{"id":49277,"date":"2013-06-04T11:43:17","date_gmt":"2013-06-04T19:43:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=49277"},"modified":"2013-06-04T11:45:38","modified_gmt":"2013-06-04T19:45:38","slug":"is-it-ok-to-touch-for-healing-purposes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=49277","title":{"rendered":"Is It Ok To Touch Women For Healing Purposes?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Historian Marc B. Shapiro writes<\/a>: There is currently a situation in London where a leading rabbi is charged with inappropriate contact with women. This rabbi denies the charges. However, he has admitted, so I am informed, that he did touch women in non-sexual ways, but this was done as part of his \u201ctherapy\u201d which he claims was halakhically permitted. Now obviously we can\u2019t have a situation where a male therapist, or \u201ctherapist\u201d, is arm wrestling or massaging his female patients. In fact, after everything we have seen these last few years, I think we can all agree that there can\u2019t be any touching…<\/p>\n

R. Ovadiah gives permission for a kabbalist to touch a woman as part of his kabbalistic healing. R. Ovadiah requires that he wear gloves when touching her, but this is still surprising, as once such a heter is given it is not too difficult to see where this can lead..<\/p>\n

I didn\u2019t know what to make of the words \u05e6\u05e8\u05d9\u05db\u05d4 \u05dc\u05d4\u05ea\u05e4\u05e9\u05d8. Does this mean that a woman can remove all her clothes if that\u2019s what the kabbalist needs in order to complete the healing process? (According to news reports, the Breslov figure currently in the news for sexual impropriety operated in this way). I was certain it couldn\u2019t mean this, but then what does it mean?<\/p>\n

…In the recently published Mesorat Moshe, p. 612, it records that R. Moshe Feinstein responded as follows, after being told of a dentist who sexually assaulted female patients while they were sedated: \u05d0\u05de\u05e8 \u05e8\u05d1\u05d9\u05e0\u05d5 \u05e9\u05de\u05de\u05e9 \u05e4\u05dc\u05d0, \u05d3\u05d4\u05dc\u05d0 \u05d6\u05d4 \u05db\u05e0\u05d2\u05d3 \u05d4\u05d7\u05d6\u05e7\u05d4 \u05e9\u05d0\u05d5\u05de\u05df \u05dc\u05d0 “\u05de\u05e8\u05e2 \u05d0\u05d5\u05de\u05e0\u05d5\u05ea\u05d5”. I don\u2019t understand R. Moshe\u2019s surprise, as he could say the same thing about teachers or anyone else who engages in this sort of behavior. Since we are dealing with people who are sick, there is no rational calculation for which you can apply the concept of \u05de\u05e8\u05e2 \u05d0\u05d5\u05de\u05e0\u05d5\u05ea\u05d5. We have already seen numerous people who have destroyed their lives and their families by engaging in the sort of behavior, and taking the sort of risks, that simple self-interest would be enough to deter normal people from.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Historian Marc B. Shapiro writes: There is currently a situation in London where a leading rabbi is charged with inappropriate contact with women. This rabbi denies the charges. However, he has admitted, so I am informed, that he did touch … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[33,69],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-49277","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-abuse","category-marc-b-shapiro"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49277","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=49277"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49277\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":49281,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49277\/revisions\/49281"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=49277"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=49277"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=49277"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}