January’s been a slow work month for me so I’ve been wandering around the J-blogesphere a little at night. I came across Masculine Jew the other night, which appears to be a blog written by an anonymous sephardic guy who’s looking for someone to marry. I usually read shidduch blogs to find something to make fun of, the truth is most of them sound the same and suck. But this Masculine Jew’s blog is different.
The latest post is his dating statistics, the fact he’s actually keeping track is pretty cool – I’m sure he must be somewhere up on the OCD spectrum, because I would never even think of keeping track of such exact numbers. After looking at that I jumped around a bit and found this painful reminder of why I think shomer negiah is a bad idea, basically this guy really needs a hug from the opposite sex and maybe some nice soft caresses.
Shomer negiah is great if you can be a regular person about it, but when anything leads to such pain it seems like a bad idea. I’m also not sure if it’s a good idea for someone to get married if they have such high expectations of what the touch will be like. It seems to be a recipe for disaster – any psychoanalysts in the house?
Now of course the critics will say that I’m a heretic for saying that something in the Torah is a bad idea, there are plenty of things in the Torah that are bad ideas and that I think should evolve like the rest of our religion. Slavery is a pretty good example of that, but I don’t even think shomer negiah is in the Torah. What this guy needs is a hug, some gentle caresses and maybe some nice heavy cuddling action in a twin bed. He should also remember that if he’s too depressed by such things to learn Torah, it’s probably better to touch a girl than be bittul Torah.
Find out more about shomer negiah on 4torah.com