Why Josh Can't Be Left Alone

While I never hide my fundamentalist ideology, I don't think I've shared one of my actual made up religious rules. When I say made up, I don't mean the rule has absolutely nothing to do with religion or that it is some type of Baal Tosif, forbidden addition to a commandment's requirements. It is actually well grounded in the common sense necessary, not for those living in the ghettos, but for those Jews who consider themselves modern. It has to do with the separation of the sexes.

There is a tendency in more Modern Orthodox Jewish circles to have more contact between the sexes than in some of the more monolithic communities. And that can be fine. It provides a lot of healthy opportunities, not just to meet a potential spouse, but to learn how to interact with the opposite sex, which regardless of which side you sit on, are probably viewed as a foreign species.

But this permissiveness is flawed in that it has no bounds. In embracing modernity without setting any limits, the modern community fails to define how it can coexist within the secular world. While the more fundamentalist community may close themselves off of certain options in order to retain insularity, the modern community does not have a right to ignore Jewish Law. For example, the immoral content that is shown on TV causes the more right wing community to shun the technology all together. On the other hand, the modern community has accepted the TV with no limits. In mocking the right wing community for being so backwards and rigid, the left wing community sits around watching Sex in the City and Will and Grace without giving a second thought as to the permissibility of the programming. (While the definition of "acceptable standards," as well as which shows meet those standards, could be debated, the sad truth remains that those lines remain undefined in the modern Jewish world, at a communal or personal level.)

With that all being established, I can throw out my crazy rule with little explanation. I don't believe that any religious person belongs in the apartment (not just bedroom) of anyone of the opposite sex. This has nothing to do with the laws of Yichud, of being alone with the opposite sex. I don't care how many people are there. For me, it is just setting a clear line of where you do and don't belong. I don't take the extreme approach of forbidding all contact. But nor am I naive enough to say people can trust themselves to behave appropriately. So I set a line of where behavior can go from casual to sexual.

I have no problem with meeting in third party spaces, whether in a park or in a married family's apartment. But once you arrive in an unchaperoned place, unchaperoned behavior can ensue. I'm not dumb enough to believe that it will happen in any circumstance. I just think that laying down a firm line prevents a slippery slope later on. For example, I don't think stopping by the girl's apartment next door to change a light bulb is going to lead to a sexual encounter. But if you start dating her, then when does it go from a casual visit to something more? You need to have a firm line in place, where consistent behavior can be expected.

It may be a paradox, but it is exactly the meaning of being Modern Orthodox that you have to bring together both the stringencies of the religious world with the possibilities of the secular world if you want to be able to meld the two into something spiritual. Going completely either way may lose you.