Purim: Jumping In

This can be compared to a boiling hot bath into which no person could descend, one scoundrel came, and he jumped and went down into it.  Although he was scalded, he cooled it off for others [Rashi Devarim 25:18]

Rabbi Judah says: "When the Israelites stood at the sea one said 'I don't want to go down to the sea first', another said 'I don't want to go down first either'; while they were standing there and while Moses was praying to G-d to save them, Nachson ben Aminadav jumped up went down and fell into the waves. [TB Sotah 36a, Mechilta Beshalach]

An analog has been making the rounds of social media recently comparing Iran to Haman, Obama to Achashverosh, and Bibi to Esther/Mordechai, finding the Ta’anis Esther timing of today’s speech to Congress particularly propitious.  Personally, I find Prof. Manfred Lehmann’s 1972 Tradition essay “A Reconstruction of the Purim Story” more compelling: he makes Haman out to have been Cannanite, and therefore more a character analogous to an Arafat or other Palestinian actor [which, to carry the analogy one step further, would make Bill Clinton Achashverosh]. 

In any case, I came up with a different meme.

The juxtaposition of the two mekoros up top is not accidental.  The two pieces are there to illustrate mirror-image paradigms of “firsts” and water.  Each actor was the first one to “take a plunge”, as it were, and each respective “plunge” was influential in getting others to follow: Nachshon kickstarted the march through the Yam Suf; Amalek kickstarted genocidal Jew-hatred.

Today Bibi represented the Nachshon meme: the sole world leader with the gumption to call Iran out for its theofascist genocidal tendencies and declared nuclear ambitions.  [Umm…you want 190,000 centrifuges…to fight cancer?]  He took a plunge no one else seems to be willing to, and we only hope that some influential people follow.

While Iran fits the Amalek meme for all sorts of obvious reasons, if one would hesitate to begin to apply it to elements of this current administration, particularly the Executive branch and the State Department, it might not be that far a stretch to say that the disingenuous manner in which they’ve conducted the negotiations and their ostensible attempt to give themselves political cover for what they see as the “inevitability” of a nuclearized Iran might give one reason to believe that they, too, are “jumping in the water”. 

Heavy water. 

To cool it off for everyone else when the inevitable nuclearization of the rest of the Middle East follows.

In any case, even if the Amalek designation can’t really be applied to this admin, the Achashverosh one—like with Clinton—might not be that far off.  As TB Megillah 13b-14a delineates, Achashverosh would have loved to get rid of the Jews himself [having proven with his “no more redemption” party what he really thought of them] but needed someone else to do the dirty work.

The Biblical narratives point to two possible parallels which might indicate as to what we can anticipate from this administration.

The incident at Refidim which we read on Purim which occurred subsequent to krias yam suf parallels the possibility that this administration will now double down and cave further to “Teheran’s talking points”, because, like the Amalekites who attacked at Refidim, they were enraged by the Nachshonian actions and wanted to show the rest of the latent anti-Semites in the world there was nothing to be afraid of in attacking the Jews.  Bibi’s warning may have the opposite effect in the short term owing to Obamanian hissyfits.

The other possibility is that, like a chastened and humiliated while not attitudinally transformed Achashverosh, this administration is forced to see the genocidal ambitions of its erstwhile new BFF’s and at the very least give the Jews carte blanche to defend itself by any means necessary with no clamoring for ceasefires like this summer, even to the point of codifying the response de jure as well as de facto in international law, as we see happened throughout Esther 8 and 9.  Even if through clenched teeth.  But as Bibi said, there ARE some things Israel CAN live with.

ONLY THEN will this admin have jumped in like Nachshon, and not like Amalek.

Side Note: Metzitzah and the Mayor

Just as he withdrew from the Stop and Frisk case after the city actually started to win it again, Comrade Bill and his admin backed down in formulating the city's MBP policy.

As far as I'm concerned, this doesn't do nearly enough.  "We can't enforce it etc." is such an obvious cop-out to electoral politics that it barely deserves a blurb.

However, there is one good thing that comes out of this:  it is now going to be well-nigh impossible for MBP advocates to even pretend there's a hava amina based on "science" and "evidence" that there is no correlation [if not outright causation] between MBP and neonatal herpes.  There has been a tacit hoda'ah here, even if MBP defenders don't know they made one.

Meanwhile, I'll make the following commitment: IF there is a policy in place that MANDATES ALL MOHALIM to be FINGERPRINTED and DNA TESTED and it's placed on the BOOKS [I won't be makpid on its enforceability if they do at least this], I'll stop insisting that that MBP practitoners and the parents who consent deserve to be arrested.  [The Agudah's dropping of it's fight against fingerprinting everyone in chinuch in 2009 is my template.]

However, I'll NEVER stop insisting that the entire Jewish world be mevatel this practice completely on our own volition.  In a couple of weeks I'll have a piece on that.

FINALLY:  If I ever am zocheh to have a son, and I'm misled as to whether a mohel does MBP or not, and he even TRIES it--I'll invoke pikuach nefesh and chase him off the bima myself.

Response to "Facebook and Modesty": Overstating the Case

A recent post on Aish.com ostensibly tackled the hava amina that Facebook was ipso facto "untzniusdik":

"Modesty doesn’t just mean the length of our hemlines. Modesty is an attitude. It’s how we talk, it’s how we walk, it’s how we conduct ourselves. It’s a sense of dignity and privacy and a focus on our inner selves. Modesty means I am not looking for credit, I am not looking for honor, I am not trying to draw attention to myself. And then along comes Facebook which seems to encourage the exact opposite."

Based upon a previous thesis of mine regarding the possible mistranslation of "tznius", this was my response [which they actually let through]:

"The author may have inadvertently highlighted one of the problems with defining "tznius" as "modesty" as opposed to "discretion", which indicates that maybe reducing digital oversharing is more a matter of basic common sense: rather than "feeling a heightened pleasure" [which borders upon self-congratulation, another hallmark of the digital age], maybe just ask "does anyone want to/need to see this?". Once it's called "modesty" and not "discretion", it's no longer about "an attitude...]i]t’s how we talk, it’s how we walk, it’s how we conduct ourselves. It’s a sense of dignity and privacy and a focus on our inner selves." Rather, it becomes a backdoor overcorrection in an attempt to spiritualize an arena resistant to it, if not discourage participation in said arena. Whole different ballgame than "not looking for credit, [] not looking for honor, [] not trying to draw attention to myself.""

Shemos: Delegitimations

Rabbi Ari Kahn posits how the Divine measure for measure may have been meted out to the purported three Pharaonic advisers at the beginning of the Exodusian enslavement:  Bilaam was killed for advocating for genocide; Iyov, who theoretically did no evil but manifested indifference, suffered so that he would develop the empathy he lacked; and Yisro, who at least actively manifested some form of protest, begat descendants who would continue along that line of thinking.

The first question would be: does Rabbi Kahn overstate the case by claiming Jethro “is forced to flee when his advice is sneered upon”?  Does the text in Sotah 11a indicate that he lodged a protest before, or even upon his way out?  It actually may not matter: the distinction between Iyov and Yisro isn’t in the verbal silence that both may have manifested, but that Iyov thought that a noncommittal approach would allow him to maintain an ostensibly moral stance while maintaining his position, while Jethro realized that it would be impossible.

In theory, a similar thing happened even among the Hebrews themselves.  The Netziv writes in his haggadah that the reason G-d had to—as it were—remove the Jews from Egypt with a “strong hand” [yad chazakah] AND “outstretched arm” [zeroa netuya] was because there were almost two classes of Hebrews at the time: the slaves in eternal peril who needed to be rescued, and the ones with more privileged positions who needed to be pried out because they were too confortable to leave.  [And…that didn’t even take into account the 80% [or 99.97%?] that didn’t make it out and supposedly all died during choshech.]  In theory, the “comfortable” ones who were redeemed [Malcolm X would have called them the “house slaves”] might have been reluctant to jeopardize their more privileged positions, but didn’t actively undermine their brethren or resist the opportunity to leave [even if it was coerced], while the ones who met their demise during the plague of darkness may have gone over to the “dark side” one way or another.

So how were they distinguished?  As I’ve discussed before, there was a tension between how the enslaved Hebrews maintained their ethno-cultural and religious identities [not changing their names, clothes, or language] and still finding themselves steeped in such a spiritual morass that on the eventual eve of their departure they’d gone as far down as they could go.  

This leaves us with several parallel tensions both within the character of the people as a group and between the various groupings among the people.  It got me thinking about a contemporary parallel of two Jewish subgroups that don’t easily overlap but that might be equally loathed from varying quarters: for arguments sake, call them the black-hat orthodox on one side and the Zionists on the other.

The irony here is that everyone outside seems to want to “deal wisely” with all of the groups, while each group here from within seems to want to “deal wisely” with the other [not to the same genocidally oppressive extent, to be sure, but with some element of deligitimation].  The question in this case would be: is there a difference between the kind of pressures dealt with by the attempts to delegitimize the Zionist project, and attempts to delegitimize the—for lack of a better term—the “black hat” project?

The difference is striking: the Zionist project was theoretically to create a state for the Jews the same way other nationalities had their states, exemplifying the commonalities with the world at large; the “black hat” project ostensibly adheres to “hivdilanu min hato-im”, and their cultural patterns are supposed to exemplify the clear distinction—one that is Divinely ordained.

Which raises the question: why would it be legit to criticize a “black hat” culture for its ostensible foibles [I’m not even going to get into what they are, but here’s one], and not criticize Israel for hers?  Simple: the Zionist project doesn’t announce that it’s on a higher moral plane.  Pum farhkehrt.  “Black hat” culture—even its artifacts—are outgrowths of “hivdilanu min hatoim”.  So it does announce that, even tacitly.  [L’havdil: a smiliar thing happened during a Bowl game when BYU players got into a fight with Memphis State players and BYU came in for more criticism—to the point that people were agitating for shutting down the BYU football program.  So sometimes it isn’t just us.]

In short: some groups take all criticism as a prelude to “hava nitchacma lo”.  It isn’t always.  And yes—I’ll go out on a limb here, in case I’m being too subtle—even the more trenchant criticisms of “black hat” cultural artifacts are more salient than criticisms of Israel. 

Chayei Sarah—The Blue Cup

“A balabusta takes instructions only from her mother.”

“Gayst du Bais Yaakov?”
“B-b-bais Yaakov? Dort…dort…dort men lernen Chimmish!!!”



Recently I attended a tour of Satmar Williamsburg conducted by Freida Vizel, who was herself raised in the Satmar community.  Among the various anecdotal sociological observations she shared during the tour two particularly stood out.

One was how she specifically was Judaically educated: completely sans "original texts".  I asked her “Not even Tzenna Urenna?”  She said in her schools, not even Tzenna Urenna, although--she clarified later-- "while we did not study from any original Jewish texts, we had Yiddish schoolbooks from which we learned. They were for instance, pieces of history written out in Yiddish, bits about the parsha, etc."  Still--when even the classic text-to-eliminate-the-need-for-women-to-ever access-any-other-texts is kept out of the curriculum, that goes even beyond "not study[ing] from any original Jewish texts".

The other—which actually preceded the above anecdote but really provided the explanation for the practice—involved what involved what might illustrate a special method of social control.  Ms. Vizel mentioned that it wasn’t a belief or faith-based system that was preached and enforced; instead, her teacher used this analogy: you have a stack of white cups, and right in the middle of it is this blue one—what happens to the stack if you pull out the blue cup?--and, well let Ms. Vizel tell it: "[S]he built a cup tower to demonstrate."

[Ms. Vizel also pointed out that teachers like the tower-builder "weren't anyone but little eighteen year old girls in pretty suits!", indicating that this demonstration wasn't exactly on the level of a Rebbe's psak, and therefore not necessarily all that representative of, for lack of a better term, "Satmar Da'as Toireh".  However, "little eighteen year old girls in pretty suits" whose teacher training likely also "did not [include] study from any original Jewish texts" probably don't come up with such trenchant analogies sui generis; the Blue Cups likely have communal legs.]

Immediately a friend I had brought with me asked: why was the cup put in the middle of the stack and not the top?

And I asked: why was it painted blue?

[While we’re using drinking analogs [spoiler alert, based upon one of the Rashis [24:16] to be quoted [or not quoted] below]—a favorite kiruv industry bon mot regarding womens' sexuality is to compare it to a bottle of soda, which loses fizz when you open it.  Well—if you wait too long and never open the bottle, the soda STILL loses its fizz.  And believe me, even the soft drink industry AND Mayor Bloomberg would agree that expiration dates are a good idea.]

[Not that I’m advocating for either mass soda-bottle openings [especially not on Shabbos, r”l [:P]] or for storing long-past expired dusty bottles of flat Dr. Brown’s that hibernate in your basement from one Pesach to the next as the only alternatives.  However: the kiruv industry might want to employ a less tenuous analogy.  [If they do I'll stop using run-on sentences [with multiple brackets [what's the halacha about where to put the punctuation?]]]]

[But I digress, as usual…]

Again: why was the cup painted blue?

Suddenly it raised an interesting question in my mind: maybe the Satmar’s particular brand of pedagogy for females dovetailed with what might actually be the ideal Torah approach, if you think about it for half a minute.  Torah she-ba’al peh was never supposed to be entexted at all, much less codified; its publication was an emergency measure.  Maybe the Satmar method paralleled a “purer” form of transmission?   And the “nashim tzidkanios” would be the standard-bearers, because of AND in spite of the restrictions on texts?

I was almost hearing “See?  Women ARE on a higher level—they don’t NEED the learning; men do!”

And then I remembered what the linchpin of R' Yoel d’Satmar’s reasoning for restricting women’s education to text-free syllabi: all women were ipso facto “talmidim she’einam kehogen”, or “unworthy students” [cf. TB Berakhot 28b] and therefore precluded from study, because they could ultimately only use their knowledge to conceal illicitness [cf. TB Sotah 21b].  It’s actually a consistent policy: the women aren't chained to a pedestal because they aren't placed on one.  However, this obviated my initial hava amina of this being an/the ideal approach.

Underscoring this was Ms. Vizel’s assertion that even faith or belief wasn’t instructed [and, though it might have been unclear whether this was actually a direct result of the sex-segregated pedagogical method, one could infer that the undeniably intensive text-based education of the Satmar male population would include some instruction in belief and faith, so even if only by default, this also could be a uniquely female experience in that—and similar—communities].

So where would the religious transmission come from?   What underpins the behavior represented by the pyramid of cups?

In this week’s parsha we may get a hint from the way Rashi and the commentaries explain how Rivkah Imenu may have actually exemplified the blue cup in the stack.  Despite her beauty--noted clearly in the posuk--she was singularly chaste, in contradistinction to the locals [Rashi on 24:16]; there's your blue cup.  But it wasn't just the locals making up the stack needing to be tumbled: her own family not only featured the paradigmatic Biblical con artist, but a father whose very name implied his defining inclination—“lord of the virgins”—and who was ostensibly slain by the angels before he could solve his dilemma as to whether to exercise his usual droit du seigneur with his own daughter [ironically enough, his own constituents were planning to kill him if he DIDN’T subject his daughter to the treatment he meted out to theirs].

Somehow she maintained her standards to the point that her aforementioned family of criminals was forced to admit through clenched teeth that they were powerless [24:50, 51] to change her personally freely chosen [24:57] destiny even though—after the father’s sudden death [24:55] didn’t provide enough of a hint what the consequences were for interfering—the brother and mother [!] tried one more time to at least slow down the process, and even though they finally realized they couldn't stop her [24:58], they might have been demonstrably upset about being overruled by their little sister [24:59].

Where would the shidduch with Yitzchak Avinu been if she hadn’t been the blue cup that tumbled the stack?

[Parsha PSA re: Rivka marrying Yitzchak at age 3--this particular vort has to be quashed with extreme prejudice from being taught in classrooms, and maybe even from pulpits.  As my mara d’asra put it: even Rashi [25:20] doesn’t hold by Rashi.  The fact that a children’s book was published with the frum community as its target market with this meme as its central theme—and that some people don’t seem to have an issue with it, don’t seem to understand what the issue might be, or do and deny it--is horrifying.  Anyone in chinuch who insists upon relating this as p’shat should be terminated with cause and chased from the field forever.  And possibly be subject to a mandated report.]

[And now back to our show.]

What’s even more interesting here, however, is that in lieu of a text-based transmission, there has to be some sort of “mesora” for Satmar women.  The numbers don’t lie: the model has proved sustainable for almost 70 years; even if one can claim that the future is uncertain, something has worked until now.  Hence the quote at the beginning of this piece: the ultimate preservative; an almost parallel “mesora”.

Or is it?

Back to the parsha: we know very little [nothing?] about Rivka’s mother.  From what we know about her husband’s tendencies, her marriage probably did not provide a suitable model for her daughter to follow.  Yet we see again from Rashi [24:67] that Rivka’s model was someone she never got to meet: her mother-in-law, whose pre-Sinaitic “Shabbos table” that had disappeared with her passing reappeared with Rivka’s arrival: pace Rashi, “dugmas Sarah imo”.

Like before--where I must clearly reiterate that I am not advocating for a wanton mass-opening of soda-bottles—I am not necessarily calling for a carnival booth of cupstack knockdowns.  However—in theory, at least—the Chassidic movement that gets increasingly trenchant in the process of sustaining its model originally started out by tumbling more than a few stacks of cups, and the premise that half your population remains barred from the sources of tradition in the name of sustaining the transformed model might lead to more than one cup wobbling in the stack.

One might deduce from Ms. Vizel’s observations that the transmission for women involves an almost nebulous method of social control with no attendant system of faith principles—let alone access to the texts that codify these principles.  One might then wonder where the system of transmission comes from, let alone where it leads.   The “anan kashur al ha-ohel” won’t always appear just because most of the cups aren’t painted blue.

Much has been made of the ultimate sustainability of a religious model that depends on increasing strictures and isolation even as it grows exponentially, and there are salient sociological reasons to believe that the jury is out on its ultimate staying power despite the generational explosion.  But there is a starker [shtarker?] reason beyond sociology to question the model: the premise itself is tenuous.  Ms. Vizel—maybe without even realizing it—illustrated why that is.  And it has nothing to do with “modernity”, or the “internet”, or other more tangible external threats: it’s built right into the very model itself.

It IS The Blue Cup.

Vayera: The Akedah and the Aisle

With all the back and forth in the blogosphere and elsewhere re: the ostensible “shidduch crisis”, people seem to forget a basic underpinning of halachic marriage which might make the prospect more frightening if they ever considered the implications.

To wit:

Every Jewish woman who enters into a halachic marriage is making a commitment involving a level of mesiras nefesh that can NEVER be equaled by a male counterpart. 

In other words: every woman who is ever mekudeshes undergoes her own personal akedah. 

Every. 

One. 

Every. 

Time.

Some lawyers consider it legally unethical to ever advise a woman client to enter into the kind of contractual relationship entailed in an Orthodox marriage because there is never an option for her voluntary exit.   This indicates that any Jewish woman who has consented to kiddushin has thereby expressed that she places notions of Kedusha and Torah above anything having to do with “freedom” or “Western values”.   For all complaints from all quarters about the pernicious influence of “modernity” upon Yiddishkeit, the fact that kiddushin is practiced and that women enter into it willingly points to the fact that in some cases said “modernity” will never become a complete  “ikkar”.

There are hints to this level of mesiras nefesh in the classic literature.   One that I find pertinent in light of this parsha is the Talmudic statement [Kesuvos 72b] when discussing possible reasons for summary divorce:  “im ken, lo henachta bas le’Avraham Avinu!”  [e.g. our father Abraham has no daughters if you hold them to [x] standard].  Not by accident do Chazal realize what a nisayon there is in every marriage on her part—and bring the one who was tested through the Akedah to make the point.

Beyond that—and if you want to accuse me of actually suggesting this be done, fine, because we all know nothing of the sort will ever come close to happening on any level—if women realized what they were being asked to give up, what would keep them from staging a grand “walkout” and declaring [Bava Basra 60b]: “we ought by rights to bind ourselves not to marry and beget children, and the seed of Abraham our father would come to an end of itself”?  The fact that said seed perpetuates—and is traced back to Avraham, particularly--indicates, again, the mesiras nefesh involved.

That is why the still-maligned halachic pre-nup is actually grossly undervalued—on RELIGIOUS terms. 

Because if people knew what mesiras nefesh was entailed on the part of every woman who underwent erusin, they’d be tripping over themselves to find a male equivalent that was that automatic.

Because if there really was a salient “concern that introducing and focusing on the possible dissolution of a marriage when it is just beginning is not conducive to the health of the marriage” there would never have been a kesuva.

[And if one will claim that the implication of divorce/death is “peripheral” to the kesuva—should I mention Kesuvos 11a: “…she has a Kesuvah…lest it be light in her husband's eyes to divorce her”?  Or maybe I should mention Rashi on Kesuvos 82b, where he says “lo rotzos lehinasei”—women were NOT MARRYING because the terms of the Kesuva [e.g. in regard to the nature of the assets attached to it] were unfavorable for the woman—and Chazal acted to fix it?  Twice?  Hardly “peripheral”, then, to “focus on the possible dissolution of a marriage when it is just beginning”.]

Because if you think that it’s “unromantic” to sign a pre-nup—actually, it might be the most “romantic” gesture a guy can make in the context of a halachic marriage.  In effect he says: I realize exactly what you’re doing, and I want to join you to whatever degree I can by making a similar commitment, even though it can never be the complete halachic equivalent.  The prenup might probably the most salient way to express that sentiment.

Because, even if you can back up your claim that there are “entirely defensible reasons” to “[not] embrace the prenuptual approach”, you may not realize what a disservice you do to the very “nashim tzidkanios” you end up chaining to the pedestals you continually place them on.

If “nashim tzidkanios” are going to bring the geulah—let’s hope it’s as simple a process as the act of kiddushin which for all intents and purposes involves an akedah.

Every.

Time.

[P.S.  After running this by an otherwise sympathetic Rabbi friend, he mentioned that the kesuva itself is hardly "romantic".  Then I remembered--

Maybe it is:

"From this forward, all my property, even the shirt on my back, shall be mortgaged and liened for the payment of this kesuva, dowry and additional sum, whether during my lifetime or thereafter"...

 "Even the shirt on my back"...sounds pretty romantic, no?

"Whether during my lifetime or thereafter"...still think divorce/death is “peripheral” to the kesuva?]

Matos--"Just One Look..."

The Gemara [Shabbos 64a] relates that the soldiers who came back from the revenge battle against the Midianites offered the gold and jewelry they captured in battle as a penitential tribute, because, even though Moshe initially suspected them of illicit relations [precisely because they offered the booty under their own volition], they said “’We did not do a sinful action, but perhaps we had sinful thoughts’…they taught in the House of R’ Yishmael: the soldiers needed [to bring the Kelim for] an atonement for getting pleasure from seeing forbidden women.”

This is one of the myriad Talmudic sources detailing restrictions regarding ogling—or, more likely, gazing that would fall far short of ogling.

Sefarim do exist that actually explicate “hilchos re’iyah” in great detail.  Suffice it to say it’s not one of my strong points.  It reminds me of the story a former shana bet colleague told me about the time he and a chavrusa, having been able to make the commitment to be “shomer negiah” and stick to it [more or less, at least for a measureable period of time], wanted to go the next step and try to be “shomer re’iyah”.   According to him, that might have lasted a few minutes.

[There is also guardyoureyes.com, which involves a “battle” that didn’t really exist yet in my Yeshiva days.  [But I date myself.]  Should I mention the irony of a website that helps one combat the vagaries of the Web?  I just did?]

This vignette is also usually a jumping-off point to most summer-period mussar shmuessen about watching what you—well, watch.   But it might not present as the paradigm of self-control it’s held up to be when you take a closer look.

This battle was the quid pro quo for Avel Shitim, the joint Moabite-Midianite turning-out of almost their entire flower of young womanhood to seduce Bnei Yisrael into Pe’or-worship and concomitant oblivion [cf. Sanhedrin 106a].  [Not-so-side note: the mass executions taking place during the incident were for the Pe’or worship, not the illicit liaisons; the only exception was Zimri, and there were other reasons for that.] 

There are midrashic indicators that soldiers weren’t too far removed by degree from the precipitating factors.  Rashi on 31:16 via Sifri relates that the soldiers actually recognized which particular woman had snared which particular Israelite offender: "this is the one through which so-and-so had his downfall."  [Since, as the aforementioned Sanhedrin 106a relates how Bilaam planned out the gradual seduction technique through business relationships, personal knowledge of at least who some of the participants were may not have been all that farfetched.] 

Tosfos Shabbat 64a [s.v. “midei hirhur mi yatzanu”] actually indicates one more interesting tidbit: the halacha of the “yefat to’ar”/captive woman was already known to the soldiers, but a reminder was needed that it applied to “the one you liked [“ve’chashakta”], but not her friend”. [I’m unaware  of anything indicating whether anyone actually made use of the loophole, but this Tosfos indicates that at least there was some consideration on the part of the soldier which would have been halachically legitimate, insofar as the boundary as to where it would not have been was delineated.]

So, not to necessarily downplay “lo sasuru”, but there were plenty of cues to hirhur here which made the situation other than a case of “re’iyah be’alma”.  Hardly paradigmatic, then.

Beyond that, however, is the extension that this might take to another realm that is the complete inversion of this case.  I can’t locate where I saw this, but a [well-meaning?] advocate of more sex-segregation in religious activity justified his position because, as he put it, he might be having a “spiritual moment”, which is then ruined by a female either singing or giving a dvar Torah.

To said complainant: if your “spiritual moments” are a] all about your having them and b] they are so fragile that they dissipate when a woman might simultaneously engage in something [at least] equally legitimately spiritual in the time and place where you are—then you probably have to reassess either what you call “spiritual”, your actual “spirituality”, or both.

This notion has actually been addressed in the contemporary literature.  In his “Understanding Tzniut”, Rav Yehuda Herz Henkin takes issue with a lot of what’s written in Rav Pesach Eliyahu Falk’s “Oz Vehadar Levusha” [I’ve heard that at least one BT women’s seminar tells their students to particularly NOT use that sefer as their tznius arbiter].   Or, as Rav Henkin puts it, it’s a sefer “as much about ideology and outlook as [it] is about halacha.”

Most germane to this issue—and the aforementioned complainant—is where R’ Henkin addresses R’ Falk’s approvingly relating the “rebbetzin who never displayed her vast knowledge…she would listen quietly and closely as if the words were new.  She never hinted that she was fully acquainted with what was being quoted.”  R’ Henkin: “An alternative—that she should share her knowledge with others and deliver a d’var Torah—is not considered.  Apparently, that would be displaying special skills and a lack of tzniut.”

And, the coup-de-grace: “There is a danger here of losing sight of the real basics of modesty—not to mention being so concerned about not thinking about women that one can think of nothing else.”

Res ipsa loquitor.