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Posts tagged shomer negiah
This “Week” in Jewish Dating: Can’t Touch This
315 years
This “week” in Jewish dating news is a magical week, because it includes stories from the last month, many of them centering on issues of modesty and “shomer negiah” (not touching members of the opposite sex until marriage).
Chastity squad’s gonna git you, sucka. If you’re American yeshiva students screening porn for local Orthodox youth, or if you’re someone really immodest, like a divorcee, you might want to stay out of Jerusalem’s Beit Israel neighborhood. The ‘hood, which is becoming increasingly religious has been the site of several violent attacks against people deemed by the local “chastity squad” to be immodest.
The ‘chastity squad’ members snatched her at the playground, poured hot water on her, and when she began shouting they beat her up,” said the resident who witnessed the incident. In a separate incident, squad members allegedly broke into an apartment where several American yeshiva students lived, sprayed them with tear gas and stole a laptop.
Isn’t It Romantic? Giving new meaning to the term “eligible singles,” Star Singles is hosting a “special event for Kohanim and women eligible to marry them (please contact us for halachic parameters).” To learn about those parameters, you can check out the comments (“I guess this is where all the virgins will be,” “no divorcees allowed,” “sorry, I’m not a virgin”) or do some more research (see here, under “ritual defilement”). If you’re “eligible,” the event’s tonight in Brooklyn. Here’s the link to the Facebook invitation - if you go, please share a report with JDaters Anonymous…inquiring minds wanna know! (via Mara Manischewitz)
Isn’t It Romantic 2: Shidduchim Boogaloo. Cash money to anyone who matches a couple! Has it really come to this? On the Upper West Side, a memo circulated shortly to rabbis before Simchat Torah, promising $1000 to the person who orchestrates each of the first five matches made over Simchat Torah on the UWS that leads to marriage. Stipulations include that the two people didn’t know each other before and that they get married by Simchat Torah of next year. Also, “all 3 people have to agree that at certain time and certain place this matchmaker made the match and verified in front of a rabbi and they must be married by next Simchat Torah.”
A Case for Cougars? According to EndtheMadness.org‘s Chananya Weissman, who’s been writing about the shidduch crisis for years, 60 rabbis in Israel recently signed a statement that read (in part):
“It has recently been revealed that the primary cause of the [shidduch crisis] is that boys frequently prefer girls who are a few years younger… Since every year our population grows, the result is that there are always more girls in need of a shidduch than there are available boys.” The letter strongly urges shadhanim [matchmakers] to push shidduchim[matches] in which there is a minimal age gap between the boy and girl, or for the girl to be older.
Cool it, would-be “Jewgars”: in this world, “older” probably means 23.
Bringing Sexy Back(side) to Saucier Shomer Negiah Girls? “Shomer Negiah Panties allow a woman to abide by the halacha, but still be individual and sexy at the same time.” One pair sets you (sexy) back $20, but since these panties are Jewish, you can get a bargain: two pairs for $36…that’s one “chai” per pair. Cute idea, but I think they should really read: “Shomer Negiah: If You Can Read This, You’re Too Close.”
So that’s the news for now – feel free to send your submissions for wacky dating news to us here at jdatersanonymous at gmail. We want to hear from you!
JDA Roundup: This Week in Dating and Relationships
015 years
Greetings sports fans. Here’s your vital roundup of dating- and relationship-related stories, and yes, even a little humor thrown in at the end.
The Husband, His Wife, and His Other Wife (Her Sister): If you think there’s tough competition in the dating world, at least you’re not married to the same guy your sister is. Brad Greenberg, formerly of the Jewish Journal and the award-winning God Blog, now writes at GetReligion.org about such a situation. And no, he’s not the husband in question. But his shock comes not from the prospect of a polygamous relationship featuring two sisters, but at the job the Telegraph reporter did in reporting the story:
While the Telegraph delivered a surprising story here, the reporter for this un-bylined article does a poor job of including the religious context needed for this story. In fact, we’re never even told in this story that the Mormon Church has banned polygamy, only that it is banned in the United States and, apparently, that “Fundamentalist Mormon families†favor polygamy.
She Brought Lewinsky Back (Yeah!): Over at Jewcy, Shula Reinharz gets the credit for bringing everyone’s favorite former White House intern back (a full week before former President Clinton flew over to N. Korea to get two American journalists freed), as the symbol for Jewish women who may have been raised in an overly sexually aggressive manner. In “Sex and the Suburbs,” Prof. Reinharz says that when the Clinton-Lewinsky story broke, she had been focusing on the wrong story.
Everyone was rightly talking about Bill. What he did wrong – and wrong he surely did. But what about Monica? Had she been doing this kind of thing back in Beverly Hills or was this an entirely new extracurricular activity for her? Can we generalize to Jewish girls in Weston or Westfield or Westwood from what Monica was doing in the West Wing?
The piece continues to consider whether today’s young people consider sex to mean only in the non-Clintonian definition, in the process noting that the practice of oral sex “is so rampant that the Reform Jewish movement has taken it on as a national policy concern.”
I checked that piece of information out on Google, and sure enough there is an article to that effect dated November 19, 2005. Rabbi Eric Yoffie, President of the Union for Reform Judaism, addressed 4,200 people in Houston for its biennial convention and explicitly talked about oral sex and hooking up. Bravo, Rabbi Yoffie. For him the issue was that girls are “defining their worth by how they please boys.” The degradation of girls flies in the face of the Reform Movement’s dedication to the equality of women, he said.
Can’t Touch This: And now, from oral sex, we go to the concept of shomer negiah, meaning the abstention from all premarital physical contact with the opposite sex. If you’re shomer negiah and have been looking for a loophole, we’ve got one for you. (Hat tip to Miriam Shaviv at the JC.com.)
And lastly, since this is “J”Daters Anonymous, I would be remiss if I didn’t bring out the J factor by mentioning the imminent arrival of Tu B’Av, the Jewish holiday of love (often called the “Jewish Valentine’s Day”). So look for a post about that auspicious day soon.