Modest Extremes

The medieval French biblical commentator Rashi explains that wives may have a greater desire for their husbands than vice versa (Genesis 3:16). But this desire is intertwined with emotional and soul fulfillment -- otherwise known as love. Women intuitively sense that sex is really about the union of two souls, which is why, perhaps, so many who intend only a casual encounter are left wanting more. In contemporary psychobabble they have "rejection-sensitivity," but perhaps what women really have is "soul-sensitivity." As for the men, thousands of years before feminism, Jewish law stressed the importance of satisfying your wife. For, according to the Torah, to really express your sexuality requires selflessness. Indeed, it is this mutual selflessness that makes it all holy. Of course, in our whatever-floats-your-boat society, this is still a radical concept.

To some, Orthodox women will always be repressed and Orthodox men will always be sexist. To be sure, Orthodox men do not objectify women with the male gaze, but on the other hand, they don't touch other women besides family and their own wives, and that really stretches the limits of tolerance. The "Ethicist" of The New York Times infamously counseled a woman not to do business with an Orthodox realtor who could not shake her hand, though he was "courteous and competent." Decreed the Ethicist: "Sexism is sexism, even when motivated by religious convictions. I believe you should tear up your contract."

The old joke about the rabbi on a train still applies. The black-hatted man is innocently reading his paper when his neighbor inexplicably lets loose a torrent of anti-Semitic and anti-Orthodox insults.

"I beg your pardon, sir, but I'm Amish!" he protests.

"Oh, I'm so sorry!" gushes the passenger, turning beet-red. "You know, I think your traditions are quaint and beautiful."

"How fascinating," says the rabbi, "because I really am Jewish."

Why is the Orthodox view of modesty so misunderstood? For the most part, Judaism is just as revolutionary today as it was back when Abraham smashed those idols. After all, even the Amish have their running-around period or rumspringa, the period when 16-year-olds leave the community and experience the immodesty of the larger world before committing themselves to the Amish way of life again (if they still want to). If you want a rabbi to support your rumspringa, after saying "Nice try," he will most likely try to persuade you that what you do as a teenager really does affect you and might make future intimacy difficult, as Ms. Saginor, who witnessed life at the Playboy mansion, found. In essence, Judaism challenges everything most people hold to be true about sexuality -- namely, that it must never be "regulated." I'm not talking about fear of government regulation here. I mean the way that any personal boundary is seen to be a kind of violation of one's authentic self.

Most of us recognize that being desensitized to the power of sexuality is sad, that if you've gotten to the point where stopping for a lap dance is like stopping at McDonald's, then you're missing out. Yet instituting concrete boundaries to preserve sensitivity -- such as not hugging people of the opposite sex outside of one's family ­-- is still seen as absurd. Nonetheless, I maintain that examining our sexual values from the vantage point of Orthodox Jews can be refreshing. If you pull aside a religious woman from Jerusalem and try to explain our debate over whether your boyfriend's receiving a lap dance from a stripper constitutes cheating, she will surely think it is our culture that's gone completely crazy. Indeed, she might argue with good reason that we are the ones who are repressed about sexuality. Emotionally repressed, that is.

And could you really blame her? When it comes to modesty, I often wonder, who are the real extremists? Those who insist that only public and tawdry displays of sexuality are legitimate, or those who appreciate privacy and restraint as necessary components for attaining real intimacy?

From Separate Schools to Separate Dancing:

How Do Orthodox Couples Get Hitched?

Among Orthodox Jews, boys and girls learn to treat the opposite sex with a kind of awe, unless they are siblings, of course. They generally attend separate schools. When it's time to date, young people are fixed up, but not in the way most people imagine. A suggestion can come from anyone -- a friend, a rabbi, the grocery clerk. The prospective match is then thoroughly "checked out." By the time their names go through the wringer and the couple is determined to have enough in common to meet, the young man and woman have merely to decide whether they like each other. The pair date in semi-public places, such as parks and restaurants, for anywhere from weeks to months. With a spark established but not fanned to front and center (no touching until the wedding), they can begin to know with a fair degree of objectivity who the other person really is.