Someone mentioned to me the other day that pedophilia was never really banned by the Torah, does this mean that it’s not morally reprehensible for a person to be into children? If there is no halacha against fondling your childs best friend, I guess it’s ok, right? This is just a continuation of my trying to understand those that go by every little thing the torah says, I myself have struggled for some time with the Torah dictating our morals, if morals are an ever changing thing.
At one point slavery was cool, now it’s not. At one point it was perfectly acceptable to think of women as property, now it’s not. I could go on and on about things the Torah says is cool, that no one in their right mind would support nowadays. So, of what is morally right and wrong changes, how do I, as an orthodox Jew – deal with this?
I guess, you could lump me in with the skeptic crowd, accept – I believe in doing something even if I don’t understand it. I don’t see or understand gravity, but I let gravity control many parts of my life, that’s kind of how I look at Judaism. I have no idea why I am rolling out of bed early in the morning to put some dead cow boxes on my head (sure some of the prayers are awesome and I’m down with that, but tefillin are very strange) there is only so much halacha moshe mi-sinai and taykoo that a yid can handle.
So if a pedophile just touches a kid or gives him/her some sour sticks to hop in their mini-van on the way home from cheder, there isn’t anything “wrong” with that…I wonder if this is the reason that frum organizations like Agudath Israel come out against any legislation that may hurt pedophiles?
134 comments for “Pedophilia is not against the Torah”