Modest Extremes: Why an Observant Jew Understands Sexuality Better Than Hugh Hefner

Seven years ago I noticed that many young women were becoming disenchanted with casual sex. Meanwhile, waiting for The One was seen as a bit pathological or for those with “hangups.” Single at the time, I decided to pen a defense of sexual modesty. I knew that my arguments – for instance, that preserving the erotic depends on a sense of mystery – might be challenged, but having just graduated college, I was naive enough to imagine that dissenters would marshal arguments. Nothing prepared me for the onslaught of tongue-lashings I would receive from my elders. Fellow writers likened me to an SS officer, accused me of wanting to drag women into burkas – and these were the more polite reactions. My favorite attack came from the Nation, which solemnly foretold I would “certainly be embarrassed” and regret my stance “in a few years.” I should be ashamed of myself. To some baby boomers, I would learn, modesty is much worse than adultery.

Even my defenders had strange notions at times. I’ll never forget the man who approached me after I spoke at NYU. “Nice talk, but I hope you don’t end up like those Orthodox Jewish women,” he warned ominously, “you know, the ones hunched over their baby carriages!” Then he began hobbling around like the Hunchback of Notre Dame pushing an imaginary stroller. As anyone who knows me will attest, I am very rarely at a loss for words. But this time I was simply stunned.

It was then that I began to wonder: Was the life of a traditional Jewish woman really so oppressive? Raised an assimilated Jew – my sisters and I once won our local “Irishfest” by singing Christmas carols, and no, we’re not Irish either – I decided I would need to investigate this Orthodox business properly.

Flash-forward six years and I’m living in Toronto. I launch my computer to find a note from a friend about James Wolcott’s blog. Incredibly, it seems that the illustrious Vanity Fair writer had turned his generous eye on little me, claiming we had “a few interfaces” at various Manhattan parties where he was offended by my “ghost-pale complexion and demure demeanor.” Soon, Mr. Wolcott “noticed Wendy wasn’t at the usual parties, making the usual scenes .... I finally asked what had become of her and was told she had turned Orthodox Jew and moved to Israel. Which I thought was taking modesty to extremes.”

Now, I never actually “interfaced” with James Wolcott in my life, so the idea of my gallivanting around in the same exalted circles as he and Paris Hilton was quite amusing. (My party days in New York comprised exactly three “intellectual gatherings” of the now-defunct Fabiani Society, where I sipped diet Coke in a huddle with the two other people I knew.) You may be surprised that Mr. Wolcott doesn’t have better things to do than to critique the skin color and rumored whereabouts of someone he’s never even met. But don’t be. Just hearing the word “modesty” can strike terror into the hearts of men. “What if my wife/girlfriend agrees with her?” these men agonize, “Will I have to give up my Playboys?!” Others canvass wistfully, “Is it true that Wendy left the continent?”

Sorry to disappoint, but I did not in fact move to Israel. I did spend a few years studying there, however, and I also spent time among Jews known as “ultra-Orthodox.” There I met mothers of eight children who were also businesswomen and teachers, involved in raising money for orphans (you know, on the side). Were they hunched over? Frankly, I couldn’t begin to keep up with them. In fact, the more time I spent with traditional Jews, the more I saw how normal their attitude is toward sexuality. How it is precisely not “extreme.”

Take a recent example. Last August in the New York Times, a therapist named Keith Ablow noted that a number of his male patients no longer felt attracted to their wives after witnessing them give birth. “I just can’t get it out of my mind,” lamented one. The article inspired a slew of personal attacks, not only on the author but on the poor men themselves. Although they reported that their feelings were beyond their control, the men were immediately ridiculed in the blogosphere – called “sexist” and abused with various obscenities. But this new cultural expectation that a husband watch every detail of his baby’s entrance into the world – or else – what if this attitude is the one that’s extreme?

Orthodox Jewish women, it seems to me, strike a more reasonable balance. Their husbands can be found in the delivery room, but always sitting by the wife’s head or to the side, saying prayers and giving encouragement – but never actually watching the baby come out in our favored full-frontal position. This is specifically prohibited by Jewish law, for the connection between seeing the birth itself and diminished male desire has been understood for thousands of years. In Judaism, preserving the intimate relationship between husband and wife is thought to be more important than worshipping at the altar of the Totally Involved Spouse Who Must See Everything. But people are so dogmatic about this subject that it’s hard to have a rational discussion. (Slate’s Meghan O’Rourke reports that one blog had to shut down its discussion about Dr. Ablow when a few posters dared to defend his patients.)

The October 2005 Marie Claire provides another window into postmodern extremism. Five “confident” women are showcased – a nurse, a musician, a dancer, a sales agent, and a testing-lab proctor – all of whom posed in the buff for the magazine. As we are told, “these women are actually more confident naked than clothed.” Then the editors pointedly demand, “Are you?” In case you missed the lesson, if you don’t want to show your naked tush to millions of strangers, then baby, you’ve got a confidence problem.

Actually, the contemporary woman seems to have a lot of problems. She is deemed to have “jealousy issues” if she cannot grasp why her boyfriend requires “lap dances” from strippers. In her new book Pornified, Pamela Paul interviews twenty-four-year-old Ashley, insecure because her boyfriend visits strip bars to get lap dances every month or so. Ashley tries “to explain why I thought it was offensive,” but to no avail. Kara, a thirty-year-old physician, has the same problem and got into a big fight with boyfriend Rob over whether getting a lap dance constitutes cheating: “I said it’s cheating because the woman is touching you?... but Rob didn’t think so.”

Paul also reports that increasing numbers of men are finding it impossible to perform with their girlfriends and wives because sex has become so “demystified.” Shockingly, when given a choice between a real woman and their Internet porn, many choose the porn.

It all begs the question: If doing away with modesty was supposed to be liberating, why is the sex now so bad? Why should men and women be further apart than ever?

To me, the essential confusion comes down to mistaking modesty for shame. If you think sexuality should be private, goes the prevailing view, then you must be ashamed of it. You must be a prude. Conversely, if you are “comfortable with your sexuality,” then you should be “cool” with lifting your shirt for strangers, or cheering on your man as he watches hard-core porn – even standing by supportively while he enjoys lap dances.

If you’re like me, you wonder how this harem mentality is liberating for women. Even Jennifer Saginor – whose father was Hugh Hefner’s “doctor” in charge of providing diet pills and breast-enlargements for all his girls – found a modesty-free existence to be damaging. As a child growing up in the Playboy mansion, Jennifer saw nineteen-year-old girls dying of drug overdoses, girls whose last acts on this earth were performing public sexual favors for men. Seeing sex so violently dissociated from emotion has made it “difficult to be intimate. Very difficult,” Ms. Saginor admits.

History has taught us a surprising lesson: Real intimacy flourishes only where there’s also restraint. Having sex for its own sake, without waiting to integrate our deepest emotions and hopes, at best becomes boring, fast. At worst, men and women end up competing over how cruelly they can use one another.

In truth, the real reason for sexual modesty is not shame, but an awareness of how precious we are. Smirk at that statement if you will, but the fact remains: It is a rare dog that desires a candlelit dinner before mating. On the other hand, it is a rare human who can have a one-night stand without feeling at least a twinge of guilt afterward. And, howls of protest from vested interests notwithstanding, most men know that their most intimate relationships should not be with their computer browsers.

Where does our modesty confusion come from? Maybe we had the wrong idea about covering up from the beginning. Most people think that Adam and Eve knew more after they ate from that infamous Tree, and only then realized that they were – yikes! – naked. But early rabbinic commentators on the Bible explain that after the sin, with evil internalized, Adam and Eve actually understood less about the world (Rashi on Genesis 2:25). Eating the Tree’s fruit really introduced subjectivity, so that things that were formerly True or False now seemed merely good or bad.

Whereas before, Adam and Eve’s bodies and faces shone with a light that made it evident that they were spiritual beings, the moral uncertainty created by eating the Tree’s fruit changed their physical appearance. Now only their faces retained a glimmering of the soul’s light. Needless to say, this posed a problem: Bodies could be seen as mere animal bodies, instead of servants of the soul. To make sure they were perceived accurately – to retain their human dignity – Adam and Eve immediately covered up. The world may be superficial, but the right clothing keeps the focus where it should be.

While the issue of wearing clothing is today under debate, it is clear that showing off your curvature of adipose tissue is not always the best way to showcase your inner self. For all people with a sense of God-given dignity (and even those without), dressing more formally indicates that what’s inside is paramount. This is generally called the soul or – if you prefer – the evolutionary quirk that pricks us to posit something more than the body. In the Bible, women and Torah scholars are encouraged to dress extra carefully because their inner worlds are considered especially rich. Even today the general rule is still: The more respect you want, the more modestly you should dress. A wise woman won’t show up to a job interview dressed like Britney Spears (unless she is interviewing for a spot in an MTV video).

After all, “the greatness of the daughter of the king is on the inside” (Psalms 45:14). A recurrent biblical theme is protecting the inner self, which is a metaphor for the spiritual realm. Only the high priest could enter the Holy of Holies, and only on Yom Kippur. The holiest of all Jewish prayers is said in a whisper. It was Hanna, the mother of Samuel, who prayed for a child by barely moving her lips. Initially, Eli the High Priest thought she was drunk, but later realized she was onto something. From then on, the Jews mouthed their most important prayers quietly. The most significant moments are always cloaked in hiddenness.

Even God Himself uses the veil of nature to give us the opportunity to find Him. No wonder, then, that public displays of affection are seen as cheapening. If you want to show everyone, how special can it be? This is perhaps the source of the public’s suspicion of “TomKat” – Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes’s overexposed romance. I don’t think people are cynical to suspect there is something a bit “off” about Tom’s repeated protestations of love, his couch-jumping on Oprah, or all those kisses staged for the cameras. Such a blatant disregard for modesty seems, rather, to betray a lack of profound feeling – at least on the part of one of them.

That there is “a blessing in something hidden from the eye” extends to the teaching of Torah. Ideally, the Torah’s teachings are to be passed on orally from teacher to student, as opposed to the detached study of texts. This private, even intimate relationship between teacher and student leaves an opportunity for clarification and more accurate transmission. Otherwise, you might mistranslate “rays of light” as horns and imagine a horned Moses (as did Michelangelo).

Jewish tradition teaches that Moses recorded God’s words, which make up the Torah, where it is written that Moses was the most humble of men. But would a truly humble person record that he was so humble? Actually, yes. True humility isn’t about “playing down your strengths.” It’s knowing what they are, but knowing that they are God-given. Similarly, sexual modesty also derives from knowing your true worth. Studies consistently show that the higher a girl’s self-worth, the more likely she is to wait for sex.

Even after the wedding, an ongoing concern for modesty preserves a married couple’s sensitivity and attraction to each other. Orthodox men make a concerted effort not to look at undressed women who aren’t their wives, whether it’s on a beach or at a newsstand. They avert their gaze. Another place for modesty in Jewish marriages is during the period each month when the couple abstains from physical intimacy. Traditional couples say they follow this commandment because it is God’s will, but there are also well-known side effects. Taking a break from physical intimacy tends to foster friendship and improved communication, and also makes the wife “as dear to her husband as when she entered the marriage canopy” (Tractate Niddah 31b).

If modesty counteracts marital boredom, then much of what we understand about desire – “if it feels good, do it” – is plain wrong. In contemporary understanding, modesty is about “repressing” sexuality. You either express your sexuality through multiple partners, or you repress it by waiting for and remaining with “just” your spouse. Judaism challenges this false dichotomy. We are taught that “the Divine Presence dwells in a home only when a man is married and he cohabits with his wife” (Zohar, I, 122a). Why?

The medieval French biblical commentator Rashi explains that wives may have a greater desire for their husbands than vice versa (Genesis 3:16). But this desire is intertwined with emotional and soul fulfillment – otherwise known as love. Women intuitively sense that sex is really about the union of two souls, which is why, perhaps, so many who intend only a casual encounter are left wanting more. In contemporary psychobabble they have “rejection-sensitivity,” but perhaps what women really have is “soul-sensitivity.” As for the men, thousands of years before feminism Jewish law stressed the importance of satisfying your wife. For, according to the Torah, to really “express” your sexuality requires selflessness. Indeed, it is this mutual selflessness that makes it all holy. Of course, in our whatever-floats-your-boat society, this is still a radical concept.

To some, Orthodox women will always be repressed and Orthodox men will always be sexist. To be sure, Orthodox men do not “objectify” women with the “male gaze,” but on the other hand, they don’t touch other women besides family and their own wives, and that really stretches the limits of tolerance. The “Ethicist” of the New York Times infamously counseled a woman not to do business with an Orthodox realtor who could not shake her hand, though he was “courteous and competent.” Decreed the Ethicist: “Sexism is sexism, even when motivated by religious convictions. I believe you should tear up your contract.”

The old joke about the rabbi on a train still applies. The black-hatted man is innocently reading his paper when his neighbor inexplicably lets loose a torrent of anti-Semitic and anti-Orthodox insults.

“I beg your pardon, sir, but I’m Amish!” he protests.

“Oh, I’m so sorry!” gushes the passenger, turning beet-red. “You know, I think your traditions are quaint and beautiful.”

“How fascinating,” says the rabbi, “because I really am Jewish.”

Why is the Orthodox view of modesty so misunderstood? For the most part, Judaism is just as revolutionary today as it was back when Abraham smashed those idols. After all, even the Amish have their running-around period or rumspringa, the period when sixteen-year-olds leave the community and experience the immodesty of the larger world before committing themselves to the Amish way of life again (if they still want to). If you want a rabbi to support your rumspringa, after saying “Nice try,” he will most likely try to persuade you that what you do as a teenager really does affect you and might make future intimacy difficult, as Ms. Saginor, who witnessed life at the Playboy mansion, found. In essence, Judaism challenges everything most people hold to be true about sexuality – namely, that it must never be “regulated.” I’m not talking about fear of government regulation here. I mean the way that any personal boundary is seen to be a kind of violation of one’s authentic self.

Most of us recognize that being desensitized to the power of sexuality is sad, that if you’ve gotten to the point where stopping for a lap dance is like stopping at McDonald’s, then you’re missing out. Yet instituting concrete boundaries to preserve sensitivity – such as not hugging people of the opposite sex outside of one’s family – is still seen as absurd. Nonetheless, I maintain that examining our sexual values from the vantage point of Orthodox Jews can be refreshing. If you pull aside a religious woman from Jerusalem and try to explain our debate over whether your boyfriend’s receiving a “lap dance” from a stripper constitutes cheating, she will surely think it is our culture that’s gone completely crazy. Indeed, she might argue with good reason that we are the ones who are “repressed” about sexuality. Emotionally repressed, that is.

And could you really blame her? When it comes to modesty, I often wonder, who are the real extremists? Those who insist that only public and tawdry displays of sexuality are legitimate, or those who appreciate privacy and restraint as necessary components for attaining real intimacy?

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Wendy Shalit is the author of A Return to Modesty: Discovering the Lost Virtue, and the founder of ModestyZone.Net. She lives with her family in Toronto, where she’s at work on her second book, for Random House.

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From Separate Schools to Separate Dancing:
How Do Orthodox Couples Get Hitched?

Among Orthodox Jews, boys and girls learn to treat the opposite sex with a kind of awe, unless they are siblings, of course. They generally attend separate schools. When it’s time to date, young people are fixed up, but not in the way most people imagine. A suggestion can come from anyone – a friend, a rabbi, the grocery clerk. The prospective match is then thoroughly “checked out.” By the time their names go through the wringer and the couple is determined to have enough in common to meet, the young man and woman have merely to decide whether they like each other. The pair date in semi-public places, such as parks and restaurants, for anywhere from weeks to months. With a spark established but not fanned to front and center (no touching until the wedding), they can begin to know with a fair degree of objectivity who the other person really is.

There is a saying that if you help three couples get married, you’re guaranteed a spot in the next world. At the very least you will definitely be invited to their weddings. If you’ve never been to an Orthodox wedding, consider yourself forewarned: When men learn that the bride can’t shake hands, a few commonly make the mistake of leaning over and kissing the bride instead. Don’t let that happen to you! If touching is bad, kissing is worse. But there is usually lots of food available to compensate for not being able to touch the bride.

Before the ceremony, the groom is preceded by a retinue of singing and dancing friends, and escorted in the arms of his father and future father-in-law all the way to his bride. There he lowers a veil over his bride’s face, an indication that his attraction to her is not superficial. It further signals the groom’s commitment to take care of his wife, but this was formally established earlier in the day, when he signed a document detailing even her sexual rights. (The traditional Jewish wedding may be romantic, but it is also extremely practical.)

As the seven blessings are pronounced during the wedding ceremony, you may notice that the bride and groom aren’t wearing any jewelry, a sign that they are marrying each other for who they are alone. Like the Eskimos, who have many words for snow, Jews have ten distinct Hebrew words for joy, and the bride and groom are blessed so that they may feel all of them together.

There is one sentence you will never hear at a traditional Jewish wedding, and that is, “You may now kiss the bride.” Instead, the new husband and wife retire for about ten minutes alone. Usually the couple eats and catches their breath, but going to a private room is significant because it’s the first time that the bride and groom are allowed to be totally alone with each other. A friend of the groom’s actually stands guard at the door to make sure that the couple really gets this time.

When the bridal couple pops out, everyone dances, even if they came to the wedding all by themselves. That’s because all the women dance with the bride and the men with the groom. Friends usually stage little performances to make the couple laugh. This tradition dates from before Talmudic times.

—Wendy Shalit