The Receding Hemlines of Crown Heights
If even pious and religious men have been conditioned to fixate on a woman's looks, then woe unto the rest of us!
Returning to the Chabad headquarters in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, for a Shabbos is an exhilarating experience. Lubavitchers are arguably the most alive people in the world, and there is a pulse and electricity in the air that can scarcely be found anywhere else.
What I did not expect, however, was to be approached by a large number of young rabbinical students (bochurim) of marriageable age who wanted counseling as to how to overcome their obsession with a woman's looks on dates. Some of the bochurim who approached me had dated upwards of 40 women and had been instantly dismissive if she wasn't a beauty. Mind you, these were not bums. Most were outstanding young scholars, deeply religious, serious about their rabbinical degrees, and desirous of going out--right after marriage--to the far corners of the world to spread Judaism. But in the area of dating, they had absorbed the shallow mores of the mainstream culture: They judged a woman primarily by her looks. They had a problem and they knew it. They felt like they were betraying the values of the faith to which they have devoted their lives.
It was then that I understood the full extent of the downfall of our culture. If even these pious and religious men had been conditioned to fixate on a woman's looks to the exclusion of most everything else, then woe unto the rest of us! The male diminishment of women to mere body parts--high cheekbones, large chest, and long legs--seemed to have been complete, the sum total of those parts, consisting of spirit and heart, all too eclipsed as a result.
Nearly 20 years ago when I married as a young Chabad student, it was almost unheard of for a bochur to date an endless stream of women before he found one that was a suitable wife. On the contrary, we were so enamored by the thrill of just being out with a woman that the dating did its magic and most of us found life partners without playing the unwinnable game of endless comparison. But those days are gone. Perhaps for the first time, Chabad and other religious groups are developing their first ever "singles scene," with literally thousands of single men and women remaining unattached for a good portion of their 20's.
Sadder still is the way in which the young women of Crown Heights of marriageable age accommodate this growing male shallowness. Last year there was the tragedy of a young Chabad woman in her late teens who died of anorexia. Her case was not an anomaly, as more and more Hassidic girls do everything to keep the pounds off knowing that few rabbinical students will marry them if they are overweight.
Then there are the receding hemlines one sees in religious communities and, of course, in the mainstream culture. Religious girls are showing a lot of leg, which might seem innocuous--but it's not. The one thing religious Jews always understood is that modest is sexy. Magnetism exists specifically in those things which are hidden and obscured. When Oxford's Bodleian Library last week decided to display all four of their copies of the Magna Carta for the first time in 800 years, they did so for only a single day. Likewise, in stark contrast to withered celebrities like Pamela Anderson who overexposed themselves to the point of a public yawn, great stars like Barbra Streisand remain interesting for decades because they know when not to appear in public. Overexposure is the very heart of boredom and one of the qualities that always made religious women so profoundly desirable and attractive was their ladylike demeanor and feminine grace. I remember how, at Oxford, whenever Orthodox Jewish girls would come to spend Shabbos with us, the secular Jewish male students were taken aback by how eye-catching they were--their comeliness lying in their off-limits mystique. Indeed, the very soul of erotic attraction is what relationship experts call "the erotic barrier," the hurdles that a man must surmount in order to obtain a woman who is always just slightly outside his reach.
What I did not expect, however, was to be approached by a large number of young rabbinical students (bochurim) of marriageable age who wanted counseling as to how to overcome their obsession with a woman's looks on dates. Some of the bochurim who approached me had dated upwards of 40 women and had been instantly dismissive if she wasn't a beauty. Mind you, these were not bums. Most were outstanding young scholars, deeply religious, serious about their rabbinical degrees, and desirous of going out--right after marriage--to the far corners of the world to spread Judaism. But in the area of dating, they had absorbed the shallow mores of the mainstream culture: They judged a woman primarily by her looks. They had a problem and they knew it. They felt like they were betraying the values of the faith to which they have devoted their lives.
It was then that I understood the full extent of the downfall of our culture. If even these pious and religious men had been conditioned to fixate on a woman's looks to the exclusion of most everything else, then woe unto the rest of us! The male diminishment of women to mere body parts--high cheekbones, large chest, and long legs--seemed to have been complete, the sum total of those parts, consisting of spirit and heart, all too eclipsed as a result.
Nearly 20 years ago when I married as a young Chabad student, it was almost unheard of for a bochur to date an endless stream of women before he found one that was a suitable wife. On the contrary, we were so enamored by the thrill of just being out with a woman that the dating did its magic and most of us found life partners without playing the unwinnable game of endless comparison. But those days are gone. Perhaps for the first time, Chabad and other religious groups are developing their first ever "singles scene," with literally thousands of single men and women remaining unattached for a good portion of their 20's.
Sadder still is the way in which the young women of Crown Heights of marriageable age accommodate this growing male shallowness. Last year there was the tragedy of a young Chabad woman in her late teens who died of anorexia. Her case was not an anomaly, as more and more Hassidic girls do everything to keep the pounds off knowing that few rabbinical students will marry them if they are overweight.
Then there are the receding hemlines one sees in religious communities and, of course, in the mainstream culture. Religious girls are showing a lot of leg, which might seem innocuous--but it's not. The one thing religious Jews always understood is that modest is sexy. Magnetism exists specifically in those things which are hidden and obscured. When Oxford's Bodleian Library last week decided to display all four of their copies of the Magna Carta for the first time in 800 years, they did so for only a single day. Likewise, in stark contrast to withered celebrities like Pamela Anderson who overexposed themselves to the point of a public yawn, great stars like Barbra Streisand remain interesting for decades because they know when not to appear in public. Overexposure is the very heart of boredom and one of the qualities that always made religious women so profoundly desirable and attractive was their ladylike demeanor and feminine grace. I remember how, at Oxford, whenever Orthodox Jewish girls would come to spend Shabbos with us, the secular Jewish male students were taken aback by how eye-catching they were--their comeliness lying in their off-limits mystique. Indeed, the very soul of erotic attraction is what relationship experts call "the erotic barrier," the hurdles that a man must surmount in order to obtain a woman who is always just slightly outside his reach.
Continued on page 2: 'Preoccupation with their potential mates' looks...' »
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