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 CHAPTER
FIVE:Those Who don’t Fit the Model: Family Situations and Status
in Judaism and the Jewish World
3A. Challenge Number One: The Single Person
The issue of the single Jewish man or woman raises difficult questions.
As mentioned in the previous chapter, the attitude towards the single
Jew has traditionally been disapproving and even negative: for a variety
of reasons, single status was always considered the negative counterpart
to the positive status of the married state. It has not only engendered
a good deal of suspicion, but even an all-encompassing negative ideology,
aimed at delegitimising it as a valid state of being.
Marriage and childbearing (in Judaism, basically synonymous) are considered
valid and important for four basic reasons:
- They provide a framework for the positive commandment of procreation.
- They allow an outlet for the sexual urge.
- They enable a person to escape the existential loneliness that is
the human condition in an unpaired state.
- They enable Jewish – and world – continuity.
The state of the single Jew is therefore considered to be the antithesis
of this:
- The single Jew is not fulfilling the first commandment of procreation,
which is perceived as an intrinsic precept and facet of Judaism.
- The sexual urge in Judaism is considered natural and G-d-given. The
sexual urge is therefore healthy, provided that sexuality is directed
in the right way and in the manner that G-d intended, according to Jewish
ideology.
- There is almost none of the negativity associated with sexuality
in Christian or some other religious and cultural traditions: the sexual
urge does not come from the devil. It comes from G-d and must, like
all other things that originate in G-d, be uplifted and sanctified,
rather than subjugated and transcended.
- However, if the sexual urge is undirected, or misdirected, it obviously
becomes destructive and poses a threat, both to the individual and society.
Ben Sira, a great champion of the married state, warned against the
danger of unbridled sexuality in unmarried daughters.
Keep a close watch over a headstrong daughter,
For if she is allowed her liberty, she may take advantage of it.
Keep watch over a roving eye
And do not be surprised if it offends against you.
Like a thirsty traveler who opens his mouth
And drinks of any water that is near,
She will sit down before every tent peg,
And open her quiver to the arrow.
Ben Sira 26
- Importantly, sexuality that is either not contained, or is expressed
outside the boundaries of a legitimate married framework, is perceived
as dangerous, threatening and acutely problematic in Judaism:
Since the Jewish attitude towards the expression of sexuality is natural
and non-repressive (sexual expression is there to be expressed rather
than repressed), and since it is a good, healthy part of a person, Judaism
cannot and does not advocate celibacy.
On the other hand, once sexuality can only be expressed in marriage,
it clearly implies that everyone should be married!
Repression through celibacy or expression in the non-married state are
not healthy or desirable, from the traditional point of view.
- The other main impetus towards marriage in Judaism is the belief
that the isolated individual is unhappy and that a human being needs
companionship. The model of Adam and Eve here is the essential paradigm.
From this point of view, it stands to reason that the life of the single
person is unhealthy, asocial and doomed to misery for the individual:
a single person is an unhappy person living an unnatural life, in the
eyes of tradition.
Perhaps, for this reason above all, we find an emphasis on the immediate
transition from parental home to married home, without any intermediate
period of singlehood.
- Finally, the emphasis on Jewish survival and continuity, which necessitate
the quick and rapid bringing forth of children, is hardly guaranteed
by a person in the single state.
This ideology of the survival of the Jews as a beleaguered minority
group, acquired increasing significance through Jewish history as Jews
were repeatedly attacked and persecuted.
The earlier chapter on children discussed how the dual twentieth century
phenomena, (of the Holocaust and the birth of the State of Israel) with
their survival and demographic questions, have exacerbated these feelings
of Jewish children as the necessary guarantee of a collective Jewish
future.
The single person is seen as having no place in this picture of survival
and future of the People.
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