Parshat Shofetim 5768: How is War like Dating?

The long list of Mitzvot continues this week. Among them are the rules to be read prior to the engagement of an overwhelming enemy:

2. And it shall be, when you have come near the battle, that the priest shall approach and speak to the people, 3. And shall say to them, Hear, O Israel, you approach this day to battle against your enemies; let not your hearts faint, fear not, and do not tremble, nor be you terrified because of them; 4. For the Lord your God is he who goes with you, to fight for you against your enemies, to save you.

After this speech, another is given, disqualifying some for service:

5. And the officers shall speak to the people, saying, What man is there who has built a new house, and has not dedicated it? Let him go and return to his house, lest he die in the battle, and another man dedicates it. 6. And what man is he who has planted a vineyard, and has not yet eaten of it? Let him also go and return to his house, lest he die in the battle, and another man eats of it. 7. And what man is there who has betrothed a wife, and has not taken her? Let him go and return to his house, lest he die in the battle, and another man takes her. 8. And the officers shall speak further to the people, and they shall say, What man is there who is fearful and fainthearted? Let him go and return to his house, lest his brothers’ heart faint as well as his heart.

When I read this last week, I read an interesting commentary in the Second edition Plaut Torah commentary about the need to keep people with anxiety out of the troops, so as not to sabotage the cause. Again these are soldiers who are up against seemingly overwhelming odds, enemy troops with not just infantry, but mounted soldiers. Targum pseudo-Jonathan calls the enemy “proud and powerful peoples.” Unfortunately when I sat down to write this, I didn’t have my copy of the second edition Plaut handy. So I started digging in the more classical commentaries, seeing if anyone else said anything. It turns out they all agree with the commentary given by the Mishnah and Talmud on the subject. There are two opinions, one from Rabbi Akiba, and one from Rabbi Yosi of the Galilee.

R. Yosi had the more predominant opinion, to the point that the Targums, Maimonides and Rashi all agree with him, based on the last case:

R. Jose the Galilean says: ‘fearful and fainthearted’ alludes to one who is afraid because of the transgressions he had committed; therefore the Torah connected all these with him that he may return home on their account. [Sotah 44a]

The person leaving the army committed some sin. There three other cases were really excuses to get this guy out of the army. The Aramaic translations, the Targums add that there can be cases where a transgression might be about houses fields or marriage, such as a forgetting to post a mezuzah on a new house before going to war (Ps-J). But why is the fearful and fainthearted so dangerous?

Rashi and Maimonides turn to Akiba’s literal approach:

R. Akiba says: ‘fearful and fainthearted’ is to be understood literally viz., he is unable to stand in the battle-ranks and see a drawn sword.

As Rashi explains

He should return lest he die, for if he does not listen to the words of the priest, he deserves to die.

The priest anointed for battle just said that there is nothing to worry about. The guy who didn’t heed that according to Maimonides “does not properly trust in God” and therefore he won’t be protected in the war. In the heat of battle his faithlessness might spread to the rest of the troops, and that is fatal for the entire army. Yet such a fearful person might also be afraid to leave the army due to his embarrassment. R. Yosi of the Galilee’s thus explains that the other three reasons give him a cover to leave without the embarrassment of being labeled a coward.

Thinking about it, cowardice might be fatal even before battle, for the Torah continues:

When you come near a city to fight against it, then proclaim peace to it.[Deut 20:10]

There is disagreement between the medieval French commentator R. Solomon b. Isaac better known as Rashi and the later Sephardic commentator Moses Maimonides, who is sometimes known as the Rambam. Both debated as to whether this is limited to discretionary wars or was for any war. Rashi, basing his opinion on the Talmud, believe only discretionary wars, and Rambam disagrees. However in light of the pronouncements above to the troops, I wonder if both misses an important point, the one the second edition of the Plaut commentary might have been hinting at.

Coming up to enemy troops or fortifications and asking for peace is not easy nor does it seem very wise. However if done with complete confidence one might just get way with it. Anyone with that much confidence must know something we don’t might be one thought running through the enemy’s mind. Yet, if there is any doubt, the opposition will see it. The one soldier with the lack of faith can spread faithlessness like a disease, and it will be visible. The enemy will exploit that weakness, attack and despite assurances from the priest anointed for battle, the bloodshed begins.

These thoughts of bloodshed are not particularly exciting. However the blood shed that I see like this happens on a mental and emotional level all the time. It is on the minds of a majority of single men who want to retreat from the field of battle either through excuses or fear. And that battle field is the world of dating.

At a simplistic level, this shouldn’t be very hard. A guy walks up to a woman, says hello and asks her out on a date. They go out on a date or two, and might find they do not like each other enough and so go their separate ways. If they like each other, then things get closer, and hopefully lead to a committed intimate relationship.

Yet a possibility of a breakup always looms. The dealing with breakup and rejection is only one of many emotional problems which make dating even more difficult than this simple model above and turns it into a battle ground. There are a variety of sources for this setup, all mixed together. One core element is a consumerist society telling us that buying a certain product will make us successful in romance. Of course the sports car, lipstick or deodorant doesn’t help. Indeed to sell the maximum amount of product, the product must be set up to fail, so more will be bought. In reality only the promise of success is sold in order to keep people buying more products.

They system in order to work requires a built in failure. The one targeted to create the failure is women, who when they wonder why they seem not to get a man, will be told to buy new products. That failure comes from requirements of what a man should be, and many of those requirements come from the same places selling the goods. Furthermore, women are looking to avoid men who might harm them that have something disturbing about their personalities which make them creepy.

In our society, we have been set up that women have virtually every opportunity to reject men, and men have to spend their entire relationship making sure they don’t. It is like the battle situations mentioned in this portion. Women have all the weapons and soldiers to fight a war, men don’t. Women have all the defenses too, all the walled cities. While physically women may not be as capable as defending themselves, there are societal norms, and emotional and mental models which defend women far more than men. For a woman in the dating world, the guy who can get through all those defenses is a valuable partner. But most men cannot, indeed they have been programmed to fail. Granted, once things become a relationship the game is very different, but getting that far is not easy from men. Often women thus stay lonely or give up and settle for something less than what they really deserve.

Men know they are set up to fail. It is just like a small army walking up to a walled, heavily fortified city. Fear is going to be in those soldiers minds. Approach anxiety looms, the fear of getting defeated with not only a rejection, but a slap on the face, a drink thrown at them, or even a jealous boyfriend or overprotective relative coming around the corner to beat the pulp out of them. All of those hurt the man, and often the anxiety will be so strong as he will not approach. Besides my own experiences with this, I’ve heard story after story of the choking effect of approach anxiety. But that is only the beginning, as the performance anxiety of not getting rejected after that point is always there for the man.

There is of course a way out of this: declare peace. The Torah in our portion gives this as the first thing one must do when approaching a city. In the classic text on strategy The Art of War 6^th century BCE general Sun-Tzu believe that waging peace is the best war, the one with no casualties on either side. But how does one wage peace? With confidence, which really no one ever really expects. In terms of combat, there is a remarkable statement made by Moses in the Midrash about walled cites and open camps:

How can you tell their strength? If they dwell in camps, they are strong, for they rely on their own strength. If they dwell in strongholds they are feeble and their hearts are timid. [Numbers Rabbah XVI:12]

The people who don’t need defenses, and don’t look defensive when they approach and ask for peace are perceived as incredibly strong. The key element women are looking for in men is strength. Masculinity and internal strength are so associated with each other there is even a word for courage relating to the male genitals. It does take balls of steel to approach women sometimes, but confidence is the one thing that short circuits the whole game. An army approaching a city can be terrifying if they have the confidence to win. The high priest’s message was critical. As those medieval scholars Rashi and Maimonides said, only those who believed in the miracle of going into battle and coming out unharmed were unharmed. Anyone without that kind of faith dies. Anyone around who could create doubt would be detected by the opponent.

All excuses and all fear needs to be removed from the front lines. I’m with Akiba here and take things literally. Thinking about anything but the engagement ahead could be fatal not just to the person who is distracted, but to the entire army. Fear of attacking and fear of defending will also cause people to lose heart in the ranks. In that critical moment when we wage peace, we must look completely confident. I really don’t know if this really works in war, but in the battlefields of relationships, it is a critical lesson.

Hayyei Sarah 5768: Is Dating Good for the Jews?

Last week, I mentioned there were a few things at my current synagogue that didn’t fit my model of a synagogue that reverses the trends of a declining Judaism. This week I’m going to let you in on a secret, one of those things that I think could revitalize an important and missing part of synagogue and Jewish life.

This week’s portion named the Life of Sarah, ironically starts with her death. Abraham does some land deals to find a proper burial place for his late beloved wife, and then tells his trusty servant Eliezer to find a wife for Isaac back in the old country. Eliezer, not having a clue what to do decides the best thing to do is pray and to ask for a sign from God. Almost immediately the sign comes to pass, he meets Rebecca, and eventually brings her back to Isaac where she is so blown away by him she falls off her camel. Isaac and Rebecca get married, move into Sarah's old digs, and Isaac is comforted from the loss of his mother. Abraham remarries, (some rabbinic sources say he marries Hagar), and has a few more kids. Even with the death of Abraham, which both of his sons bury jointly, everybody's one happy family until the twins show up next week.

Last week we talked about lifting the eyes, and this is one way to see the miracles around us. In this weeks portion we read about eye lifting again:

63. And Isaac went out to meditate in the field at the evening time; and he lifted up his eyes, and saw, and, behold, the camels were coming. 64. And Rebecca lifted up her eyes, and when she saw Isaac, she got off the camel. [Gen 24:63-64]

In terms of eye lifting, once again it is the miracles involved seeing that is forefront. Yet this miracle is far more powerful. I think it’s a tradition for me to quote the following Midrash every time I comment on this portion, for obvious reasons:

A [Roman] matron asked R. Yose: ' In how many days did the Holy One, blessed be He, create His world?’ ‘In six days,’ he answered. ‘Then what has He been doing since then?’ ‘He sits and makes matches,’ he answered, ‘assigning this man to that woman, and this woman to that man.’ ‘If that is difficult,’ she gibed, ‘I too can do the same.’ She went and matched [her slaves], giving this man to that woman, this woman to that man and so on. Some time after those who were thus united went and beat one another, this woman saying, ' I do not want this man,’ while this man protested, ‘I do not want that woman.’ Straightway she summoned R. Yose b. Halafta and admitted to him: ‘There is no god like your God: it is true, your Torah is indeed beautiful and praiseworthy, and you spoke the truth!’ Said he to her: ‘If it is easy in your eyes, it is as difficult before the Holy One, blessed be He, as the dividing of the Red Sea.’ [Genesis Rabbah 58:4]

Last week, I talked about my graduation, and the graduation of Abraham, and in some sense Hagar. I had a graduation party this weekend at Shabbat services, and I thank everyone who gave me their well wishes who were there or not. But Sunday it hit me big time: What now!?! The answer of course is changing my single status to married. And as R. Yosi points out this is not an easy prospect. Splitting the Red Sea or finishing a Masters Degree is easy in comparison.

One of those papers I wrote for grad school asked the question – Why am I not married? According to the research paper I did, intermarriage is really a symptom of a bigger problem. It is very difficult for Jewish singles to get together. There were several trends in the National Jewish Population Survey 2000-1(NJPS) which I found interesting, and very likely related. One was fertility rates. By age 40, 36% of Jewish American women have not had their first child, compared to 20% for the U.S. as a whole. That led me to the age of marriage. By age 34, 64% of Jewish women are married compared to 70% of The U.S. Population as a whole. Men are worse off with only 48% of Jewish men by age 34 compared to 59% of the U.S. population married. We do catch up a bit by age 44, with Jewish Men at 74% and Jewish women at 85% married at least once. Yet even here there is a gap compared to the U.S.

What I found in my sample population is the trend for Jewish singles to finish college, then start graduate school in their late twenties or early thirties then finish grad school somewhere around their mid thirties. Up until the mid thirties Jewish singles describe the relationship they are looking for as non committal. In the mid thirties they suddenly reverse their objective and look for a mate to have children with. I concluded the two were related, people do not want to start families under the dual pressures of work and graduate school. When that is completed, the number of child-bearing years is limited, and a new emphasis is placed on having a family. Yet with those limited number of years, there may not be time for a large family, and thus less children born. While in their late thirties and forties, women begin to indicate a desire for life partners instead of a parental partner, and the desire for children stabilizes. Such is not true of men. Instead their rate for wanting children continues to soar, This, I inferred, may be one source of intermarriage, as these men now look outside Judaism and into the local population for potential mothers of their children.

This brings us back to Isaac and Rebecca. Abraham was clear in his instructions to Eliezer that was exactly what he didn’t want to happen with Isaac.

3. And I will make you swear by the Lord, the God of heaven, and the God of the earth, that you shall not take a wife for my son of the daughters of the Canaanites, among whom I live;4. But you shall go to my country, and to my family, and take a wife for my son Isaac. [Gen 24:3-4]

Eliezer faces the problem of American Jewish singles: Where to find this adequate person in a place that is so big, it becomes impossible to navigate. Such is the Jewish American dating scene. It is very different from the medieval Kehilla of our ancestors, where the matchmaker was critical. Parents rather early in adolescence would use a matchmaker to find a partner for their children. There reason for this was rather pragmatic and not what you would expect. Besides the reproductive reasons, a teen with the raging hormones of that age would have a committed intimate partner to sexually express themselves instead of falling into promiscuity. Such young marriages would also be at a time where the child did not have a lot of worldly experience, and thus were more flexible in compatibility with a mate. Modern dating’s search for a committed partner means as much as two decades of experience. This has shaped a personality which has more requirements for compatibility than the pliable medieval teen. That medieval teen also lived in a small intimate community which had a lot of common ground among itself – the limitations of potential partners assured better compatibility. Yet in modernity, our choices of potential people, including dating among other religions, are vast. With less than 2 in 1000 Americans being Jewish adults, and only a minority of those single, this becomes quite the task to find a potential partner. The options are often beyond our ability to choose. The success of Internet sites such as Jdate.com or Mypsace.com are in response to this, which gives singles some community with at least a few common attributes.

The success of one particular Jewish author and journalist shows one other problem, also noted in our text by an interesting absence. Moses and Jacob both charmed their potential mates into marriage. According to Midrash, Joshua was so charismatic he hooked the hottest woman in the region: Rahab. But Isaac never says or does anything to attract a mate. He may have had no social skills. The success of Neil Strauss and his book “The Game” points out another deficiency we may have unintentionally created. Strauss writes early in the book that society does not prepare us to meet the opposite sex. Often we are given false images in the media of what it is to date. These idealized or trivialized methods leave us unprepared for the real thing, and may even intimidate enough to keep people single. Strauss took an extreme course of action, becoming a member of the world of the pickup artist in order to learn those skills, and the book is his chronicle of two years in that community. Strauss’ book set off an avalanche of people, both men and women, clamoring for his secrets, of just getting enough knowledge to get a date. The response to this book and indeed the number of books on similar topics sitting on the local bookstore’s Self-help shelf point to how poor many a good Jewish boy’s and girl’s skill at meeting and connecting with potential mates may be.

Given all the obstacles for singles to date, it is a miracle on the order of splitting the Red sea to get two people together. In my mind, dating has not been good to the Jews, yet it is the mating system of the western world. Yet, Isaac and Rebecca did it, as have generations since. Like Isaac and Rebecca, I still believe such the miracle of finding a mate is possible as I begin to tool up my life to the task of finding my beloved. I know the problems. I’m still not sure of the solutions, though I believe one component of that is communities who help Jewish singles get together in a comfortable environment. Getting to the point where I break the glass under the Huppa with my beloved will be quite the journey, harder than the Masters degree by far. But this too will be a journey which is a Matter of Torah, and not only I but the Jewish world needs to learn.