Natan's Latest Post

A digest of 'The Craziest Ban'

Quite surprisingly, I seem to be from the few suckers who subscribed to Natan’s blog. Almost all the regular commenters have the noticeable ‘Gift a subscription’ button next to their name - meaning that they are not yet subscribers. I must say, this is not what I was expecting. I really enjoy Natan’s blog. He has a phenomenal writing style and I enjoy reading his posts and arguing when I disagree. I especially enjoy the comments section and it is well worth the $8 a month (even though Natan thinks it’s Ok to pirate artwork and cannot pay the couple of dollars to buy it when necessary). But apparently, not too many people share my feelings. So I’ve been asked by some of the RJ readers to provide a digest of his latest post.

Natan begins by hedging in favor of bans in general and against the MODOX community, in terms unusually strong by his standards. I guess if he is always shocked and appalled at charedim, what’s he to do when something is really shocking and appalling?! So he lets us know that most bans have a kernel of truth to them, and praises the Charedim about their cautiousness with secular influence and tznius. But obviously, a positive post about Charedim is not the secret high-quality material that Natan is hiding behind is paywall. He then goes right to the beef of his post:

A certain yeshivish school for girls in the US has banned its students from using certain types of plastic water bottles. Specifically, the type which instead of having a screw-top, have a stopper that you pull up and then suck from, as in the picture above.

Can you guess why?

I couldn’t.

The reason is that they are “provocative.”

I kid you not.

Natan then goes on to explain that this is due to the hypersexualization of Charedi society. MODOX society you see, does not suffer from this problem, since they have a much more ‘open-minded’ attitude towards these issues. They can attend co-ed schools, night clubs, surf the internet unfiltered privately, and remain entirely pure. But those sheltered Charedim are in fact walking around with hypersexualized thoughts, leading them to ‘zealously’ scrub women’s images from shampoo bottles and not post pictures of women in their publications.

While I agree with Natan here that it seems that this school is going a little overboard and the healthiest approach is to be normal and not blow things out of proportion, reading his post, one can be led to believe that this overzealous school is more guilty of sin than some MODOX who feel that mixed-swimming is ok because it helps avoid ‘hypersexualization’. Such was a sentiment expressed by a number of MODOX commenters on this site a couple of months back. The fact of the matter is, this is a huge mistake. There are halachos from Chazal about seeing women in such while swimming - and Chazal call someone who does so a rasha. It’s human nature that one more careful about this is going to be more sensitized, and Chazal themselves acknowledged as such. The Gemara in Sukkah tells the story of Abaye who saw a man and a woman travel together alone and not sin, and this caused him much anguish, as he felt that if he were in the same circumstance, he would have sinned. The Gemara concludes כל הגדול מחבירו יצרו גדול הימנו - Anyone who is greater than another, his evil inclination is greater than his.

But the point is not to try and desensitize ourselves. The point is to lead a life of purity, devoid of porn and promiscuity. For some reason, filtered internet is not a concept that exists amongst the MODOX, and only G-d knows what people do, unsupervised, on an unfiltered device. And certainly teenagers who have especially strong desires. A playboy who wallows in sin will have a very high threshold to be stimulated. And that is not at all what the Torah wants from us. We are supposed to channel our desire towards kedusha - our connection with our spouse. Not try to drown it with sin.

Natan concludes by paying some lip-service about the ‘middle-ground’. And I agree that there is a middle ground. It’s just very hard to take that lip-service seriously from a society that completely ignores the very serious pitfalls of sending boys and girls to co-ed institutions or even the army for that matter, does not seem to think there is a problem with mixed swimming, is extremely lax in tznius, and seems completely oblivious to the very serious problem of unfiltered internet. Again, I don’t think it’s necessary to ban water bottles. But that middle ground is found in a society where the general public is careful about very obvious things mandated in halacha, and not handing kids (and adults for that matter) a key to b’er shachas.

Comments, anyone?

UPDATE 2/1/23

Natan is upset with me and feels that I’ve misrepresented him by writing "MODOX society you see, does not suffer from this problem, since they have a much more ‘open-minded’ attitude towards these issues. They can attend co-ed schools, night clubs, surf the internet unfiltered privately, and remain entirely pure."

Natan is pointing out that in fact he specifically did mention that the internet is a problem and the MODOX are way too lax about it. But here’s the thing. It is one thing to mention it in passing and another thing to actually be concerned about it. To the best of my knowledge, despite being very astute and articulate about pointing out every single slightest problem with Charedim, real or perceived, Natan has not devoted a single post to this very real and pressing issue that the MODOX have. In fact, the only place that this has come up is in context of saying that the Charedim have a ‘much bigger issue’ with the ‘hypersexualization’ of their society. Not only that, Natan regularly harps on the Charedim for not serving in the army despite being aware of the very serious issues that go on there.

Despite some word salads about the dangers of the internet, I’d be curious to know if Natan or the people whom he associates with have filters on their internet for themselves or for their children. Random anonymous yeshivish high schools in America banning ‘provocative’ water bottles seem to be a much bigger concern.