Men and women who spend a lot of time alone together (or just having private conversations on Facebook or at a bar or a restaurant) are likely to cross the line from just being friends to more.
Therefore, in my view it is a bad idea generally for someone to go for drinks or lunch with a married member of the opposite sex or simply to engage in frequent private conversations with the person.
(I can see many exceptions to my principle. If you are doing a business deal and some socializing is required, OK. If you guys have been friends for a long time, I see nothing wrong with occasionally getting together for drinks or a meal or a FB chat, but it is dangerous to a marriage. The more private time you spend with an attractive member of the opposite sex, the more you endanger your marriage.)
I was asked by a 20-something single female friend about if there was anything wrong with her taking up a married guy’s offer to have drinks.
I said yes. She said, ‘But he has a bad marriage and he’s suffering.”
I said, let him go have drinks with his male friends. She said, he said he didn’t have male friends.
On his radio show today, Dennis Prager said: “Michelle Bachman is the latest person to drive the liberal news media nuts. The latest is that she migraine headaches. John F. Kennedy had a back condition and took pills for that.
“Migraine headaches? And therefore what? Therefore she’s incapacitated from being president?
“Then they have an ABC reporter running at the bus on which Michelle Bachman is located and some of her aides manhandled him… It’s astonishing to me that that is what he was running at the bus to ask her. ‘Do you have migraine headaches?’ Anybody who watches ABC News gets a migraine. Sometimes you have to treat these people with the humorous contempt they deserve.”
If so, I don’t think the solution for most people is to shut down their Facebook accounts.
I think the important thing is to go deeper.
Spending too much time on Facebook is just a symptom. For me, it is a symptom of a clumsy attempt to connect while keeping people at arm’s length.
Why are you chatting on Facebook instead of interacting with people in the real world?
I’m often too tired to go out and socialize but I don’t want to stay home alone. So I keep my Facebook open and check in when I want to connect a little bit to recharge my batteries.
I’m also susceptible to wasting time (whether on Facebook or elsewhere) if I am not passionate about my goals. It’s not just that goals need to be specific and measurable and the other characteristics of action goals. It is more important that they be deep. If I have the action goal of buying a Jaguar, that’s OK, but what am I really after in buying a Jaguar? Do I want to feel like an important person? Do I want to impress the world so I am treated better? Well, these latter matters are the true goal and we’d be better served by going after these true goals than fixating on action goals.
We may set goals that we’re not passionate about. They’re just goals that have been suggested to us. That would make our family or friends or community happy. But they are not goals that truly motivate us. If we have dirty goals, goals where our subconscious is actively sabotaging our stated goals, then we’re likely to screw around and waste time on Facebook and Youtube and the like.
If we’re fired up with goals that truly motivate us and speak to our deepest yearnings, we’re less likely to waste time. We’re not going to want to be distracted from pursuing our deepest desires.
Dennis Prager tackled this topic for an hour on his radio show today. Almost all of the callers said they abstained from pre-marital sex and that it was good for their marriage.
They all sounded religious. They all sounded programmed by their religion.
I’ve never heard of secular people in the modern world abstaining from pre-marital sex. I think you have to buy into a belief in God and in the divinity and eternality of the Bible to be able to wait until marriage for sex (unless there’s something wrong with you).
I’ve never heard of a sex life getting better. I’ve never heard of a couple struggling with their sex life and then it gets better.
In my experience, if sex sucks at the beginning of the relationship, it never gets better.
Dennis Prager advocates waiting for marriage before you have sexual intercourse.
Dennis said he’s heard from several women that they had wished they had known prior to marriage that their husband was asexual, that he was using religion as an excuse to avoid sex before marriage.
This guy Jamaal calls in and says he was not a virgin on his wedding night. His wife was. He prayed for a spiritual rebirth to be a born-again virgin.
His wife has had pelvic pain issues for all 17 years of their marriage and their sex still does not work. They were not able to consummate their relationship for 12 years. They adopted two boys.
KTTV news reporter John Schwada blogs on Facebook that so few people have spoken up about his firing: “But really what disturbs me most is the silence from my union, AFTRA, and from the journalism academy. When a veteran reporter for no good journalistic reason is dismissed, where are their independent voices? Some of these folks are even protected by tenure? Their silence is particularly disappointing.”
I don’t know John Schwada’s work because I rarely watch local TV news. I hear he is a great reporter but TV is inherently shallow and I don’t watch much of it.
What gets me about John’s Facebook post is how universal it is. We are all disappointed when people don’t care about us. When they don’t speak up for us. When they don’t take our side.
However, as a great economic professor of mine (Russell Roberts) once said at UCLA, “Other people don’t think about you as much as you do.”
Isn’t it obvious that the reason John Schwada lost his job is the same reason that tens of thousands of other journalists have lost theirs over the past decade? That the news business as a business is in dramatic decline. Its business model is broken. Most news businesses are having a hard time staying afloat.
I’ve had a hard time staying afloat financially. So I’ve retrained myself to do something other than write. John might have to retrain himself too.
The New York Times writes: “More than 100 people in Turkey, South Korea and Greece have been charged in recent weeks in inquiries into players and officials throwing soccer games. Similar scandals in Hungary, Italy, Germany, El Salvador, Israel, China, Thailand, Zimbabwe, Vietnam and Finland have shaken fans and sponsors worldwide. This crisis of confidence comes just as FIFA, which oversees international football, is facing its own internal ethics inquiry over allegations of bribery.”
I think some groups are more susceptible to corruption than to others. If a country is having a lot of fixing going on with its soccer games, that probably says more about that society than it does about the sport.
You can’t have economic and political progress in a society rife with corruption. The English-speaking world has its problems but it also has the least significant corruption and the most freedom and economic and political and judicial progress.
I’m a convert to Orthodox Judaism. I subscribe to an elevated moral code. I try to live my life by the dictates of Jewish law. I want to be a mentch. I study the holy words of Torah. I meditate upon the meaning of God’s commandments.
Yet when I step outside my hovel and go into the world, what I find myself thinking about most is — where are some women I want get with?
I’m not thinking about lofty philosophical or moral issues. I’m thinking about getting with a lady.
When I go to a social gathering, I find myself thinking mainly, “Are there any woman here I’d like to be with?”
Actually, what I’m thinking is much more crude than that.
After all the profound texts I’ve studied, I still have the instincts of a cave man.
I’m just checking out chicks and thinking, “Well, if she’s interesting and has a nice personality, perhaps over time I could become attracted to her.” Or, “I want to be with her right now!” Or, “I could never be with her in a million years, even if she had the personality of Mother Theresa.”
Luckily, I’m careful about how I act on these beastly tendencies.
Rabbi Rabbs writes: Judaism says there are categories of Jews that are exempt from the entire Torah. The cheresh, shoteh, and katan. The deaf, fool, and minor. Although the minor (under 12 for females/under 13 for males) knows the difference between right and wrong, nevertheless, they are not required to keep any part of the Torah, and their parents are responsible for their actions.
If G-d forbid a minor murders someone, that kid cannot be punished for his actions. Similarly, the shoteh — the fool — cannot be held accountable. The fool is usually defined as someone who is crazy, and there is a whole series of criteria in which they must meet. Ripping their clothes, walking alone at night, hanging out in graveyard, showing obsession with radio talk show hosts.
There is also another type of fool, and that is the peti, the mentally retarded. The Rambam wrote in his Mishneh Torah, Hilchos Aydus (Laws of Witnesses) 9:10, that someone whose comprehension is like a small child is called a peti, and is considered on equal halachic status as the shoyteh, and is exempt from mitzvahs.
As a result, Rav Moshe Feinstein paskened that the parents of mentally retarded people are fully responsible for them when they turn adult, just as if they are still minors, just as parents are responsible for minors.
Rav Shlomo Zalman Auerbach wrote in his Minchas Shlomo (1:34) that a peti is any adult regardless of age that lacks the comprehension of a 10-year-old.
He wrote that there are two levels of retardation, with the comprehension of a child of age 5-6 as the dividing point. People with the comprehension of kids under that age — we’re talking full-blown mental retards — are treated as shotim and we don’t teach them Torah, and they are exempt from all mitzvahs, and cannot be held responsible for their actions.
But, a peti who has the mentality of someone over 5-6 but under 10, we do teach them Torah and when they turn 13, they are responsible to do the mitzvahs they understand at the level of a 5-6 year old, but are forever exempt from mitzvahs they don’t understand.
However, Rav Auerbach wrote that even the mitzvahs they do understand and are required to keep them at age 13, nevertheless, they are not punished for their transgressions when they fail, just as a child is not punished for transgressions prior to 13.
So, when a 35-year-old man murders someone, and the murderer is a shoyteh — whether he is a peti (mentally retarded) or just crazy, either way, we do not hold him responsible for the murder. He cannot be punished for the crime. Either he didn’t understand the mitzvah of thou shalt not murder, and therefore isn’t responsible to obey it, OR he did understand the prohibition, but nevertheless, cannot be punished for not obeying it.
It doesn’t matter how old the murderer is. He could be any age. It doesn’t matter how old the victim is. He could be a child. We do not hold the murderer responsible. We do not seek justice against him. We do not label him as evil. He is not a monster. We don’t demonize him, and it doesn’t matter how many emotional Jews call for his execution nor how many frum rabbis ignorantly label the killer as evil.
A recent case that grabbed the attention of the Jewish community this past week involves a murder of a Chassidic boy in New York. I think the shoteh category fits the description of the boy’s accused murderer quite nicely, and I will now explain why.
My first introduction to Levi Aron was when I read his confession statement. I had no idea who he was or how old he is, and as I read his own words, I would guess the author was a small child. Here is what he wrote and I will comment as we go:
“So I asked if he wanted to go for the ride — wedding in Monsey — since I didn’t think I was going to stay for the whole thing since my back was hurting. He said ok.”
Really? Any half-intelligent adult knows that his story will immediately be investigated by police who will interview everyone at that wedding. So, they will find out if he’s making up a wild story or not. Hence, he won’t get away with such an elaborate lie. Therefore, the story must be true, or he doesn’t realize he will get caught with his lie very easily. I mean, if it’s a lie, it’s a pathetic attempt at lying. It’s pure fantasy.
So, either he took the kid on a fun night on the town (hardly the act of a monster) or he said an embarrassing lie. My money says he made that story up, and because it’s so easily disproved, he must be a child or a complete retard to think anyone would believe it. Children often make up wild stories and get caught in their lies. It makes more sense to me to believe he’s a kid than a grown adult.
But, let’s say he told the truth… he goes on:
“Due to traffic, I got back around 11:30 p.m. … so I brought him to my house thinking I’d bring him to his house the next day”
Hey genius, how about taking him home before going to bed so that the family doesn’t worry about him? If the guy was sincerely a friend of the kid as he wants us to believe his story, then he needs to drive the kid home that night. Not later. The fact that he didn’t drive the kid home and actually thinks we will accept his reason that he will take the kid home the next day speaks volumes about what a complete retard this guy is. No adult with half of a brain would think any of us would accept that story. Therefore, the author is either a child or someone with the brain of a child who doesn’t even grasp for a second that he is committing kidnapping and that family members might be worried about the kid.
“… when I saw the flyers I panicked and was afraid. When I got home he was still there so I made him a tuna sandwich.…I was still in a panic…and afraid to bring him home. That is when approximately I went for a towel to smother him in the side room. He fought back a little bit until eventually he stopped breathing.”
I believe him on that part. Everything points to him being a peti. He thinks he’s doing a mitzvah by keeping the boy by him, sees the posters and freaks out realizing what he thought was a mitzvah is now considered an averah. Now he can’t let anyone find out he did a bad thing (which was never bad before in his mind). He’s not going to come forward and say “my bad” because he’s scared that no one will understand.
I bet no one ever explained to him that murder is a terrible offense. I bet it was assumed that everyone knows something so basic, but it went right by him because he lacks basic understanding of basic things.
So, he kills the kid to shut him up not fully realizing how horrible that is. The support to that is that when the cops come asking merely if he’s seen the kid, the dude points to the fridge and says his feet are frozen in there. WTF? If he knew murder is wrong and how much trouble he was in, he doesn’t confess.
“I understand this may be wrong and I’m sorry for the hurt that I have caused.”
He apologizes? I’m 50, and I don’t recall a murderer apologizing for murdering upon arrest. Only upon conviction facing sentencing. The guy is either a calculating genius or a simpleton. His confessing to a crime the cops hadn’t accused him of yet shows he’s no genius, so he must be a simpleton.
Ok, those are the parts of the confession letter that in my opinion, it makes no sense for an adult mind to write any of that. But, when I picture it being told by a little boy, suddenly it reads smoothly. Little kids are notorious for telling wild stories, lying, covering things up by doing more bad things, panicking about getting caught, not realizing how bad certain consequences to actions will be, and apologizing afterward. So, I was already thinking that since the accused is in his 30s, therefore, he is likely retarded. But wait, there is more.
Then, I read what Levi Aron’s ex-father in law said: ‘I gather he went to the Hebrew School, but wasn’t smart enough and dropped out.’
Bingo! That’s the final clue. Levi Aron fits the peti mold. He got bar mitzvah, went to shul, kept mitzvahs he understood at his low level. But he wasn’t smart enough to comprehend very much of what he was taught and didn’t understand most mitvzahs. I am going to guess his mental condition was not detected by the schools, and he was never given the type of special education he needed.
That is further evidenced by Sam Lowy, one of Aron’s co-workers said: ‘He’s not social. You didn’t get a chance to get into his social life. He did what he did and then went home.’ Aron worked as a stock clerk so spent most of his time in the back of the store, with little interaction with customers.
I bet he avoided enough contact with people so that no one knew he was retarded, and he got through life that way. I’ve been told that New York years ago cut a lot of funding for the care of the mentally handicapped. It is quite plausible that someone retarded easily grew up without ever being treated and given the proper care they required.
As a side point, this is what happens, folks, when you cut funding for the their programs — they will come back to bite you in the butt, and the only time you’ll care about it is after they kill someone, and then you’ll call for their deaths. So, how about taking a proactive approach, and helping the handicapped early on and preventing such tragedies?
In conclusion, according to the words of Rav Auerbach, in my opinion based on everything I’ve read about Levi Aron, he is a shoteh that either didn’t fully comprehend the prohibition of murder, and therefore was never required to obey that prohibition, or he did fully comprehend it, and was required to not murder, but nevertheless, he cannot be punished for his failure to obey it.
Either way, if I’m correct and he is a shoteh, then he must not be punished and he must not be considered evil. Until I’m proven to be incorrect when a Beis Din determines that he is not a peti, until then, we must give the accused the benefit of the doubt and treat him as a peti, and never consider him evil, nor a monster, nor a creep, nor seek punishment for him, G-d forbid.
And, we must stand up for him against the angry lynch mob of emotional Jews who ignore Torah, and don’t give him the benefit of the doubt, and call for his death. It saddens me to no end to read so many otherwise frum Jews demonizing Levi Aron, and labeling him as evil and as a monster, and saying that G-d needs to bring justice against him. Those Jews spew senseless hatred and ignorance, they need to be quiet, they need to listen to what I’m teaching right now, and all of their emotional outbursts must be ignored.
The same Torah, the same Judaism that says to keep Shabbos and eat kosher also says that the peti and shoteh must be treated like the katan, meaning that just as we wouldn’t call for the execution of a 5 year old murderer, we cannot call for the execution of a 35 year old with the brain of a 5 year old.
We must give Levi Aron benefit of the doubt, and there is no room in Torah to say otherwise. Even if it is determined later that he is not exempt from mitzvahs, it makes no difference to us now, I repeat, it makes no difference to us now. Until then, we must treat him as innocent — innocent until proven guilty.
I want to say to all members of Chabad Lubavitch and all of the friends of Sholom Rubashkin that watch our show, if you can stand up and support Rubashkin who is obviously not a shoteh, he’s not exempt from mitzvahs, and no one in the Jewish community has called for his death, then you have no excuse. How much more so you must show support and stand up for Levi Aron who is very likely a peti and is being persecuted by fellow Jews that want him dead. Think about it.
Finally, instead of posting photos on facebook of the dead child, which has become the trendy thing for Jews to do, what the community should be doing right now is using their energies to trying to prevent the tragedy from happening again. The frum world needs to take a hard look at its horrible failure of dealing with members that have mental problems, and giving to them the care they need rather than marginalizing them and just hoping they’ll go away and die somewhere.
According to Aron’s ex-wife, he “was very lonely because he was rejected by his own community”. He was ostracized because he wasn’t born into religious life, and “because he was slow, low-income,” he was not considered a “prospective future son-in-law.” The community was “prejudiced to people like Levi and all others with mental problems, without trying to help them,” she said.
Bingo! That’s not surprising to read. The frum world loves to marginalize everyone that doesn’t fit the mainstream. Those with mental problems are thrown to the sides and left to die. That disgusting attitude came back to bite the frum community right in its collective ass. It’s time for the frum world to embrace those who are not part of the mainstream, and to treat every Jew as equal, and to help give to those in need, even when doing so is not convenient or trendy or sexy.
I dedicate the rest of tonight’s show in the merit of Levi Aron, an innocent man according to US law which says innocent until proven guilty, and according to Judaism which commands us to give everyone the benefit of the doubt, even when doing so is inconvenient. Amen.
Everywhere I go, when I run into people I’ve known for years, they often ask me, “So what are you doing these days? Are you still writing on the same things?”
And I usually answer, “Yeah, I’m still writing mainly about Jewish stuff.”
Most of my writing since 2001 has been on Jewish themes.
But that’s never what they mean. They always want to check to see if I am still blogging about the p*** industry.
I haven’t written about the p*** industry since October of 2007, but I understand I am best known for the reporting I did there.
It reminds me of the old joke. You could build a big bridge and people wouldn’t think of you as Joe the Bridge Builder. But if you suck one little c***, you’re suddenly that c***sucker.
Sexual norms are universal. Every community has sexual norms. If you deviate dramatically and publicly from those norms, that will usually overtake every other identity you have.
If you were convicted of getting oral from a 15-year old girl, people will think of you as a child molester. If you made one sexually charged movie and then everything else was as benign as Disney, you’ll be widely known as a pornographer. You could blog about 20 different topics, but if one of them is the p*** industry, then that is how you’ll be known.
We only have a small amount of space in our heads for 99% of people in our lives. We give them one primary identity. They’re either a teacher or a mother or a clergyman or a sports fan.
I was thinking this morning that I wanted to ask my friend, “Do I look like I write on the p*** industry?”
Your choice of profession writes itself across your features. Lawyers tend to think and talk in certain ways. Accountants have a similarly logical manner to them. They’re also the group of people with the highest ethics, on average, of any group I know.
Clergy tend to have an aura about them. Police have a certain manner and a certain energy.
Your choice of profession is emblazoned over time on your face and on your thinking and on the way you move. People can pick up subliminally on what you’re thinking about and how you think. And they will tend to start thinking of you the same way you think of them.
As I get older, I have more equanimity about reality. I have less resentment. I rarely get terribly annoyed any more if people choose to still think of me as “the porn guy.” I understand that my writing on that topic is scandalous and I accept the consequences.
I’m equally poised between introvert and extrovert. I went to a networking breakfast this morning and much of the time I wanted to retreat into myself and then on occasion I wanted to expand and to meet people. Whether I’m feeling more introverted or extroverted largely depends upon my life position. When I’m thriving, it is easy for me to be extroverted. When I’m struggling, I tend to retreat within.
When I’m happy with myself, I tend to have a much more positive view of others. When I’m struggling, I tend to have much darker thoughts about others. I’m much quicker to dismiss them. I’m much quicker to tell myself, “I have no interest in talking to that person.”
Greg Leake emails:
Hi Luke,
The thing is you didn’t simply blog about porn. You also published books about it and appeared on TV numerous times discussing it. You weren’t just a guy who blogged about porn; you became one of America’s foremost experts about the industry.
Writing about Jewish subjects is simply too low-intensity to overcome the reputation you had as sort of a sociologist of the seamy side. Like it or hate it, porn is a high-intensity subject. Judaism is low-intensity and primarily of interest to other Jews. Porn is interesting to everyone either to apologize for it or to condemn it. Judaism becomes pretty monotonous if one doesn’t happen to be a Jew.
In my view, the way to meet your kind of challenge would have been to use your reputation, but take it in another direction. Maybe become the low-key, intelligent dissenter about the porn industry. Maybe become the anti-HughHefner. Take the whole thing to a different level.
I don’t think the attempt to simply shift from the celebrity you acquired to a guy who writes about Jewish subjects will ever challenge the work you did on the adult industry. I think you should sort of be the Dick Clark of the anti-porn world.
Either that or latch onto another subject that can accrue the intensity that porn possesses and has the ability to elevate your status as expert on something else that is vivid. Judaism will always be a lot stodgier than porn.
You know, a lot of your readers would not realize anything about the cultural milieu that you came out of. You were a Seventh Day Adventist, and I grew up as a Protestant. You made a transition to Orthodox Judaism, and I got into philosophy and am now sort of a hybrid of spiritual humanism and neo-reform Christianity. What most of your Jewish buddies don’t realize is that had you wanted, you could have become Franklin Graham (Billy Graham’s kid). You could have been speaking at hundreds of Adventist churches around the world for remuneration. You could have been lauded, conceivably with your own TV show. I do not think a lot of your Jewish friends exactly realize the possibilities inherent in your father’s success.
Because you mentioned it, my wife and I have now gotten interested in Friday Night Lights. It creates some anxiety for us, however, because we grew up at dead center of this cultural milieu. Naturally, decades ago there was a lot less fooling around and a lot more guys wanting to be Tim Riggins. Outside of that, things are about the same. (So far it looks like we basically have one Alexander Technique teacher here in town.)
"This guy knows all the gossip, the ins and outs, the lashon hara of the Orthodox world. He’s an [expert] in... all the inner workings of the Orthodox world." (Rabbi Aaron Rakeffet-Rothkoff)
