Posted May 22 2008
The Touchy Subject
When tackling this issue, all sorts of fun puns come to mind. One needs to be cautious in approach, steady on arrival and only once a comfortable calm has been established can one thrust forward with the heat of the issue. Even then it is not a simple task to ensure everyone’s happiness with the outcome.
When I was 19 I had a conversation with a female (who was then my age now) that ended with her calling me gay because I claimed to have never touched the girl I was dating. Her basic premise is that no one can have feelings towards someone and not act on them. And while that says all wonders of things regarding what she was doing during her dating period, it rises further questions on what her expectations are for people during Niddah, or how likely someone is to resist an opportunity to cheat during marriage.
While not only defending my claim but also the concept of Shomer Negia I believe that people have the ability to control their desires. I know a few otherwise orthodox Jews that watch TV on Shabbat1 to help them vent frustration. While arguing on the plausibility of single (and married) individuals to be Shomer Negia one has to see the comparison: one has an equal ability to willingly abstain from touching others as one has to willingly abstain from using əlectronic devicəs.
Anyone who has watched sufficient television and movies will recognize the archetype of a “quick to bed” character who finds someone they like enough to not sleep with him or her.2 If this is the case, one has to realize the implication - if you really like that girl/guy you won’t need, maybe you won’t even want, to express that affinity sexually. This mentality does not downplay the need for sexual attraction or sexual play in a marital (or otherwise strongly committed) relationship, but it is intended to put a damper on the animalistic urges that tend to be associated with premature sex play.
Not all my ideas when I was 19 do I maintain as truths to this day. I happen to believe that, like all things, the rule for touching should be the golden mean. To enter into a mentality that touching is never permitted is dangerous. The Talmud in Sotah 21 discusses the nature of a pious idiot, a person who might be softly deemed “wrongly righteous.” The example is that of a man who refuses to save a drowning woman because she isn’t modestly dressed. If she was modestly dressed, he would still have to touch her. The story is told of the Debreciner Rav, the late Rabbi Moshe Stern, who advised against girls older than 7 riding bicycles in an attempt to protect modesty, commending another Rav for helping a woman who had slipped back to her feet.3
The concept of Shomer Negia has no baring whatsoever on being polite and helpful in various situations. [In my opinion] you can consider yourself fully Shomer Negia and shake every hand that is reached out towards you, help every old lady (or man) across the street and give someone who has stopped breathing mouth-to-mouth. I believe it reaches beyond those “do or die/awkward” situations where if you were to refuse it would be considered insensitive and rude and perhaps deadly. At some point, yes, it does get vague and you need to set your own boundaries. At some point you have to decide what falls under the rubric of Negia and what does not. If you live in a community where everyone greets with hug and kiss, that action likely should not be categorized as Negia despite what the Rambam says.4
But now lets get off of everyone and get to sexual contact between dating couples. The concept exists in Halacha to put a stronger hold on an activity now prohibited but later will be permitted. During Niddah a married couple is held to a stronger separation than they ever were while single; on Pesach Chametz is forbidden even in as a minute fraction of a mixture.5 What are the rules then? How guilty should one feel for touching before marriage? Should one stop at a handshake, or maybe not even allow a handshake? Stop at a hug, holding hands, a shoulder massage or playing with hair- activities some completely divorce from sexuality? Kissing, caressing, cuddling, first, second or third- sexual, but not sex? As long as you don’t thresh across the magic threshold, should you feel confident that you are still within the bounds of what God expects of us? Are you the kind to insist that Niddah is taken care of if you would have sex, or would you feel that once you believe you are out of the bounds of the Torah there is no reason to try and uphold any part of it?6
I’m not going to answer those questions for you but, as that now 27 year old woman [still] believes, maybe if you’re with someone you really want to be with you just can’t control yourself. I maintain that I could (and anyone could) keep control under any attempt at seduction, but is it always right to maintain control? Under certain circumstances, maybe control should be relinquished?
There is the matter of the questions you’ve been hoping I would answer if you don’t think I have already: Doesn’t he or does he?7
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1. I’m not speaking here of people who have the TV on a timer or otherwise live in a community where certain things are accepted. I’m speaking about people who put on their headphones and close all the shades so that at 3AM no one will catch them breaking Shabbat.
2. Characters filling this archetype can be clearly seen in the movies Grease (Danny), Pleasantville (Jennifer) and The Sweetest Thing (Courtney).
3. This story and his approval for this sort of physical contact is recorded in his responsa, “Be’er Moshe.”
4. I refer here to his adamant disapproval of physical contact between relatives, an activity which even in his day was the acceptable norm.
5. On Pesach, this concept doesn’t work practically because of different prohibition of Chametz that was in the possession of a Jew on Pesach. Nevertheless, if not for this distinct prohibition, Chametz is more stringently forbidden on Pesach, because it is permitted after.
6. I’ve heard both sides on this. I do think that if you are having sex, keeping the Niddah rule strictly forces you to a certain degree of chastity ensuring the involved parties that it is not a sexual relationship, but a relationship containing sex.
7. What? This is a forum for ideas, not public displays of private information. It’s rude of you to ask and it’s rude of you to care. Start again from the beginning, the answers are there.
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2 Comments currently posted. 
keliata says:
keliata says:
I guess the bottom line when it comes to being shomer negia or observing shabbat boils down to how seriously do you take your religion and how concerned are you about obeying G-d? If you care and love Him you’ll obey Him and you won’t feel tempted to stray away from His laws.
It’s sad that people can’t understand that others are capable controlling themselves. When it comes to touching and sex among unmarried people general society takes two approaches-one is that the person in question is sexually repressed. The other is the premise that the person is sexually overcharged. The themes in Billy Joel’s “Only the Good Die Young” is a prime example. It could apply to chaste Jews and Mormons as well as Catholic.
It’s just plain sad that people can’t understand that people live their faith and aren’t abnormal, sexually repressed, over-sexed or suffer from an abberation like homosexuality.
I know a lot of people who have the idea that “everyone” has used drugs, too.