Jewish Big Love

PilegeshPersonals.com is a website that caters polygamous religious Jews.

Most rabbis and most religious Jews would regard this pilegesh stuff as an abomination.

Here’s an amusing YouTube video from Jessi Jaymes, a former Jewish escort living in Reno.

Ariel emails:

Dear Levi!

Thank you for posting about Jessie’s video and giving one more link to the PilegeshPersonals site I have had more visitors and 1 extra man from Cali and a woman from Toronto signing up since your post.

Here are my comments about the substance of the post itself:

https://lukeford.net/blog/?p=1992
PilegeshPersonals.com is a website that caters polygamous religious Jews.
1) a. Pilagshut and Pilegesh Personals is not only about polygamy
see for example:
http://pilegesh.blogspot.com/2007/10/confession.html
it is also a way for people to live together if they are unable or unwilling to commit to marriage for whatever reason.
Gaon R. Yaakov Moishe Toledano z"l  explained in his responsa Yam haGadol seif 75 that pilagshut combined with various legal agreements between man and a woman can be a way to prevent the possibility for a woman to be left as an aguna ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agunah )and should be considred at least for those couples are aware and  worry about unpleasant eventuality.

Also see : http://pilegesh.blogspot.com/2006/10/there-is-no-mitzvah-to-marry.html
http://pilegesh.blogspot.com/2006/10/advantages-of-being-pilegesh.html

b. To say that most rabbis and religiuos Jews  truly consider this abomination is incorrectfor a number of reasons . 1) My information from variuos rabbis (including rabbinic judges of various cities and spokesmen of various Orthodox groups is that it is simply a public position that we don’t do this anymore or the like  many choose to take in particular in countries where the the majority religion is against this.
Ovadia Yosef supports polygamy (see salt lake city tribune 2001 reprinted here http://pilegesh.blogspot.com/2006/12/polygamys-practice-stirs-debate-in.html ) . R Menashe Klein Ungavar Rov of Borough Park (Eli Weasel’s mentor) supported an organization promoting pilagshut in 1997 .
Lubavitcher Rebbe writes: http://pilegesh.blogspot.com/2006/12/lubavitcher-rebbe-on-polygamy.html
that the reason polygamy was baned among the Ashkenazim  by rabbeinu Gershom and Yibum (levirate marriage ) was discouraged among Ashkenazim was because of the extra difficulties of exile among Edomites (Christians) who according to Rambam are idol worshippers and concludes the Sicha with prayer for the ability to observe mitzvot completly with the coming of  redemption which clearly implies that in his opinion pending the elimination of hte potential for persecution from the gentiles both polygamy should be permited and Yibum should be encouraged instead of Halitzah.

2)a) I resent the fact that you tagged the post adultery instead of polygamy. This reminds me of your mentor demanding that Muslim congressman swear on the New Testiment.
Why do we have to pretend that Jewish values are same as Western Christian ones ? R. Emden  (and some othres) mention this too that the reason R. Gershom banned polygamy is because Christians consider a man with two wives to be commitign "adultery" and he wanted to prevent extra pogroms bound to result from this being allowed even if 1 in 10 thousand Jews would do it.
see http://pilegesh.blogspot.com/2007/01/halachic-polygamy-in-our-time.html

and http://pilegesh.blogspot.com/2006/12/lubavitcher-rebbe-on-polygamy.html
and http://pilegesh.blogspot.com/2006/10/rabbi-yaakov-emdens-answer-regarding.html
b)
When mans sexual nature is supressed by "Catholic" morality it results in many evils much worse than negative aspects of pilagshut or polygamy seee my reply to R. Avi Shafran http://pilegesh.blogspot.com/2006/12/iso-kosher-concubine.html
and this applies to rabbis and scholars in particular: http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger2/3563/4339/1600/Page%2020.png
see also chapter about polygamy from  "A Time for Change" by Asher Karen http://pilegesh.blogspot.com/2007/06/time-for-change.html

3) If you look at Jessie’s YouTube it says "former escort" : http://www.youtube.com/user/JessiJaymes13

PS.  You can improve your SERPs rankings for LukeFord.net by going into your WordPress settings and changing 1 little thing how the page urls are displayed .
when the title of the post is used for the subdomain it is much more search engine friendly and ranks higher like this
http://pilegesh.blogspot.com/2007/06/time-for-change.html as opposed to this https://lukeford.net/blog/?p=1992
see article on this here http://www.blogherald.com/2004/12/08/search-engine-friendly-blog-urls-and-other-word-tricks/