One of thr greatest sins one can commit is to have sexual relations with a woman who is in a state of Niddah. The penalty for this is Kares. That is a very serious heavenly death penalty where one’s soul is literally cut off from his or her people.
That unfortunately has not stopped some people from succumbing to temptation. And it doesn’t matter which side of the Charedi /modern Orthodox divide one comes from. There are people guilty of succumbing to this temptation on both sides of the aisle. There is even one case where adultery has been committed by a prominent rabbinic figure. The punishment for that is an earthly death penalty meted out by Beis Din.
Of course we don’t have the ability to do that now and haven’t for thousands of years. The point is that the penalty mandated by the Torah is severe. Adultery in the Orthodox world is still relatively rare. Men having sexual relations with singe women… not so rare. At least not as rare as it should be.
The problem is that in our society the lifestyles of modern Orthodox singles are such that they get married quite late by Orthodox standards. In some cases they don’t get married at all. Just spend some time on the upper West Side of New York and that will become obvious to you.
Apparently there has been a solution of sorts to this problem. Single women are now going to the Mikvah. That is the way one becomes ritually fit for sexual relations. The Issur Kares is removed. Once a woman finishes her menstrual cycle after waiting the proscribed period of time she immerses in a Mikva and becomes permitted to have sexual relations with hr husband. That is how the Orthodox world operates. It is a matter of both biblical and rabbinic law. Up until now this was what married woman did. Single women did not make use of a Mikva since sexual relations were off limits to them.
But as I said, single women are now in some cases going to the Mikva. Some might say that this is a good idea. They might feel that this is better than violating an Issur Kares of a man having sexual relations with a woman before she immerses. Well, that’s true. But it is also a disgusting and promiscuous lifestyle that is anatehema to the holy ways of the Torah. It is what the sages called Znus… something that they went to great lengths to prevent out daughters from doing.
Casual sex is not the Torah way. And it is sad that it has come to this. We are at a point where the Cheif Rabbinate in Israel has to come out with an edict forbidding Mikva use to single women!
I’m not sure that will help. If people want to hook up, Rabbinic edicts by the Chief Rabbinate isn’t going to do much to stop them.
How low we have fallen! And how terrible is the curse of singles in our day. Whose fault is it? It is the fault of a promiscuous western lifestyle that is glorified by the entertainment industry in every single one of its facets: Movies, TV, magazines, books, music, advertisements… all promote sexual promiscuity. One needs to be pretty strong to resist temptation these days. This is the world those of us who do not chose to be insular live in.
But the answer is not Takanos. The answer is to figure out a way to end the scourge of singles. To teach that the ways of western promiscuity are not the ways of the Torah. We need to become better at taking out the wheat and discarding the chaffe of western culture. The answer is a massive change in education on this issue. Our youth ought to be taught often and early about the importance of marriage. The answer is to discourage the singles lifestyle. It used to be an embarrassment if someone didn’t get married. Today… no biggie!
I’m not saying that everyone should get married young or that there shouldn’t be great care and deliberation about getting married. Of course there should. In fact there is not enough of that either. The other side of the coin can be just as devastating if not worse. Bad marriages leading to divorce is statistically tied to people getting married too young among other factors. Neither extreme is good. But one thing is certain. We ought not be turning our daughters into mattresses.
