stop at shul to catch
mussaf and Shabbat lunch with groups of friends. On other Shab-
batot Michaela feels moved to come to tefillah early, where she prays
with rapt concentration and later participates in intensive learning
sessions featuring rigorous exegesis of the parshah (weekly portion),
sessions which but a few years earlier she had led.
Michaela has had several important relationships over the years,
all characterized by her as “having great depth and intensity on all
levels.” Yet, all were ultimately elusive in yielding commitments to
marriage. Michaela does not look for blame or locate the causes of
her experience exclusively “in them or in myself.” Instead, she be-
lieves that the dynamics are “probably subtle and complex, located in
the interplay between myself, others and what has gone on inside me,
I mean in my life, for a very long time.” Today, Michaela sees herself
as “very caring, powerful and effective, but nevertheless somehow in
search of a closeness which addresses something missing at the core
of my life. I guess I remain hopeful that some day I will be touched
emotionally in a lasting and profound way.”
Michaela’s early life experiences included attendance at “the
finest” yeshiva day schools, Jewish high school, Israel, college and
post-college programs. Throughout, she excelled as a student and
was socially popular among her peers. Michaela described her home
as “solid,” viewing her relationship with her mother in particular as
“warm but overly intense.” She stated, “I was the ‘Chosen One’ and
the oldest,” followed by three brothers. She described her father as
“caring” yet “erratic” in both his presence and attention. “At times
it felt that to be under his gaze was to be transported, warmed,

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 90 Daniel Rothenberg

elevated and held all at once. Mostly, however, especially when I

was no longer a child, he seemed preoccupied, focused elsewhere.”
Michaela characterized the relationship between her parents as “an
enigma inside of a mystery… I didn’t see much ‘chemistry’ between
them – not even in terms of noticeable evidence of companionship
or shared interest.” While Michaela saw her father and mother as
devoted to their children, the bond which kept them together was
elusive in her eyes.
Michaela spoke sadly about what she called “my father’s with-
drawal from me” around puberty.
While he had once both carried her around as his “precious
princess” and just as easily “rough-housed with me and my broth-
ers, I recall a kind of awkwardness which set in when I, in his words,
‘became a young woman.’ It was as if he just didn’t know what to do
with me after that.”
Today, Michaela continues to try to make a life for herself,
finding meaning and closeness in relationships as best as she can.
Her parents, she says, are now “verging on elderly” and she divides
her energies between a demanding, largely successful career and
a challenging and rich, yet, in some ways, emotionally “arid and
depriving” social life. Most of her friends from “the old days” are
married, some are already divorced. She spends as much time as
she can helping her parents and giving to her community and, in
her words, “in search of the closeness and recognition I had always
thought awaited me. After all,” she concluded, “I was a Future Leader
of the Jewish People – I was always told.”
Resemblance to any individual coincidental. All identifying data
have been altered.
© All Rights Reserved – Darchei Hachaim 2005
May not be cited or duplicated without written permission

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