The first day of yeshiva was devoted to the general assembly in which we all sat down and learned what rules the yeshiva had instituted to make our lives as miserable as possible. These ranged from checking with the dorm councilor before you could take a piss to why the yeshiva was legally allowed to open your mail (federal offense) and publicly embarrass you (biblical offense) in order to check if the letter you received (this was before email) was indeed from a relative and not that cuttie from Kiamesha Lanes that you promised you would stay in touch with.
Pretty much every rule made in my yeshiva was against having fun or made to prevent us from masturbating, which could be fun, if it wasn’t your 5th time that day – I could never figure out the joy in literally beating your meat 5 times a day was, but my guess is that it was some sort of “I can jerk off more than you” man pride contest which I never took part in. One of those rules was centered around the types of books you could have, Hallmark romance novels bad, Stephen King good, most of the time. It got interesting when it came time to check which books were kosher and which were assur.
Federal crimes aside, you can obviously see that they were strict, which was shocking because when they told us we could take out books from the library we thought it was a joke, I mean the library had all sorts of scandalous things like seventeen magazine (which many of us would read in the bathroom wink wink) and uncensored tribal photos of large breasts with malnourished children hanging off of them in the latest copy of national geographic. Our magazines were censored by the secretary who would cut out any items which could be masturbated to (we used JC Penny underwear ads – so nothing was off limits) this censorship was way before the Patriot Act was foolishly passed.
Books were that one holy grail item, we could read in peace knowing that we conducted the Rabbi prescribed test to see if the book was kosher. The Rabbi explained that any book could be opened to a random page and if that page contained a sex scene, it was obviously assur (not allowed) the logic seemed believable considering the fact a bunch of 14-16 year olds were likely to read those scenes of Ayn Rand violent sex scenes over and over again, but not until recently did I realize how flawed this test was.
Not everyone reading these books was a sex stared, hormones flaring 14 year old yeshiva boy in a single sex dorm. Would a 40 year old married woman stop constantly and go back to the steamy hot sex scene on page 357? Probably not…
Besides this, how on earth could this test be done correctly on a softcover book? There was no way the page would be random, it just seemed like it depended on your hand size whereas it may have been possible for a hardcover book to be tested in this manner – other books it was simply impossible.
The logic of the Rabbis never did make sense, but it amazes me how long it took me figure out the logic was so profoundly flawed, I know it was screwed up, but I thought it was such a good idea at the time.
-->
{ 25 comments… read them below or add one }
Given that test I’m surprised that Stephen King passed the test. It and a lot of King’s other works have sex scenes.
Frankly, I’d be more curious as to what the policy was about books with kafirah in them. Were they more worried about masturbation than they were about making little apikosim?
Your yeshiva was quite liberal to allow you to go to the library in the first place. The reject yeshiva I went to allowed us to go for book report purposes.
My hippie teacher refused to allow me to use a horror book, and instead assigned me a book about to teenage boys that end up playing with each other in the shower (wtf was he thinking???).
I got my revenge on Mr. supernerd by using the most stereotypical and descriptive terms in my book report, that ended up being my first and last trip to the library.
Holy crap, that’s incredibly flawed.
Dont you know all that steamy sex scenes are towards the middle of the book? That’s why you’d just open it to the front and hear them talking about walking down the street. Duh.
I had a teacher in 7th grade ask me what I was reading, then she asked me to read a passage to everyone (since it had one of those swooning women in the arms of a native american dude) so I read it out loud and it was about a battle, with lots of blood and guts, the woman was witnessing….sans the smut she *thought* I was reading. Bitch.
So I got curious about that book cover and looked it up, nice photoshop skills.
I don’t know how to use photo shop – all of my photos come stock from google images
ORLY? I’ll make sure not to overestimate you next time. Bahaha.
Wow – When I was in school, ALL secular books post-1970 were not allowed. Do you know how many times I read Lord of the Flies??? (So sad that Piggie gets his head smashed in by the other kids on the island…)
I should do a post on classic yeshiva english class books like Lord of the Flies and To Kill a Mockingbird
We read the Chosen but apparently it has been banned since.
In my yeshiva we read “My Name is Asher Lev” by Chaim Potok, which if I recall ends with the frum boy-tuned-artist using a crucifix for inspiration…
Of course The Chosen was made assur. It was written by a Conservative “Rabbi.”
Heshy, u prob beat your meat when u asked the secretary for a bandaid.
Heshy: Maybe you were a “sex stared, hormones flaring 14 year old yeshiva boy in a single sex dorm” years ago.
Today you are a 30+ year old sex starved hormones flaring blogger. Grow up and find a woman.
I cannot tell you how far off your second statement is
you cant, bec its true my friend.
so DAMN true!!!
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAH
I always wonder why people who love to throw judgement around waste their time dissing people’s blogs.
stop whining you sissy…
Wasn’t reading other people’s mail prohibited by Rabenu Gershom?
I remember my copy of Grease (the movie with John Travolta) was confiscated. The book was so bad it was good. An irony lost on the Rabbi’s. That’s ok, I just went into their office and took it back. These were the pre-Park Ave days.
Ah a reader from Pinnacle Hill days – very cool
They don’t do this in seminary, though, right?
Actually instead of banning books, my seminary had an old-fashioned book burning, where the super-frum girls burned their romance novels and Britney CDs. (This was one of the major red flags that I was in the wrong seminary…)
I got my copy of Phantom of the Opera confiscated. Ugh.
we used to go to the roof with the porn and soft porn books. we had a great hideout,until the beis medrash guys found it and read it themselves….those aholes!
I bet that’s half the reason why they’re made into the police men in yeshivas… all the rebbes get their stashes from their students.