Category Archives: Synagogues

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Considering Nakedness in light of the “Pink Elephant Problem”

I call it the “Pink Elephant Problem”: if someone says “Don’t think of a pink elephant”; what’s the first thing you think of? A pink elephant. Same thing applies to tzeni’ut: the more that I say “This is prohibited because of tzeni’ut and this is prohibited because of tzeni’ut”, the more you take innocuous interactions and sexualize them.
“Men and women can’t socialize at a kiddush because of tzeni’ut” – implication: men and women having kiddush together is somehow sexual.
“Men and women need separate entrances to get into synagogue” – implication: same entrance, there’s something sexual there.
All of that is problematic. … You’re sort of putting it in people’s heads that it’s always sexual. … You’re implying that men – and women, too – we just can’t control ourselves, we have no self-control…. We can’t but help get sexually aroused by listening to women. That’s what you’re implying.
When you take the expansive view of erva onto everything, effectively, you’re putting more ideas into their head they may not have even had before, just by pure implication.

Rabbi Josh Yuter, “Current Jewish Questions 26: Music in Judaism“, YUTopia Podcast #106 (23 May 2013) {http://joshyuter.com/podcasts/current-jewish-questions/current-jewish-questions-26-music-in-judaism.mp3}

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Heschel preferred frankness and authenticity to popularity

Heschel preferred frankness and authenticity to popularity. He told people exactly what he thought, because he believed more in the destruction of a false god than in the compromise of truth. Rabbi Heschel warned The General Assembly of the Council of Jewish Federation and Welfare Funds, that while their members were concerning themselves with numbers, society was increasingly consumed by spiritual decline. He reminded those who measure religious engagement in terms of monetary contributions of an old Jewish principle: “The world stands on three pillars: on learning, on worship and on charity. We are not going to invite a friend to sit on a tripod, a stool designed to have three legs, when two legs are missing.” He pointed to the spiritual absence which was so typical of religious life in America. According to Heschel, synagogues and churches suffer from an identical disease: acute coolness, since leaders of religious communities think that spiritual problems can be resolved by administrative means.

Waldemar Szczerbiński, “Poland and Christianity in Heschel’s Life and Thought” in Abraham Joshua Heschel: Philosophy, Theology and Interreligious Dialogue, ed. Stanisław Krajewski and Adam Lipszyc (Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz, 2009), 16.

“Far too many Jews are too lazy mentally to take the trouble to inform themselves about the trends and currents of contemporary life”

Far too many Jews are too lazy mentally to take the trouble to inform themselves about the trends and currents of contemporary life, and of how they and their lives fit into the pattern of what is happening…. They make a virtue out of their ignorance of the Jewish past, thus dispossessing themselves of vital links to the present and the future. As far as religion is concerned, when they do affiliate with synagogues and, when they do occasionally attend services of worship, they look upon it as a form of entertainment headlined by a rabbinical performer in the pulpit. The phrase, “I enjoyed the sermon,” is one of the chief criteria of the religiosity of the modern Jew.

Leon I. Feuer, On Being a Jew (New York: Bloch Publishing Company, 1947), 6.