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July 1966

Letter to Jewish Life Responding to Review of A Hedge of Roses (1966)

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Article

A Hedge of Roses: Book Review (1966)

This little volume endeavors to explain the profound significance of the Jewish laws of family purity. Extremely well-written, it should be made required reading for all those who ignore or belittle these crucial teachings of the Torah. The author does not preach – he explains his subject in terms intelligible and meaningful to contemporary minds; in language simple and effective.Among many important points made by the author, this reviewer would single out his emphasis that, in enquiring into the explanations of mitzvos, “we want to know not why G-d commanded them but what He wanted us to learn from them” (p. 49). He warns that the observance of “the law must contain independent of and unconditioned by the values, reasons, and pur-poses we believe we have found in it.” (p. 50)Needless to say, the effort to cover large areas of thought in limited space is bound to lead to some over-simplifications (thus the reader may conclude that worn-en are excused by the Torah from all time-oriented positive precepts; or will fail to find in the author’s / definition of Tumoh any clue to Tumas Sheretz.) Also a few formulations could perhaps be improved upon (the Mikvoh is not “an ancient institution,” p. 35, but a Divine one, and the Kohen is not forbidden to be in the same ‘room’ with a corpse, p.80, but in the same house.)These are, however, mere minutiae. There is only one suggestion of more basic importance that this reviewer would like to offer: an elimination of the remarks on page 59 that can be read as an acceptanceof the concept of the honeymoon. This concept is so foreign to us in its essence, and in practice it is such an utter obstacle to the observance of Taharas Hamish-pocho, that it deserves the same clear and complete rejection that the author has accorded to other aspects of our contemporary mores.While offering this suggestion, the reviewer wants to express at the same time his hope that this fine work will succeed in reaching all those within our American Jew…
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Article

A Hedge of Roses: Jewish Insights Into Sex and Marriage, Part 2 (1969)

In order to appreciate the implications of Family Purity, it is important to understand, as well, what it is not.For one thing, it is not the kind of superstition that, in other cultures, has stigmatized the menstruant as repulsive, placed upon her mysterious and stringent taboos, and banished her from the community for the duration of her menses. Maimonides, the eminent twelfth-century Talmudist, philosopher, and physician, forcefully rejected the superstitious beliefs and practices of the Sabeans, Magi, and other Eastern peoples concerning menstruation, and emphasized the spiritual content of Judaism’s teachings.״ The Torah’s legislation is simply not of one piece with, for instance, the primitive customs recorded in Sir James Frazer’s The Golden Bough. Unfortunately, such identification of the Torah’s laws with primitive pagan and mythological cultures often does take place in the mind of the contemporary Jew or Jewess who is uninitiated into the world of Torah and the Jewish Tradition and who cannot, therefore, view Jewish Family Purity from a broader perspective and greater knowledgeability. A terminological confusion is largely responsible for this unhappy distortion of the Torah’s larger purposes and the intrinsic meaning of its commandments. Tuharah and tum’ah (and the corresponding adjectives tahor and tamei) are usually translated as “pure” and “impure.” It is this deceptive semantic delinquency that leads to the interpretation of these categories as denoting some kind of intrinsic mysterious abhorrence that possesses the person of the menstruant and that must be purged by some magical incantation.But this is clearly not so. According to Jewish teaching, nothing whatever happens to or changes in the person or character or value of the individual, man or woman, designated as “impure.” No special quality makes such an individual inferior in any way to any other person re-fen־ed to as “pure.” The terms ta-harah and tum’ah signify halakhic or legal categories…
Marriage & Sexuality

Correspondence

Letter to the Editor of Jewish Life about "A Hedge of Roses" Review (1966)

To the Editor: I am grateful for the flattering remarks about my "A Hedge of Roses” by your reviewer, Mrs. Sifra Tendler (Jewish Life, May-June, 1966) – sufficiently grateful to break the unwritten rule about an author responding to a reviewer. While I appreciate Mrs. Tendler's gracious comments, I do wish to react to her assertion that the work contains a number of errors of fact. Her charge is authenticated by her in a footnote averring that she consulted competent Halachic authority before offering the criticisms. While no book is perfect, and mine no doubt is flawed in more ways than one, I do not believe that Mrs. Tendler, despite the undisputed credentials of her anonymous authorities, is correct in the specific errors she has purported to discover.First, the halachic distinction between the prohibition of niddah and the tum'ah of niddah is no doubt valid – but largely irrelevant to the point I made. The fact remains that the term tum'ah is used to describe the prohibition of niddah even in post-Temple times. Even a cursory glance at the laws of niddah in Yoreh De'ah, beginning with the very first paragraph, will confirm this usage. Furthermore, the question of whether or not the technical law of tum'ah is operative for niddah today is not germane to the psychological problem one encounters in trying to persuade a person to abide by these laws. If the classification is derogatory – which, of course, it is not – then the principle remains objectionable regardless of contemporary halachic inapplicability. A legal nicety may appeal to one trained in halachic dialectics; it has little effect on the psychological and philosophical difficulties which we are called upon to deal with.The reviewer’s objection to my footnote (p.85) on the difference between "natural” and "artificially accumulated" water is another example of being over-technical. The note begins with the comment, "Interestingly, there is a difference..." Quite obviously, I did not try to "sell" mikvah …
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