Navigating the World: A Jewish Lesson

The article is titled The Shallowness of Men Who Won’t Sit by Women, but comes close to talking at the same time about the shallownness of women who complain about men who won’t sit by women. Writing in the Forward, Simon Yisrael Feuerman observes that

Today, customs and sentiment have disappeared and hardened into rigid belief. For some of us, one is either “allowed” or not “allowed” to sit next to a woman. One is expected to quote this halachic source or other to support his view.

Alternatively, the “laws” of feminisim clamor and compete for parity through equal claim on rectitude. A man is not “allowed” to not sit next to a woman. It is an “insult” on par with racism and it is not to be tolerated. It is all chapter and verse and no spirit.

I discussed the difficulties of living out one’s counter-cultural beliefs in Haredi Gaming the System. Feuerman offers an interesting history of the way Orthodox Jews once navigated the difficult course of being believers among semi-, non-, and other believers:

Time was that a recognizably Orthodox person in public transport was seen as a curio: a remnant from the Old World. He (most often a he) represented a sentiment, a gesture, perhaps holy or pious or quaint. In the face of the thickness of this identity, members of the public would, if not out of total belief, then out of sentiment, recede, sometimes with affection sometimes without, as in, “that guy doesn’t want to sit next to me — a woman? That’s interesting! He must be a holy man.” But now it seems that is no longer so.

There was a kind of silent agreement among all Jews of the last century for observant folk to soften hard issues of doctrine and belief in the face of general custom and sentiment and for the less observant to soften and respect them as well. An Orthodox man might shake hands with a woman, if that were the custom or might not, but it would not be an occasion for either party to militantly protest. A pious man would certainly not obstruct a bus, train or plane over something like this. A pious man would not be prevented from talking to God or studying his Talmud or reciting his Tehillim on the subway.

Parallel to observance of the law, there was a profound ethic of modesty and menschlicheit inherited from his forebears in the sense of being attuned to the world outside — a belief perhaps that human existence in a civil society was a serious matter that in some ways had to live side by side with doctrine. There was finally an easy oscillation between being both narrow and broad, worldly and parochial. The Jew was finally alone, but still tried very much connected with the world.

These are, of course, matters that Christians are increasingly having to navigate, though many don’t want to navigate them at all. Some of our brethren like the “obstruct the flight till we get our way” option and others the “don’t act like a believer in public” option.