Sin, Samantha, and the Talmud
One who sees his evil inclination getting the better of him should dress in black and go to a place where he isn’t known. That’s the famous passage in the Talmud that played in my head over and over like a nagging friend who just doesn’t know when to stop. I was horny and desperate, and the Talmud, just to complicate things, seemed only to say, “Eh, better you don’t, but if you can’t help it… nu, here are some ideas…”
It’s a healthy urge, I said to myself, as Cathy, the cute Hispanic receptionist, put another pile of mail on my already overflowing stack. Men all over the world feel the same, nothing unusual about it. Or perverted. I’m just healthy and normal, looking for what every male has looked for since the dawn of the Y chromosome.
Cathy’s ass was toward the flat side, and her face still had some residual acne, those flaky skin cells that stubbornly refused to read the memo that her adolescence was over. But she had a face that reminded me of Eva Langoria in her better days. I’d have done her in a heartbeat, except she hardly looked my way. My feeble attempts at making conversation seemed only an unwelcome distraction from the Yahoo Messenger windows she kept open all day, chatting no doubt with hot and ripped hunks from the South Bronx. I could never compete.
Why the unbearable urge? I couldn’t really say. Sex with the wife wasn’t so bad – in fact it was quite good. We’d come a long way from the shocked look on her face when I suggested we take it out of the bedroom and into the laundry room. Eventually she came to love doing it while sitting on the washing machine, during both the wash and spin cycles. (The dryer never proved very satisfying.) She didn’t have an orgasm until after our third child was born, but once she had it there was no going back. Seeing women in movies moaning “Oh, yeah; oh, God, yes!” once brought a completely baffled look to her face. She’d look away uncomfortably. But now she understood it. She’d changed.
But I changed too, and while she was just discovering her sexual side, I was starting to feel, um, uninspired. I needed variety.
Craigslist proved a failure. The women I encountered were interested in hearing about my Chasidic lifestyle, but their photos were a letdown. An overweight woman riding an elephant in Thailand, a punk rocker with more piercings and tattoos than body parts and a sizable muffin top to boot, a dorky looking girl with a crooked nose and no chin. I closed my email on the last one and grimaced. Not my thing, I mumbled to the stapler on my desk and the piles of overdue invoices. Cathy was just putting on her short white jacket with the fur lined hood. I wondered what she had in store for the night. I imagined her in a tight mini-skirt, getting down at a club and shaking it. I longed to ask, but I didn’t dare.
And then came Samantha.
It was another of those days at the office. The boss yelled like a maniac, threatening to fire — no, fucking fire! — anyone who came within sight of him. Murphy’s Law had kicked in and just when we had an important meeting, the computer froze during the Powerpoint presentation. I, bookkeeper-slash-techie-slash-office-manager-slash-janitor, was at fault. I needed a break. Fuck it, I thought.
The Talmud warned against my intended actions. It’s like bringing a flood all over again. Automatic excommunication. Deserving of death. But that wasn’t the worst of it. I was tortured by the mystical warnings. I remembered the nighttime sessions studying Reishis Chochma as a teenager. Kaf Hakela, it said, was no fun. My attempts at re-imagining it as a super cosmological roller coaster might’ve worked, except for those damn Mal’achei Chabala, the angels of destruction, who beat and pursue your soul from place to place and make the Christian purgatory seem like a cruise to the Bahamas.
Then comes the Talmud and gives you ideas. Dress in black, go to a new city, just keep quiet about it; it’s all good. Talk about mixed messages. But at that point I no longer cared. By the time I got out of the meeting and out from under my boss’s fury, I’d made up my mind.
A sign outside proclaimed it “the cleanest gentleman’s club in NYC.” Hmm, I thought, clean is good, and I walked past the bouncer who looked after me without a word. The place was dark. On a small, low stage two topless girls lazily trotted around a pole they were gripping. I wasn’t aroused. I felt in the wrong place. Self-consciousness kicked in like a bitch. Not to mention my anxiety about the sin, which reared its ugly head again. The fucking Talmud had me confused. Couldn’t the rabbis get their damn theology straight? Their inconsistency was killing me.
I ordered a Coors Lite and sat down to watch. I kept thinking I should leave. This wasn’t the place for me. I thought about how I’d feel the next morning, beating my chest, Ashamnu, bagadnu… rashanu, shichasnu, tiavnu. We’ve been wicked, wasteful, and committed abominations. But it wouldn’t be we, it would be I. Good Jews didn’t do these things. I did these things.
Samantha made it all go away. I hadn’t noticed her at first. I looked up from my beer and saw her walking across the room from where she’d been sitting alone. She sat down next to me and asked for my name. She was cool with just schmoozing, she knew how to sell her goods. She wanted to know about my life, my family, my job. If she was pretending, she was very good at it. She asked the right questions, and shared about herself without hesitation. She was smart, but not too brainy, working, literally and figuratively, towards an MBA. She was Hispanic, an Eva Mendez look-alike without the mole on her cheek, with long brown hair, baby-soft skin, a well-rounded butt that jiggled oh, so subtly, and very few clothes. Two pieces, to be precise, if you don’t count the shoes.
While we were talking she caressed the fuzz on my arm. When she put her hand on my thigh I knew she had me. I wasn’t so naive to think this was anything more than a business transaction. She had something to sell, and I was an eager buyer. I might say I wasn’t looking for romance, or even a personal connection. But there was an illusion of that. People who work in this industry know what men want, and it isn’t, in most cases, just brute sexual gratification.
Unable to resist, I took Samantha to a private room towards the end of the club. Across the doorway was a curtain. Inside there was a bare table and an easy chair. Music was playing, top 40 songs, good for dancing. Samantha took my hand and said, “Let’s dance.” When I hesitated, she laughed. I didn’t know how to dance at all, except for a Chasidic-wedding-style hora. Dancing with a naked woman was completely new. But we danced. Or she did, and I held on to her hand and twirled her around again and again, turning my awkwardness into pretending I was spinning a top. She laughed when we stopped, dizzy from spinning, and fell on top of me onto the chair.
She went beyond the limits she’d set when she explained the rules. I like to think that it showed she liked me, although it’s possible she did the same for all customers. I had no way of knowing.
She became a habit. I ended up coming back at least every other week for a period of a few months. At the office I’d see Cathy and wonder what I ever saw in her. During stressful days at work, it was Samantha I looked forward to, a relaxing high before heading home, an oasis of pleasure in between the demands of office and family life.
Until one day, as I walked into the club, the bouncer yelled, “Samantha, your rabbi’s here.”
If my beard made me a rabbi then Allen Ginsberg was Moses himself. But you can’t argue with people’s perceptions. What do goyim know of rabbis and beards? I thought to myself, and greeted Samantha with the usual kiss on the cheek. I settled down with a drink.
It was one of our best evenings. I started to think that perhaps she liked me for real. She’d started allowing things that she didn’t when we first met. To me that meant something. I even thought to ask her out, but then thought better of it. Best to keep it this way, simple, no attachments. I wasn’t even sure I had her real name, which suited me fine.
It was only when I left that I caught sight of the bouncer and remembered what he’d called out. I gave him a thumbs up as I left. He nodded and said, “Take it easy, boss.”
But I never went back.
Printable Version
BSM: I think it’s simpler than that; sex is a subject people love, or love to hate, frum, frei, or in between.
Re the conflicting texts, I don’t have sources at hand, but the “dress in black” text is a gemoroh in Kedushin, I believe. It’s generally understood to be not so much permission to sin as much as a reluctant concession towards the power and intensity of man’s sexual urges.
The counteracting (and far more emphasized) texts are found in various parts of the Talmud, and they warn against the various evils of sexual iniquity.
The Reishis Chochma has an entire chapter called, I believe, Shaar Hakdusha, in which the author details the horrific penalties for even the most minor of sexual transgressions. An additional source of no less severity (if less fantastical in its descriptions of the afterlife of the transgressor) is R’ Chaim Vital’s Shaarei Kedusha. Both of the above are heavy in mystical teachings, the basis of which later formed Lurianic Kabbalah.
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I think, also from memory, that the ילבש שחורים message is that in addition to the transgression itself, one must be mindful of the influence such behavier might exert on others – as the Medrash explains the אשר קרך with Amalek.
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Of course, the problem here is that even if one follows this advice and goes the extra mile (literally), one’s still damned, for המחלל שם שמים בסתר נפרעין ממנו בגלו and there goes the secret.
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BSM
I’m not familiar with Raishit Chuchmeh; I’m not a misogynist and I was never compelled to read it. All I can tell you is that the passage in tractate Qedushin quoted in the story is definitely the exception to rule than the established Talmudic norm. Here is an enlightening passage from Tractate Sanhedrin (75 amud 1) that exemplifies how stringent chazal really were on these matters. אמר רב יהודה אמר רב מעשה באדם אחד שנתן עיניו באשה אחת והעלה לבו טינא ובאו ושאלו לרופאים ואמרו אין לו תקנה עד שתבעל אמרו חכמים ימות ואל תבעל לו תעמוד לפניו ערומה ימות ואל תעמוד לפניו ערומה תספר עמו מאחורי הגדר ימות ולא תספר עמו מאחורי הגדר פליגי בה ר’ יעקב בר אידי ור’ שמואל בר נחמני חד אמר אשת איש היתה וחד אמר פנויה היתה בשלמא למאן דאמר אשת איש היתה שפיר אלא למ”ד פנויה היתה מאי כולי האי רב פפא אמר משום פגם משפחה רב אחא בריה דרב איקא אמר כדי שלא יהו בנות ישראל פרוצות בעריות ולינסבה מינסב לא מייתבה דעתיה כדר’ יצחק דא”ר יצחק מיום שחרב בית המקדש ניטלה טעם ביאה וניתנה לעוברי עבירה שנאמר (משלי ט) מים גנובים ימתקו ולחם סתרים ינעם:
Here is my poor attempt at translating these sublime gemureh. The gemureh relates an incident where a man laid his eyes on a certain woman. He became obsessed with her and he fell gravely ill due to his obsession. Doctors were summoned and their medical advice was “the man wont get better unless he sleeps with the woman of his obsession”. Concerning this case the sages ruled “its better that he should die than sleep with her” The doctors offered an alternative remedy. “let her stand befoe him naked and that might appease him.” The sages ruled, he should rather die than see her naked”. The doctors offred a third alternative, “let her converse with him from behind a barrier, maybe that will appease him.” The sages ruled , He should rather die than converse with the woman of his fantasy from behind a fence”.
There is an ensuing disagreement between R’ Yaaqov the son of Idi and R’ Samuel the son of Nachmieni on the status of the woman in question. One claims she was a married woman, whilst the other posits she was single. The gemureh than proceeds to state that its understanble the strictness the sages applied to the case if the woman was indeed married, but if the woman was unmarried what was the reason for the stringency of the sages ruling? The gemureh gives 2 resolutions. Either- to prevent familial shame or for the sole reason that Jewish girls shouldn’t be immodest in matters of intimacy.
I think the passage speaks for itself and no further explanation is needed.
In regards to the passage in Qedushin, the Rishonim on the daf claim that the gemureh never intended to permit the transgression of any form. The whole dressing up and venturing to a faraway place is more of technique to distract the consumed mind of the individual in question. Hopefully whilst going through all the preparations to do the aveyreh he will come to his senses, but of course it is not a permission to do as ones heart desires.
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Yoilish:
“I think, also from memory, that the ילבש שחורים message is that in addition to the transgression itself, one must be mindful of the influence such behavier might exert on others”
I think that one of the commentaries give that explanation on the passage, but that is still questionable, because in essence the explanation contends that the in the proper circumstances (in this case the avoidance of chilul hashem) the aveyreh is permitted. The explanation I brought down does away with the whole heter. If I’m not mistaken it’s the Ritv”a’s opinion and is the commonly accepted p’shat on the gemureh.
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“My feeble attempts at making conversation seemed only an unwelcome distraction from the Yahoo Messenger windows she kept open all day, chatting no doubt with hot and ripped hunks from the South Bronx. I could never compete.”
I enjoyed reading your story, most of us can relate to those feelings at least for me in the past…
If you were to invest 30 minutes a couple of times a week doing basic workouts, lifting weights, etc. you can be as ripped as any dude from the bronx. Just give it like six months and of course watch your diet too.
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R&C: Be careful, some might accuse you of working for Artscroll…
(Although your non-Charedi transliterations, “Yaqov” and “Qedushin,” might suffice to allay such suspicions.)
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Hahah. Nice to see that you chopped the usage of Q instead of K. I love to do this shit.
What is the difference between a oifgeklert chusid and a stam chusid? A stam chusid says “tekifas ha’geonim” and a oifgeklerte chusid says “the gaonite period”. Kedushin and Qedushin, is another one.
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Zoney Petunia,
That’s the problem with you guys. You make it a problem and then have the perfect solution. If someone doesn’t believe in god, he has ‘amunah problems’. And should go to a Chasidic brain-washer to restore his mind. If someone goes to a strip club, he obviously has a sex addiction, and you had the perfect solution for it.
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I haven’t read all the comments – who has the time.
But I am shocked that so many think all this is OK in the name of breaking free and exploring other worlds.
As someone who grew up in the secular world, I cannot fathom this kind of morality. What about the WIFE? You know, the one who finally, after years and years, relaxed enough, trusted enough, to enjoy her sexuality. What a betrayal.
What if SHE decided to ‘break free’ of tradition and spice up her love life? Would that be OK? I doubt the issue is halachic. After all, dear Samantha is nidda, etc.
There is a trust implicit in any normal relationship which you have shattered. It has nothing to do with religion.
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Shira, maybe you should read the comments. I haven’t seen one commentator who claims that what the protagonist is doing is justified in the name of breaking free.
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OK, my fault. I read the bulk of the comments, and you are right; most people, thankfully, saw this as a huge problem.
I do hope the narrator used protection (however halachically unacceptable) and isn’t exposing his wife to disease on top of this humiliation.
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great writing.
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Thanks for the great post! You have a new fan.
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