Come to Kedusho!

Contents

What is the Jewish-Torah attitude towards sexuality? Sexuality is natural; it is procreation and part of the Creation. The mundane and the material are part of life, even Life. "The Way of the World precedes the Torah." Our task is to find G-d, not in the cave, but in the bedroom and dining room, in the business and the market. In Life, we sense Transcendency. Suffused in our daily lives and certainly in intimacy, is the Schechinah, the Divine Presence.

In Segment Two we learned that women are the pinnacle of spirituality, and intimacy elevates a couple to infinity. Procreation is the highest level of humanity; people transcend their pettiness and achieve creation. The High Priest in the Temple could only function if married. One who has no wife has "no Torah, no blessing, no life."

Sexuality is natural, so natural that at one time public lectures were given on it, as taught in the holy classic, "Two Tablets of the Covenant," or "SHELO." Sexuality came from marriage, which in Hebrew is KIDDUSHIN, or "holiness." Holiness was not just the marital bond, but the marital function, the Life actualized in intimacy.

What is the Western attitude towards sexuality? The New Testament, in Mathew, demands that the truly spiritual refrain from marriage completely. The third century Church theologian Tertullian demanded that women dress in mourning and realize that evil is because of them. A major early church figure, Origen, castrated himself to avoid the temptation to go near a woman. He promoted the Greek idea that matter and the material world are implicitly evil. The Greeks, who utterly despised women, influenced the early Church. Athens reveled in homosexuality, one reason being that women were inferior. Therefore, the Jewish and Western ideas of sexuality are far apart.

Sex as secular entertainment and enjoyment is quite different from Jewish modesty and sanctity. Modern secular ideas about sexuality promote what biblical people consider perversity. The American Psychological Association not only condones and supports homosexuality, it once published a paper purporting to show that pedophilia can be good for the molested child, although recently it did publish another study contradicting this. It would seem that the anti-biblical sexuality of the secular culture and academic community would have nothing to do with the Church view on sexuality. This, however, is a mistake. Once society accepts from the Church that women are things, and that sex is naughty, and that marriage is only for lower people and removed from true spirituality, or is only for procreation and kingdom building, it is but a small step to fulfill one's biological needs by creating a Hollywood woman who is a physical toy. Also, by pouring guilt on the sexual drive, one is unable to deal with his natural passions without feeling evil. Once evil is served, the helpless person is on a slippery slope. Historically, a society that refuses divorce was one that made marriage into a joke. A Pope once told a woman, who needed an heir in order to provide the Pope with what he wanted politically, "A smart woman knows how to become pregnant." Throughout the history of the church, fornication and homosexuality were common at the Vatican and surely elsewhere. Some popes had children. In monarchical France, marriages were made only for financial reasons, with no expectation of fidelity. There is thus a linkage between one's attitude towards women and sex and the two faces of the Church and secular sex. The impossible demands of the Church, denigrating sexuality, prohibiting divorce, forced many people to accept that what they had to do was evil, and they then went to adultery and heinous sins as if on a trajectory.

We cannot discuss secular sexuality without mentioning Sigmund Freud and the secular study of sexology. Although we will not go into Freud in depth in this segment, we mention here one important idea: The sexual habits of people in modern Austria, in the most fashionable salons where Freud's patients lived, were unsatisfactory. Even today things are not good, as we will discuss. Freud felt that melancholy, anxiety and hysteria came from poor sexual practices, such as frequent masturbation and coitus interruptus. People don't have a proper avenue for their sexual needs. Unmarried people can contract disease from prostitutes, married people have problems with maintaining their ardor-at one time, they had problems with unwanted pregnancies. Freud worried that condoms interfered with the proper release of libido energies and caused mental illness. The sexual forces in people must have a proper release, Freud felt, and he was right. He also said, rightfully, that people have problems with these releases. These problems have led people, as we will mention, to utterly reject either heterosexuality or even any partner sexuality, and to find release anyway they can, even through auto-excitement. This is the present state of sexology, seeking to find a path to sexual fulfillment, even as we slide down the slope culturally and socially away from it. What is sad is that a century after Freud began his study of sexuality, the basic issues he raised have not been properly resolved. Indeed, they are part of larger issues that are the challenge of the future, such as the study of consciousness, the connection between the mental and chemical, ideas and hormones, as well as the neurological process of sexuality. The farther science retreats into reductionism and the smaller things, the more it wants to break away and find the total picture, which is quite a trick. We hope to discuss the Jewish counterparts of some of Freud's phrases, but not in this segment, because it deserves a large focus of its own.

When we eat and enjoy, we feel less spiritual than when we pray or study. Indulgence fills our primitive appetites, not our souls. This led the Church to teach that the material world was so remote from G-d that He had to create an intermediary deity to deal with it. The devil controlled the material world, and demanded from the Creator a payment of the death of an intermediary deity. Judaism feels that G-d created the material world as an adjunct of His Holiness, which suffuses nature and matter. We have no need of an intermediary to deal with the material world, and indeed, every pebble radiates with mystery and transcendence. To the church, sexuality was the ultimate denigration of the soul; the rabbis taught the opposite. Sexuality was the pinnacle of spirituality, an act of creation, and a partnership directly with G-d. G-d is not removed from materialism, and He is not separate from sexuality. He is revealed in it. The Cabalists teach that the unity of male and female unite the supernal letters of the Divine Name in Heaven.

In 270, inspired by a Church teaching to renounce one's possessions, Anthony retreated to a tomb where he claimed that demons assailed him, even striking him, to draw him back to the sensuous world. Thus began Christianity's idea that matter, sensual pleasures, and this world are the domain of the devil. The monastic priests of the Church spread this doctrine, that earnings and sexuality are lowly things. Judaism insists that people have earnings and support their families. The Cabalists say that the highest lights reverberate in the acts of buying and selling, if done honestly.

The rabbis taught that Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden cohabitated unclothed. After the sin, they were ashamed of public nakedness. Whereas some religions taught that the expulsion from the Garden of Eden denigrated people in G-d's eyes, Judaism denies that sin can do this. No sin can destroy G-d's love for us, nor can any sin deny us the opportunity to return to G-d who awaits us. Even sexuality after the sin is beloved, and matter and nature are still suffused with transcendence, albeit privately and quietly. We see the great difference in the attitudes of the West and Judaism regarding humankind, sin, and sexuality.

Is Sex Shameful?

We are so ashamed of our nakedness, even though G-d made us that way, that we clothe ourselves. Sexuality is the deepest nakedness and we embarrassed by it. It can only be consummated in utter privacy. Sex may be natural and procreation, but something about it seems incompatible with the nobility of rational and regal man. Sexuality is surrender to something irrational, and base pleasure demeans us, somehow.

A Greek philosopher regaled his disciples with the importance of rationality, and complained how sexuality without higher logic was objectionable. As far as anyone could tell, the professor was as good as his word. He had nothing to do with women, but was engrossed constantly in study and deep thought.

Finally, the professor's barbs about sexuality reached new heights. The students decided to see just how pure their professor was. They found out, through scientific experiment, when they sent a prostitute to him, that he was quite fallible. Bursting into his room at the appropriate or rather inappropriate time, the students confronted their master. "Now," said he, "I am not your master."

There is in this story, true or not, two ideas, and they are both true. One, is that sexuality is emotional and not commensurate with hard rational thinking. Two, even people who prize rationality are human. Anyone who does not realize the power of sexuality may easily be burnt by it. We therefore seek to deal with this mighty force by feeding our needs, not by denying them. The incredible pedophilia and homosexuality scandals engulfing the Catholic Church today show what happens when one denies marriage.

I was once a partner with a Catholic Priest in a certain project, which received the blessings of senior rabbis. We decided to honor a senior Bishop. The Bishop spoke at the dinner, and began his remarks by saying that he decided to become a priest before he was ready for celibacy. I discovered later that this Bishop did have sexual problems, went to school and got a high degree in counseling, and is now busy with other priests. There are calls for change, but the Church was founded with the attitudes enumerated above, and to alter them will rock the foundations not only of the priesthood, but also of the theology. ABCNEWS, on April 26, '02, showed a picture of top Vatican prelate Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger slapping the hand of an ABC correspondent. The correspondent asked Ratzinger about Father Marcial Maciel. Eight Catholic men in their sixties have come forth to charge Maciel, the head of a legion to make priests out of children, with molesting them in his secretive domain near the Vatican. Despite the furor, the Pope continued to praise Maciel. Today, the world realizes that the Jewish way given at Sinai is the correct one. As I write these words in May, 2,002, sixteen priests accused of pedophilia have committed suicide, and an archbishop has resigned. Two senior American Cardinals, Law of Boston and Egan of New York, are being deposed or working with the DA's office, and are under heavy pressure for covering up priestly pedophilia.

Even outside of the Church, the idea that sex is wrong, or that it must be confined to procreation, makes problems. The guilt associated with sex has turned it into an anti-social thing like gambling and drugs. Instead of people getting it properly, they deny it, until something bursts and becomes adultery, the ruining of a woman, or people simply run across town.

It is easy to understand the error of the Greeks and the West. When you have sex, you lose yourself, you decline, and you are degraded. Sexuality is a lust that does not reflect the higher powers of man. Sex thus became naughty, and women, "things." All of this is utterly contrary to Judaism. Judaism feels that sexuality is the highest spirituality, and females are more spiritual than males. This does not contradict the patrician culture of Judaism. The man leads in the public arena, which is appropriate for struggle and darkness. The female rules in the home, where the Schechinah, the Divine Presence rests. We develop these ideas elsewhere, especially in Segment II, in the unit about women. When we accept sexuality as Judaism does, we mean only the family oriented kind. Profaning sexuality as Western "sex" is a heinous sin.

The problem is that if rationality and logic are the highest aspects of man, how can we reconcile sexuality to them? Sexuality is done with other parts of the mind, the emotional or primitive faculties. What pride does Judaism sees in this act? If the logic and rationality of man is overwhelmed by sexuality, this is because one enters the infinite realm, not because he becomes an animal. Sexuality is one of the many times that a person in this world tastes of the higher one. We say this not because of the physical pleasures involved, but because of the actual spiritual energy that is sexuality.

What is the Sexual Force?

Sexuality may involve, in its failed form: fantasy, the disintegration of the ego, and sad surrender. Judaism, on the other hand, sees sexuality as not disintegration, but transcendence. One surrenders to emerge as something higher. Man and female cease being alone and become "one flesh." Just as nature does not tolerate a positive charge without a negative one, an electron without a proton, so there cannot be a fully fulfilled man without a woman, and a fully fulfilled woman without a man. Only in marriage do we find out what we really are.

A person has a body and a soul. The universe has material and spiritual forces. Just as a rock is real, so is the soul, and so is spirituality. There are orbs of fire and rock racing through space, and there are lines of light that lead to and from G-d. The key is that the material and spiritual merge, fuse, and reciprocate each other's essence. Material life is suffused with spirituality; spirituality inspires us to better the material state of the world. Marriage, the highest material reality, leads to and reveals transcendence.

According to my friend, internationally renowned sexologist Edward Eichal, the concept of sex being a physical energy was entertained by Freud and is being studied by modern physicists. However, the idea of sexuality being a physical force has nothing to do, per se, with spirituality. It means that the psychosexual process invokes waves of energy and forces that are similar to light and sound, or that it is somehow rooted in physiological processes, or that it is hormonal. We can accept that sexuality is both physical and spiritual. The new science may indeed find a way to measure the waves of energy in sexuality in purely physical terms, and yet accept the transcendence of sexuality as a spirituality beyond physical measurement.

One may thus think about sexuality as actual physical energy, or even a transcendental force. David Bohm, a major scientist and philosopher, proposes that there is what we see and detect with scientific instruments. This he calls the explicate. An example would be words written on a page. We know the words; we can study them. There is, however, an environment, like the page where letters are written and form words. The environment of the letters he calls the implicate; the letters are the explicate. There is, in addition, says Bohm, a super-implicate. This environment is above time, and percolates down into the temporal world as a creator. A thing in the lower world connects to the super-implicate and achieves new and creative properties. All of us, according to Bohm, and all life and all particles, sense and connect to the challenges and the creative capacity of the super-implicate as we grow and develop.

(The idea in secular terms is very rough and scientifically controversial. One objection is that if there is such a thing as the super-implicate, everything should develop perfectly and not fail. Indeed, since all things in the universe are connected to the creative guidance of the super-implicate, how can there be clashes and wars? Obviously, the idea is wrong on the physical level. It further violates a law of physics called entropy. Entropy says that all order becomes disorder; all organization becomes disorganization. If all particles and life are connected to the super-implicate, why do things get worse instead of better?)

Nonetheless, for our purposes, we congratulate Bohm's effort to connect science to transcendence. That is the way things are moving. Judaism has always united science and spirituality. Judaism believes that "there is no blade of grass that does not connect to an angelic force that causes it to grow." Bohm's idea of all particles connecting to a super-implicate is correct only if we admit the existence of spirituality, because the super-implicate defies physics and entropy, as we explained. All particles in the universe live in a pot of destruction, entropy. We are pressured to fall, to fail, to disintegrate. We must reach past the physical forces that bind and lower us, and find eternity, the "angelic forces" and G-d. We then can rise above our finite shackles and realize our true potential.

We can thus define human spirituality as the effort to evade the destructive pressures of the finite by finding the source of life in transcendence. In marriage, we have daily problems and pressures. They are relieved, and the marriage sustained, through sexuality and its invocation of higher energies. Love, revealed during sexuality and maximized by it, is infinite.

The early scientism that barred spirituality was heavily influenced by the Church and Western idea that matter is apart from spirituality, even evil. Today, we seek to unite matter to spirituality, which is a Jewish idea.

Sexuality allows us, when properly done, to connect to the true spiritual "super-implicate." Whenever we perform sex, we put the key into the motor and it connects to the supernal sources of light and infinite spiritual energies. If we love and are loved, the process is perfect, and we emerge whole and renewed. If we "take" and not "give"; if we are actualized and not vulnerable; if we demean and don't respect: mighty powers of transcendence and spirituality flow down, but they are corrupted and become evil and meanness. Sexuality is a primal force, a blastema; it raises one to the heavens or plunges him to the abyss. Sexuality can be loving, resolving, spiritual, transcendent and happy. It can also be compulsive, addictive, perverse, anxious and menacing.

Spirituality, according to Judaism is a reality. This is enforced scientifically by the studies of many who died and came back, called "near death experiences." People brain dead without heartbeat had no function in the brain and heart were revived. They then told the doctors and emergency personnel what was said and done while they were dead. This proves that there is a soul. Dead brains do not remember anything. Scientifically, therefore, we accept a soul, and thus spirituality. In sexuality, we see either its purest form, or the opposite.

"Spirituality is Autoeroticism"?

A senior secular sexologist said, "Spirituality is autoeroticism." This is a terrible mistake. While it is true that one can attain a primitive pleasure by fantasizing and masturbating, the masturbatory orgasm is surely not the spirituality of the transcendence. In secular distorted sexuality, a higher human becomes a fantasy, his ego, disintegrated, his self, vaporized. Purely physiological sexual pleasure is not spirituality; it is unfulfilled or even toxic sexuality.

"Auto" means one alone. "Autoeroticism is spirituality" implies the lone self. Nothing is said about a partner, male or female. However, he did not say this because he was strange or evil. In the secular world, heterosexuality and surely homosexuality is so riven with problems that people endure it rather than enjoy it. Spirituality, to this professor, sincerely stated, is autoeroticism. He massages certain erogenous zones, stimulates the blood to flow over nerve endings, and claims to be "spiritual." Lest we laugh, we must realize that in the secular world, sex is a challenge rather than a pleasure. People are always trying this or that because they are frustrated with the old ways. Eventually, just masturbating in the privacy of one's home brings relief without the mess. We can understand that, even as we disagree with it. However, is this spirituality?

In the sixties, secular people began to search for spirituality in drugs. Professor Timothy Leary of Harvard influenced many young people to take dangerous mind-altering drugs such as LSD. People claimed that the twisting of the mind with chemistry was "spirituality." Will wonders never cease?

Sexuality as "autoeroticism" or even as erogenous arousal is shallow, and manifests only the processes of the nerve-endings and biological responses. Jewish spirituality is communication, "and Adam knew his wife." He did not fantasize; he knew something. He understood Eve on a deeper level. As Adam sank into sexual arousal, he saw Eve in a dimension higher and more transcendent than he had ever known. This knowledge, the revelation and knowledge, not the fantasy, afforded him a communication that recreated his own soul.

We thus sum up our comparison of Jewish and secular/Western sex. Judaism considers sexuality a spiritual energy and insight, a knowledge, that unites two disparate elements, man and woman, and propels them to deeper dimensions, depths of insights, lights of infinite power and immeasurable pleasures. These pleasures are not merely spiritual or chemical. They are the challenge of the lone individual to escape the prison of his own limitations, and to find freedom, strength and a spiritual renewal through intimacy. Pleasure is usually related to something important. We must procreate, or the species disappears. We must eat, or we die. Therefore, both of these are pleasurable. The need for a person to connect to challenge, renewal, expansion, freedom, strength and intimacy with others is an infinite need, and its pleasure is infinite.

When the greatest sage in the world in Babylonia, Rav (250 CE) was old, he heard some people discussing Solomon's teachings on sexuality. He groaned. Those who heard the groan said, "Obviously, Rav no longer is sexually virile and potent." The Talmud records this. What is there to record? That an old man groaned?

Rav was a saint who founded the rabbinical schools that completed the final and authoritative Talmud. That such a man, in his aged state, should be pained by his lack of virility shows that sexuality is a very high knowledge and spirituality.

Rav's opposite number, in Israel, Rabbi Yochanan, was the founder of the Jerusalemic Talmud School. He once remarked, "Such and such a potent restored me to my youth." Maimonides made medications for virility. Sexuality to a Jew was not the consuming vice of the Arab. It was the consummate spirituality.

Modern sex fails almost eighty percent of the time. The emphasis upon the physiological and the denigration of the act make it almost impossible to succeed. One can only succeed with sex when he realizes that it will elevate him, make him more rational and heighten his spirituality. He enters the room as if he was in the holy of holies. There are those who recite special prayers before going to bed. G-d is together with the parents in the selection of the soul. The parents tremble that their love not be marred, something that will blemish the soul of the child. Even if no child is born, souls are created by procreation, and of course, the parents are reborn.

Secular person begins sex without the moorings of the rational and regal self, and without the excitement at the spiritual dimension of the act. What is he looking for? The woman senses his powering on as an insult and threat, and hardens in fear. The rest is disaster. This happens in the majority of the time with secular sex.

The Jewish marital act takes place, when people are young, after a menstrual period. The husband suffers, for a week or two. The woman watches her husband climb the walls. She is counting the days; he is dying; so be it. Finally, she goes to the Mikvah, a ritualarium filled with well or rainwater. He is home, excited as if he was just married. She goes into a building swarming with ladies and helpers. She showers and chats with her friends. There is enormous tension in the night, but it often evaporates in the quiet talking. Ladies on the staff of the Mikveh help her get ready, and she is called to come to an available pool. She goes down the few stairs into the water, and immerses totally. She feels something spiritual and new. She is not the old person. The old weaknesses are going to have a hard time in this body. She rises from the pool, and goes home. What is important for us to note in her attitude is this: SEX IS SACRED!

Note that the most pious ladies are escorting the woman. Some women will wait in their private rooms until a senior lady is available. They want to be led to the water by someone very special and invoke her presence. They want to hear from this saintly woman some blessing, one that will bring more meaning to the Mikveh, and blessing to the marriage and children. A Mikveh is at least as holy as the synagogue on Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement.

The lady comes home. Her husband knows the rules. HE MUST BEHAVE. He wants to rush, but he better not. If he does, the wife might tell the rabbi. Secular woman is not going to call the police, but you better believe that religious lady will call the rabbi. And if she does...

The woman is intensely excited, as is the man. Now is the time to relax and chat, and enjoy something to eat. When the woman is ready, not before, there will be action. She is not nervous. She is in control. The Talmud tells of the senior rabbi who taught his daughter about sex. "Don't let him grab anything," he told her. First this, and then, that, and then... Secular woman just hopes for the best, but when you leave it to biology, she feels like the grizzly bear females who flee at top speed when they notice a male in heat. A man in heat is a grizzly bear. It takes a lot of training to make him into a human. A rabbi told me of the forensic report he had read, of a man who killed his wife during intercourse, not from cruelty, but from the violence of his movements. He simply tore her apart. Many women are not torn apart physically, but what they go through emotionally is almost as bad. Sexuality is a great challenge. Either do it right, and achieve wonderful things, or do it wrong, and suffer.

Those secular people, men and women, who have had enough, retreat to their dens and announce, "Spirituality is autoeroticism." Pity them. Pity such a world.

Sexuality, Spirituality and the Angels

We find in the Creation story that Adam and Eve copulated publicly, naked, yet without shame. Only when they sinned did they become embarrassed without clothes. Thus, sexuality itself is spiritual. However, sexuality by people with sin and stained souls is shameful. We therefore accept that there are two levels of sexuality, one glorious and one embarrassing. In our world, sex must be very private. We shut our eyes when praying out of respect for the Schechinah Presence that stands before us. We seek darkness and privacy in sexuality for the same reason. Only in the Garden of Eden, when people openly consorted with the Schechinah, could sexuality be public.

Outside of the Garden, sexuality continued to be a spiritual force. Indeed, the first teaching of the Yeshiva of Elijah the Prophet is that after the Expulsion, we relate directly to G-d through Derech Erets, the "Way of the World." This "comes before the Torah." Whatever relationship we had with G-d in the Garden of Eden is now hidden and quiet. In the privacy of our homes, even in our mundane functions, we find true spirituality.

Because sexuality is so linked to heavenly forces and spirituality, when we violate the ethics of sexuality, when we defile and profane women, we turn the heavens upside down. This happened, literally, in the generation of Noah, when men began to "take women," and do as they pleased. The bible tells us of the Fallen Ones, who were angels, hurled to earth by the sexual sins of men. When men violated women with rapine, the foundation of spirituality was shaken, and angels were toppled to earth. In the twisted turmoil of the times, these angels were pulled to earth by the beauty of women, a spirituality ruined and made suddenly toxic by the acts of men.

The sins of men thus caused two things to happen in the time of Noah and the Flood. They toppled angels and corrupted spiritual forces. Sins corrupted the animals, which now mated with other species and engaged in homosexuality.

Genesis 6,4: "The fallen ones were in the land in those days (just before the Flood of Noah.) And also afterwards, when the Sons of Holiness came to the daughters of man, and bore for them. They are the mighty ones who were the famous people from days of yore." Some say the "mighty ones" were called "fallen" because all who saw them trembled and fell down. Others, however, object to translating "fallen ones" as causing others to fall. "Fallen ones" mean that they, not others, fell. Yet, if they fell, how could they be the progenitors of "mighty ones"? The answer is that angels fell from heaven, married women, and produced giants. (See Baal HaTurim 6,4) Rashi says the same thing on a previous passage, "And the Sons of G-dliness saw the daughters of man that they were good, and they took them for wives, from all that they chose." This means that angels took women.

The bible tells us that sex can topple angels. The "fallen ones" of early Genesis were angels who were carried away by desires for lovely women. What did angels see in females? We mentioned one solution previously; angels were toppled in the turmoil of human sin. By violating women, the sacrosanct font of spirituality, the spiritual forces of the very heavens were toppled, and some angels fell down to earth. These angels, again, from the toxic spirituality, were attracted to women. On second thought, angels attracted to women may not be so strange, after all.

Angels have no bodies, so their interest was not as we would assume. We mentioned the spirituality of the female, and perhaps the angels liked that. If so, why did they decline and fall from their relationship with women?

Sexuality and the female can raise a man to heaven, or fling the angels into the abyss. It depends on our attitude and respect for the female. The angels "took" from "all that they wanted." Women meant nothing to them, only as a toy. Such resulted in tragedy and falling. Men who approach a woman with respect, however, invoke the spirituality she possesses and rise to the heavens.

Some say that the angels fell from heaven to marry a woman, Naama. What did the angels see in Naama? Naama means "lovely." NOAM is comfort and pleasantness. We are happy. We have no problems. Naama also has a connotation of aesthetic loveliness. When we gaze upon a lovely thing, its loveliness energizes us. There is a fragrance-like power in beauty. We assume new energies because of it. Why? Beauty is related to transcendence and mystery, and even the angels were impressed with it. Surely, people can be inspired by beauty. What is beauty? What is loveliness?

The angels, swayed by the charm of Naama, were not necessarily impressed with her lipstick. Her name "lovely" indicated a higher dimension where even angels had to look. This "loveliness" of the spirit is often replicated by physical loveliness. This is the principle in physics of symmetry, whereby variegated dimensions produce similar phenomena. The spirit produces beauty and the manifestation of that loveliness can often be reflected in other dimensions, such as the finite and the physical. A lovely woman is often a lovely soul, a lovely spirituality. The angels did fall for Naama, but not just for her physical form.

A human being has many levels of consciousness and knowing, from the soul and deepest emotions to the coldest calculating and logic. Somewhere, out there, is something special, the energies we require to escape from our finite confines and to know better things. We seek a higher spirituality to find freedom. Others, failing, utilize a drug, a drink, any force that can save them from the doldrums and limitations. We are finite, and it bothers us. We are trapped within our bodies and restrictions, the crush of entropy and decline, and we want to fly free. Perhaps, in our fantasies, we take wing and float in the warm air over an island in the ocean, in a paradise of birds and breezes, and we gently rock on the clouds, free of fear and pressure. Alas, it is all fantasy. For biofeedback, this is great, but we know it is only an exercise to relieve tension.

Along comes a lovely thing. Suddenly, we are happy, we find something new; we are floating on a cloud. Where did that cloud come from? This is surely better than biofeedback. It is real. Why? One idea is as we explained, that physical beauty radiates with higher beauty and true spirituality. It can be corrupted, but nonetheless, the force is there. It can raise us to the heavens or fling us to the abyss. There are beautiful women who are righteous such as Sarah who founded the Jewish people, and there are beautiful women like Vashti who hated Jews and made Jewish girls work on the Sabbath. From one comes life and from the other comes evil and destruction. High forces are very delicate and can easily be corrupted. However, the Talmud records famous prostitutes who became righteous, such as Rahab, the wife of Joshua, and another in the generation of Rabbi Mayer. One idea is that these lovely ladies were dirt and repented. This is acceptable. "Nothing bars the path to penitence." However, there is another idea, in keeping with our discussion. The beauty of a woman resonates on spiritual and material levels. The higher beauty is easily corrupted; sexuality with its spiritual content easily slips down into "sex" and evil. These women, such as Rahab, the wife of Joshua, were lovely, and this indicated that their souls were very high, but captured by the evil force. In the merit of righteous people, these spiritual lovely forces broke free until even the physical woman returned to goodness.

Within this idea is another, deeper concept, taught by Rabbi Yisroel Salanter, the saint and scholar of nineteenth century Vilna. Rabbi Salanter taught that in nature there is always balance. Thus, something very good attracts great evil, and something very evil attracts goodness. Practically speaking, this means that a good person has a good exterior, but a poor interior system. There must be balance, because "G-d made this opposite that." The world is one of testing, and there must always be balance to produce the challenge to choose good and to avoid evil. There must be evil to test us. What happens when a person becomes pious? Do the evil force and inclination leave? Rabbi Salanter taught that the evil force in a good person re-entrenches and makes the good person filled with evil inclinations. Alternatively, a bad person has a bad external system, but internally, the good forces pour in and concentrate. The inner force waits for something to pierce the shield separating it from the external. Once that barrier is broken, the inner force explodes its pent-up energies, and the person is flooded with an opposite force.

Obviously, this deserves more attention, but for our purposes, we will return to the prostitutes who became pious. When did they taste the light of goodness? While mired in utter evil, the power of balance asserted itself. Here, in the muck, was an inbalance, and something had to be done. Good forces poured into the evil prostitute, and hid behind the barrier. When something happened, in the case of Rahab, the conquest of Canaan and the revelation of G-d's might, the good poured through a breach in the barrier, and she converted to Judaism and became pious. A similar story is told of the wife of a Roman emperor, a renowned beauty, who married Rabbi Akiva in his old age.

People who live in the dregs of life, running to and fro with prostitutions, fornication, and who knows what else, simply increase within their hearts, deep down but somehow sensed, forces of good that can balance the force of evil. The pain felt by those with compulsive and addictive behaviors reflects in part these good forces that cry out with each step into the quagmire. Of course, this outcry simply reinforces the anxieties that drive the person to seek relief with the evil behavior. As tragic as this is, there is a good force building with each failure; ultimately, all of that good can come out and prevail.

Psychosexual and Spiritual

In his classic work, The Two Tablets of the Covenant, Rabbi Isaiah Horowitz writes, (Volume III, page 149b) in the name of Rabbi Isaac Luria, that food and material things contain spiritual elements. A person who eats feeds his body and his soul. The material in the food feeds the physical body, and the sparks of spirituality sustain the soul. He writes, "There is nothing in the lower world that does not have a spiritual influence from above that brings it to actuality and says to it, 'grow!'"

The last phrase is a quote from the Talmud, that "no blade of grass exists without a heavenly angel that deals with it and tells is to grow." There are two ideas here, one, that the material world is also spiritual, just as the soul exists in the body. Secondly, the spiritual forces of heaven guide the material world intimately. Life and growth are ultimately the process of spirituality, even though the plant, grass or person is also material.

In terms of sexuality, we also have two domains, the physical and the spiritual. The physical is variegated, because sexuality may invoke the entire repertoire of human emotion and thought. The spiritual is also variegated, because the spiritual world is not one blob; even this world, the material, has a fascinating structure of many elements. The spiritual world itself has many forces, and the material life we lead, especially in marriage, invokes a wide range of spiritual forces, depending on our spiritual level. Our emotions, when good and pure, invoke high spiritual forces. When we are angry, when we are selfish, when we feel small, we may invoke the other, lower kind of spirituality, or even evil.

Many things go on during human interactions, especially in intimacy. The male needs the female resolution, and the female needs the male penetration, his entering into her "home" and "circle essence" to be resolved and revealed. Sexuality tugs at the deepest personal level, defining and creating, resolving and revealing. Sexuality invokes G-d, so that "three partners, the father, the mother and G-d" create the soul of the child. G-d is not removed and abstract, but a veritable partner summoned by the spirituality of sexuality. There are various levels of procreation. The Talmud teaches that the level of the child's soul is determined by the love of the parents for each other during intercourse. Obviously, intimacy is exalted. Having said this, we must keep in mind that the mighty engine of sexuality is fashioned not in heaven but in our relationships with our parents. Our childhood forms our psychosexual attitudes and forces, although there are genetic, social, inter-uterine and hormonal influences as well.

The psychosexual drive is rooted in our relationships to our parents and others. The capacity to relate to others is part of our mind or essence. The relation force within us has many levels. There is the casual relationship and there are deeper relationships. The highest level of relationship requires the deepest emotions. When we want to physically join with a person it is partially because of the mental and spiritual need to relate with another. We also relate to others in order to expand our horizons and to inform ourselves. We have sex in order to grow and to be actualized. The sexual relationship however is quantitatively and qualitatively different and much more intimate and searing than other relationships. In order for one to have a sexual relationship and invoke these deeper emotions, one must call upon previously prepared parts of the person. If these parts, designed for deeper relationships, are scarred, the sexual experience may be damaged, even sick.

This can lead to negative sexuality. Instead of involving the soul and the deepest healthy emotional responses, one has sex without the help of those essential emotional and psychological tools. Still worse is when impaired emotional and psychological tools twist the power of sex into perversion. There are people who have sex that is tender and vulnerable. There are people who have sadism and masochism. Sex can send a confident person to the stars; it can fling a broken person to the depths.

Sex is not only an emergent from our emotional essence. Sex re-creates our emotional essence. Sex not only utilizes the soul or denies it, it creates the soul or destroys it. In every area, emotional, psychological, biological, spiritual and medical, sex can improve or damage. We are not the same person after sex than we were earlier. Sex is atomic energy. We don't know all that much about it, but it is very powerful. The angels came to Naama the lovely one and became evil. Others had sex and became angels.

We said before that a human being has many levels of consciousness and knowing, from the soul and deepest emotions to the coldest calculating and logic. These are piled together in one person and yet they are different, separate and conflict. The flow of signals and demands coming into the human consciousness leaves no rest. Where is the focus?

Enter beauty. Let us talk about a painting. It has a blue sky and a brown dog. The artist is not telling us about a sky or an animal. The artist is painting a picture. The artist is suggesting a system. In the system the dog and the sky are partners and do not conflict. This is beauty. The painting has many hues. All of these are one picture, and one beauty. We watch, not because the shades of color, the dog and sky are real enough to help us, but because we are captivated by systems, by the unity of disparate things. This is splendor. In Cabala (and cubism), "splendor" is capturing opposite forces and letting their "push-pull" synergy create beauty and Truth.

If the dog and the sky are not the picture, what is? Beauty is a force that connects the finite to the infinite. We feel mystery and transcendence silhouetted just beyond our cognizance and limitations. It beckons us to sense that within the dog and the sky, inside of our finite fingers and limited mind, are lodes of transcendence, sparks of infinity. Beauty is this peek into the beyond. It raises us and all of our parts; it unifies them in hope and healing.

Modern art and culture are busy, for the past centuries, in not old fashioned beautiful art, but in abolition, surrealism, and dada, which means ridiculous poems without meaning. For this Jacques Barzun considers our age one of decadence. There is much to discuss about this, but for now, in the confines of our topic, we note that beauty is not available to everyone. The modern painter must find beauty by painting a mustache on the Mona Lisa, and by destroying, by revolting, by anti-synergy and anti-art. It is no accident that this age is also a time of the breakdown of sexuality in marriage. Up to eighty percent of women cannot enjoy intimacy. This again is a challenging topic and it is not for us to here digress upon it. We note however a connection. An age where beauty is dead is an age where sex is dead. An age where music is talking, shrieking, playing notes that jar the senses, is an age where people suffer during intimacy.

Naama, "lovely," is the epitome of beauty. Only one organized to know beauty can see Naama's beauty. The person whose inner system is chaotic, who has not surety of human and natural unity, cannot know beauty.

Sexuality is about "and they will be one flesh." It ends that way only if it begins that way. A person whose quiddity is clear and wholesome will see beauty. A person who seeks the elements of the whole by destroying cannot see the forest and even the tree is ugly when splintered and broken. Lovely means a forest where the trees and the birds are all part of a body. Ugliness is when we cannot behold the forest without atomizing every part of the whole until it is meaningless and lacks light. An age where reductionisn reduces the whole to invisible and strange parts is an age where the whole of the person is reduced to flickering shadows of doubt and fear.

The eyes of a person who is confident in his totality and inherent cohesiveness see the positive in the other. The eyes of a person who is confident that truth is reduction must reduce the obvious until it disappears; there cannot be beauty in the reduction.

Someone can see a lovely woman and reduce her to various organs. Another can see a woman silhouetted against the infinite mysteries of Pure Unity. To the first fellow the female is a thing; the second person accepts that he doesn't know what the female truly is because of her transcendence and loveliness. This is a physical beauty radiating with something else. True loveliness is more than what we behold. Reductionism is the search to negate what we behold, to make it smaller and ultimately disappear and reappear as something even smaller and less significant.

Let's talk about NAAMA in a deeper vein. If it is too subtle for your tastes, just skip down the page. In Hebrew, letters are also numbers. The Hebrew spelling of the name NAAMA, the "lovely" woman, is numerically the same value as for the Hebrew words for "shadow" and "man." The word "TSEL" or "shadow" figures prominently in the Creation narrative. We develop this elsewhere. Regarding NAAMA, we find the numerical value is "shadow-man." What does "lovely" have to do with "shadow-man"?

A simply idea to explain "shadow-man" for a lovely woman is that female beauty is buttressed by modesty. The Medieval commentator Meiri writes that a woman is loved when she maintains her dignity and modesty. An English poet made a similar point that the longer a woman's dress the greater ardor in the heart of her man. Naama means "lovely" and its numerical value is that of "shadow-man." Beauty is revealed by "shadow," when we conceal it. When "man" trumpets itself, man is deformed and despised. When "man" or woman proceed with grace, dignity and modesty, the "shadow" reveals "loveliness." We may never know who we are, who our mates are, or what anything is. We can, however, invoke the "shadow" and the concealed light, and adjust to it. We grow in sensitivity through life until we feel the pulsating infinite suffused in sexuality and human relationships. Thus, the "shadow" reveals and creates the "'man" in proportion to our relationship to mystery and "shadow" transcendence.

In the good old days, a woman was paid for sex. Today it is free, and with the pill, means nothing to the man. A woman is a free toy.

A young woman attracted a very virile and dashing man. She moved in with him and they lived the life of those in their biological prime. One day, she saw some Orthodox Jews on a date. She compared them with her life. She decided to leave her partner. He told her, "If you leave, I will kill you." She knew that he meant it, but she was not going to live like that anymore. She fled from him and became Orthodox, even Hassidic. Thousands of secular women are flocking to Orthodoxy not because they want G-d necessarily, but because they want to be women. Perhaps you need G-d to find a sexual attitude that is respectful. If life is evolution and survival of the fittest, a woman is in big trouble.

A shadow is the negation of something, darkness rather than revelation. A shadow adumbrates a reality but does not reveal it clearly. Why does "shadow" then represent Naama as beauty and loveliness? We have explained that beauty is revealed through modesty. Now we will go deeper.

NAAMA is both a finite and infinite force. Through her, a man resolves his finite forces and connects to the infinite. She is thus, the "shadow" of "man," in that man must seek, from the finite light, the mystery of darkness, beyond ken. This unseen infinity is "shadow." Beauty and loveliness are the transcendent energies that connect man trapped in entropy to the renewal and challenge of the infinite mystery. NAAMA, or loveliness, is thus the connecting force. When we gaze upon beauty we sense this higher energy, and it frees us and encourages us.

Albert Einstein said: "The most beautiful emotion we can experience is the mystical. It is the power of all true art and science... To know that what is impenetrable to us really exists, manifesting itself as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty, which our dull faculties can comprehend only in their most primitive forms-this knowledge, this feeling, is at the center of true religiousness..." This is a very tricky statement. It says that we "experience" the "mystical." It claims that something "impenetrable" "really exists." It describes this impenetrable mystery as "the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty." It avers, "Our dull faculties can comprehend [this wisdom and beauty] only in their most primitive forms."

Einstein was talking about our "beauty" as "shadow." Beauty must unite with transcendence. When we see wisdom and beauty something clicks within us, and struggles to see further. This struggle is the true wisdom and beauty of life. We are wise and we sense beauty not only in the revealed images and ideas, but in the veil and halo of transparency that they conjure. Our mind must invoke our soul. The soul, however, cannot be seen clearly. Therefore, wisdom and beauty draw us to their hidden source, or "shadow."

NAAMA, or "loveliness," is the numerical value of two words, "shadow" and "man." Man is a term that includes male and female ("male and female He created them and called their name Adam"). When male and female reach their zenith of actualization, they have achieved "wisdom and beauty." They must next find the hidden spiritual and supernal source of their relationship. Each step in marriage and intimacy reveals another depth to the "shadow" of the soul. It tugs at wisdom and beauty, the knowledge of others and us, which is humanity.

We have perhaps entered an arcane area, but we must go further. Our topic is crucial for understanding wisdom, beauty and humanity, but also to comprehend our present era and the sexual problems it spawns. Sexuality is the expression of the person, and the person is the sum of his beliefs. The problems of modern sexuality and gender are rooted in our world outlook, our Weltanschauung. For us to have a full sexual experience, we must fulfill our humanity and our view of life. What does Judaism say about this? What is the failure of the West in this regard?

There is a great difference between Judaism and other idealisms and religions. Judaism does not allow a mortal to declare religion. "No prophet may innovate." A prophet can adjure and encourage, but not declare law and certainly not basic principles about the deity. Judaism therefore is free of the mortal battles defining the deity and other sensitive issues that divided the West. Many if not all nations of the world rejected Sinai as G-d's charge to Israel. Once bereft of G-d's revealed Law, the nations of the world had to invent not only a Law but also a deity to go along with it, because they had no tradition. This led to the mighty wars that consumed the West once it renounced paganism. What wars they were! There was the Hundred Years War and the Thirty Years War. At the end of the Thirty Years War, according to historian Jacques Barzun, the exhausted religious camps in the West introduced secularism and constrained religion. From that time to the present, the West has survived, or at least attempted to, by imposing a secular boundary between religious camps. In other words, in the West, religion is dangerous, and secularism is a savior. In time, secularism because idealism similar to religion, and began lopping off heads for secular purposes. The past centuries saw the French Revolution, Communist slaughters, and the Nazi regime.

The West failed in its effort to curb religion and idealism. Furthermore, religion and idealism represent terror. This led in the West to a fear of the positive, of Truth, of searching, because it always ended up with mass murder. America was built with the ideal of making money and putting idealism and religion safely aside. The negative of fearing religion and idealism explains the decline of nineteenth century art into abolitionism, surrealism and dada, all aimed at uprooting normalcy. Normalcy means Truth, and Truth is dangerous. We therefore escape the danger by living in an anti-truth, and we paint mustaches on the Mona Lisa and write nonsensical poems, prized for their nonsense. Sense is scary, so nonsense is in. What does this have to do with sexuality?

Sexuality is "and Adam knew his wife." Sexuality is Truth; it is the clearest knowledge. It is knowing yourself and the supernal source of mystery. Sexuality cannot function in a world of dada. Sexuality must liberate the inner spirit and find a finite home for infinite energies. Sexuality cannot survive nonsense, negativity and fear of Truth.

The modern age knows that religion and idealism are fearsome, and that Truth is dangerous. Western man fears Truth and does not dare know himself. He functions, he gets along, he makes rules for the betterment of human mechanical function, but the mystery and the soul are not there. When it comes to sexuality, the negatives obfuscate and deny fulfillment. The modern age painted mustaches on the Mona Lisa and drew clouds upon contentment. It confused people, and denied them the Truth of Intimacy. Up to eighty percent of women in some studies told of their anguish at sex with men. The man does not have his essence together, and therefore cannot be "kindness." The female does not have her essence together, and therefore cannot be "strength" and "justice." Each confused person seeks something from the other, and from intimacy. They don't realize that intimacy is not a therapy for confused people. Sexuality multiplies their original confusion. Modern sexology therefore pursues other areas. A major professor said, "Spirituality is autoeroticism." Let us repeat that. "Spirituality is auto-eroticism." Spirituality is being alone, masturbating, and finding... How sad. How inevitable.

Naama, or "loveliness" is the human being knowing Truth, and Truth begets Truth. We meet another person who has Truth, who knows what Life is, who has no fear of religion and idealism, and is confident in their worldview. Two such people can find themselves focused in intimacy, and sexuality ratchets up the Truths originally known. This is "loveliness." Those without religion and focused idealism come to intimacy searching and fumbling; it has no worldview to explain it, and so people utilize the entertainment culture with its grotesque caricature of sexuality as "sex." Without transcendence, where do people go in their unions?

Sex, Evil and the Flood

There is an evil potential to sexuality, and nobody is safe from it. Some say that Cain murdered Abel because they fought over a woman. That nice sweet man over there may be a child molester. Beware of sexual enticement. That is what the bible, especially in Proverbs, teaches.

The story of the Flood of Noah is about a world of immoral sex. Even the animals, sensing the evil vapors from human conduct, became ruined. The Flood was the response to this. How did this happen? The Flood story in the bible is in Genesis chapter six. Chapter five begins with some hints about the decline of the human race that led eventually to the Flood.

(Genesis 5,1) "This is the book of the generations of Adam (humankind). On the day that G-d created Adam, He made him in the likeness of G-d."

The bible begins about "the generations of humankind." It immediately interrupts "G-d created Adam." We know already that G-d created Adam; is the subject of numerous previous passages. Why did the bible repeat this fact? Why did it interject this in the story of Adam and Eve and their posterity?

The key to procreation is intimacy, and the key to intimacy is to know what a person is. From that we can be "male and female." Without knowing what a human is, without a direct connection to the supernal sources of the spirit, we cannot be human. We become dada and abolitionists. We rebel and take drugs. There is no positive way for us.

Therefore, when describing the progeny of Adam and Eve, the first step is to elevate Adam. The bible therefore says that Adam was created in the likeness of G-d. G-d has no physical form; however, emulating G-d elevates a human being. As the Talmud says, "Just as G-d is kind, so must you be kind." We create light from darkness, just as G-d did. We fight evil and promote benevolence because G-d wants this and has assigned such a task to us. We are therefore in "the likeness of G-d." When we begin procreation, we do so as one, not mired in dada or "sex" in the secular sense, heaven forefend, but as one "in the likeness of G-d."

The next passage says, "Male and female He created them, and He blessed them and He called their name Adam, on the day they were created." Adam could not deal with Eve until he realized that he was "in the likeness of G-d." The two of them became one, "Adam," and shared the Truth and self-confidence of G-d's grace and "likeness." Only then, could Adam and Eve begin procreation, and hope to preserve in their progeny the wholesome confidence of "Adam."

For ten generations things held, until the time of Noah, when powerful men stole women and began sexual improprieties. G-d then brought the flood. What happened?

(Genesis 6,1) "And it was when the man began to multiply upon the face of the earth, and daughters were born to them."

Decline began when "man began to multiply upon the face of the earth." What does multiplying have to do with decline? Why mention man was "upon the face of the earth"? Did he perhaps multiply upon the face of the moon or sun? This is of course redundant, and redundant passages are keys to deep ideas.

There were two major failings of the human race after the Expulsion from the Garden. One, three generations after Creation, the generation of Enosh despaired of a close relationship with G-d, and turned to intermediaries and paganism. This was an intellectual failing, but people still maintained themselves as human beings. There was then no biblical discussion of floods or destruction. (The rabbis, however, mention a small flood.) Now, in the tenth generation after Creation, the passage tells of something else, not a mere intellectual deterioration, but a sexual one. Once people become involved with sexual sins and the world was mired in it, G-d declared for the Flood. Rabbi Isaac Luria says that paganism, even as it denies G-d, does not corrupt the inner essence of the person. It is an intellectual sin, and the intellect is only on the surface. Sexual dissolution, on the other hand, is utterly ruinous to the human being.

How did the sexual decline set in?

First, men began to multiply upon the face of the earth. Originally, people felt important because they all knew each other. There were only a few people. People who feel important marry properly and exalt in the proper procedures of procreation. They have no need for illicit sex. As people multiply, there is a decline in their self-confidence. Not only are there many people, but also they "multiply upon the face of the ADOMO (ground)." Note that the word ADOMO is used for "world." ADOMO means "earth" or "soil." It is a term signifying the base element of humankind. It indicates that people multiplied not as heavenly creatures in the likeness of G-d, but as people of the soil and earth, rooted to it, and not feeling the spiritual superiority innate in their ancestors and Creation. People began to feel inhuman, without self-confidence. Male "kindness" requires the self-confidence of one ready to "give." A broken man cannot give; he can only take. As people multiplied and became less important, as they gravitated downward from the "likeness of G-d" to "the soil," people were unable to have proper intimacy. Men now became "takers" and did not "give" to women but "took" them. A person who feels inferior to others finds strength by conquering others.

"And daughters were born to them." Note the passive tense. Daughters "were born" to them. It does not say, "They gave birth to daughters." Daughters "were born" without the father feeling important before or afterwards. The father felt low, and his daughter was born without male "giving" and appreciation. She became a thing, similar to the secular woman who is taken and spit out.

Now began the desperate need to feel strong. People were locked into a life of "soil" and lowliness. They wanted to find power and freedom. They wanted to soar and not crawl. They did not feel in the "likeness of G-d," so instead, they became rapists. They did not come to "know" women; they came to rape them. The secularists, when talking of intimacy, use words that indicate that the act is an obscenity. This is not cuteness or secular cleverness. This is an accurate description of what secular man thinks of secular woman. She is a thing, and sex is the realization of lowliness, the opposite of the biblical procreation in "the image of G-d."

After the Second World War, a Japanese soldier explained how he felt when he first murdered an innocent civilian. He said that he felt a surge of strength. Those who feel innately weak must make themselves strong by conquering others. The strongest and more vicious the conquest, the stronger the murderer feels.

"And the sons of the powerful ones saw the daughters of the Adam, that they were good, and they took for themselves women from all that they chose."

What was so good about women? It doesn't say that they were lovely or delightful, only "good." Good for what? This is one problem. The biggest problem, however, is to translate the phrase that we render "the sons of the powerful ones." In the Hebrew, the word for powerful (ELOKIM) can be holy or secular. It can refer to G-d, Naming Him as Powerful, or it can refer to a judge or any powerful person. Targum Unkelus and Rashi render it in the secular so we translate it "sons of the powerful ones." The Ibn Ezra, however, translates it in the Holy sense, referring to holiness. The "sons of G-dliness" were pious and devoted to holiness. They were able to discern with their wisdom who was the proper mate, and because of this, they produced great offspring. Ibn Ezra adds that they probably took these women by force. This is incredible. He says that they were pious people, and then he says that they took the women by force.

The pious people who are "sons of G-dliness" were able to discern with their wisdom or heavenly calculations what woman was appropriate for them, what women was the highest spiritually, what woman had the highest soul and who was the most appropriate match. They saw the "goodness" in women. The only problem was that they did not court the woman and convince her to marry. They took her by force. They took her because they wanted her good and spiritual powers, and they were not particular if she consented. This violation of a women and their spirituality caused G-d to bring the Flood.

The violation of women thus takes place regardless of our respect for them. The same people whose wisdom allowed them to appreciate women nonetheless did not respect women. Lack of respect led ultimately to utter denigration. We find what this means when we study Greek society. In his work, "The Greek Achievement," historian Charles Freeman writes (page 87): "Wives were never able to dine with their husbands in Greek society; the women portrayed at banquets were always hetairai, courtesans." Not only did the Greeks not dine with their wives, they were not ashamed to be pictured with hetairai. A wife was worse. Family was lower than the drinking halls. On page 286, Freeman quotes the scholar Charles Segal summing up the Greek attitude towards women: "She has her place within the sheltered domain of the house, but also has affinities with the wild savage world of beasts outside of the limits of the city wall." The Greek woman marries and (page 288- Sophocles) "When we reach puberty...we are thrust out and sold away...from our parents. Some to go strange men's homes, others to foreigners, some to joyless houses, some to hostile. And all this once the first night has hooked us to our husband we are forced to praise and say all is well." Freeman quotes Euripides' play, "Of all things that are living and can form a judgment we women are the most unfortunate creatures." And, "I would much rather stand three times in the front of battle than bear one child." (Emphasis added)

When we realize that Greek ideas influenced Western thought, we realize something of the challenge of being a Western woman. Of course, elsewhere it is even worse. The Chinese regularly drown a baby if it is a girl, even today. The Moslems just stoned a woman because her relative raped her. Judaism is different than the world in many respects, but the attitude towards women is surely one of the great singularities.

"From all that they chose." It means in the first instance the forced marriage of single women, and it leads to "all they chose," the rape and theft of married women. At this point, the sanctity of society and the holiness of the home collapsed.

Male and Female

"And the sons of ELOKIM (G-d) saw the daughters of the Adam." They were the sons of ELOKIM, the Female force of spirituality. They thus violated their male kindness essence. Instead of marrying with the Ineffable Name and transcendence, they wanted to look over their bride in a finite manner. They wanted to judge her in purely physical and finite terms. They did not thus manifest or invoke their male potential to unite, through marriage, the Ineffable Name and the Name Elokim, the marriage of Names that sustains the world. Instead, they wrought destruction by bringing together two female forces, which cannot survive. They "saw" the woman, the first step, as we explained, towards their decline. Next, they failed further by relating to women as if they were the "sons of G-dliness" and she was merely the "daughter of man." In reality, it was the reverse. She, not he, was the repository of the Schechinah, or Divine Presence. They, however, took for themselves the spirituality role and denigrated women.

A man who is "kind" sees goodness in others. A man who is "female" "takes" and wants the glory for himself. He must always be superior to others. A man who sees a woman as a servant or something to improve his life takes her and does not give. This is the opposite of Torah marriage.

Samson said of a woman that she was "proper in my eyes." This was a sin, because we don't "see" a woman with our eyes. Eventually, the Philistines gouged out the eyes of Samson. We must relate to a woman as soul to soul, although of course we want to satisfy ourselves in other ways. What goes into your eye is not the whole woman. If that is all she is, you have not a woman, but a thing.

I have married off five daughters. The parents, the two of us, do all of the work. When our exhaustive efforts talking to many people about the boy are finally rewarded, and we are onto something, we then ask for a photograph, and so does the other side. If all is well, a meeting is arranged. I meet the boy and others can listen, (in the next room) if they want. There are "cheaters," but so what? If all is well, the boy and girl meet. When the girl first meets the boy, she is sure that there is nothing wrong with him, and that he is compatible in every area. She knows that the parents have worked very hard to check things out. She knows that the parents want this boy for her. The only problem is the chemistry. That sometimes takes a few meetings.

It doesn't begin with the makeup. Those attracted by makeup first float in and out of pseudo-marriages and relationships, until their eyes are blurred and their hearts are awash in tears. We don't "see" a mate with physical eyes alone, although that is surely crucial. There are, however, other important things, and all must click together.

"That they were good." The sons of Elokim saw that the women were good. That is, they judged them; they visited upon women the exacting of the female force. They looked them over and judged them, and there was no kindness, no vulnerability, and no appreciation of the woman. Yes, she was good; but she was a good thing. Perhaps she was even good spiritually, but she was judged and not offered the higher kindness that she required to thrive.

"And they took for themselves women." "Taking" is feminine. Now the men became "women." They took "for themselves," not for her. The male must be "kindness" and "self-abnegation." The female "takes" these lights, actualizes them "for herself", and actualizes both of them. However, now the evil men of the generation of Noah "took" women "for themselves," the opposite of kindness. Without kindness, the world could not exist. Just as later Sodom was destroyed because it eschewed kindness, so now the Flood would consume the world because of this rejection of benevolence and the enthroning of the "taking" traits in men.

Marriage is not a picnic, although some people achieve bliss. Rabbi Shlomo Zalman Aurebach of Jerusalem, the leading authority of the generation, came to his elderly wife's funeral, and refused to ask her forgiveness, as is customary. People were shocked. Could the rabbi not beg forgiveness from his wife of perhaps sixty years? He explained: "I will not ask forgiveness. I never did anything to displease her." When told this story, a younger saint, Rabbi Aaron Stern of Kaminets Yeshiva responded. "Of course such is possible. If you live properly, this should be the norm." Everyone understood that in his marriage, too, there was never a bad moment!

In reality, however, these are the exceptions. Marriage, even for saints, is sometimes awful. A rabbi once came to his father, a renowned seer, and asked who was a good wife. Who was the woman of whom it is said, "He who found a wife, finds good"? The seer replied, "Your mother." The son then asked, "And who is meant by the passage, 'I find the wife worse than death'?" The seer replied, "Your mother." The Talmud quotes this conversation to show that marriages are not perfect. People have their moods. Sometimes there is bliss, and sometimes the opposite. We come to marriage with the idea that our lives cannot be without it. Only in rare circumstances are there problems that require divorce. Some rabbis are of the opinion that almost any marriage with a good sexual rapport will survive. A senior rabbi in Israel was noted for not divorcing people who came to him for a divorce. He would take the husband for a walk, and there was no more talk of divorce.

"From all that they chose." Once men lost kindness and began "taking," it was a small step to take by force. Without kindness, and with total selfishness, no barrier existed to force and rapine.

"And G-d (the Ineffable Name) said, 'My Spirit will not judge inside Adam forever, in as much as he is flesh." The Ineffable Name is "male." Men had rejected it. Therefore, G-d responded to this rejection and said, "My spirit will not 'judge' inside Adam forever." Since they don't want "male" forces, and have rejected the Ineffable Name, the divine spirit cannot remain in a world without kindness. For the Spirit to remain would mean adapting to the female "taking" mode and destroying the essence of the Ineffable Name, heaven forefend. G-d did not want to change the Ineffable kindness Name to justice, because that would destroy everything. G-d said, "My Spirit will not judge..." It will not become a female force of justice. It will remain kindness. It will therefore not stay forever inside of man, who rejects kindness.

"Inasmuch as he is flesh." How can the Divine Ineffable Name and Spirit (Soul) remain inside of a mortal of flesh? This can only be when the mortal practices kindness. If we practice kindness, G-d practices kindness and remains with us. Otherwise, He leaves. When G-d's Name for Kindness leaves, what remains is the Name of ELOKIM, or "justice." This leads to punishment. There are 120 combinations of the five letters of the divine Name ELOKIM, and they represent the consummation of "justice." Punishment would thus come in 120 years. From this Divine Utterance, 120 years passed before the Flood came and destroyed the world.

6,4: "The fallen ones were in the land in those days and also afterwards when the sons of ELOKIM (G-dliness or powerful people) came to the daughters of the Adam and they gave birth for them. They are the strong ones who from antiquity are men of renown."

There are two people and two times: The fallen ones earlier and the sons of G-dliness later. "Fallen ones," without women, preceded the "sons of G-dliness" who came to women and had children.

"The fallen ones were in the land in those days." Rashi explains, "In the days of Enosh." Enosh was the third generation; he followed Adam and Seth. Maimonides says Enosh and his generation despaired of G-d's favor and invented intermediaries. They "fell" from the lofty position of praying directly to G-d, and turned instead to angels. They "fell" further and felt that they could not even deal with angels, so they worshipped the stars as intermediaries. They "fell" further and felt that even this was too high, and they kept falling until they baked images in the oven and worshipped them. However, these sins were intellectual failings. At this point, there was no problem with women. Only later, around the time of Noah, did men "take" women and destroy the world.

"The fallen ones" who lost their self-confidence "were in the land." "Land" is a key word. "Land" is a "high" word for earth. The fallen ones of the earlier era of Enosh were "in the land" or a higher world. Later on, as people multiplied and became unimportant in their own eyes, it says, (6,1) it says, "and it was when the Adam began to multiply upon the face of the ground." It does not say "land," it says "ground." We mentioned that "ground" indicated that people were low. They "multiplied" so that a person felt lost in the crowd. Self-confidence disappeared, and was replaced by "falling" and the need to conquer others to feel good.

Sexual sins did not begin in the time of Enosh, however, the "falling" of people began then. It was just a question of time before people would sin sexually and even become violent with women. This happened in the time of Noah. However, the story of Noah is really the story of Enosh. Therefore, Enosh and Noah's generation, a span of seven generations, was really one story. When people think lowly of themselves, it is just a question of time before they turn on others, especially women.

If, indeed, the key to the story of the Flood was the story of Enosh, what could Enosh do? How could he realize, together with his generation, that people are not "fallen"? Remember that the passage about the "fallen ones" says that they were in the "land," a high term for the world. It took many generations for people to decline until they were people of the "soil," rather than "land."

The "land" called out to the generation of Enosh. People err and feel inferior and lowly, so they think they are in the "ground." However, they are not. Even as people fall, they are in the "land," and the "land" calls to them to rise back to their earlier state. It is unnatural to be "fallen," and it is natural to feel the power of spirituality emanating from "the land." Thus, people in those days intellectually despaired of being close to G-d, but the land and nature called out to them to realize their importance.

The bible tells us that this voice from heaven, this call to return to G-d's favor and direct praying to Him, does not cease speaking to people. The "land" called out to people when they first fell intellectually, when they were still pure physically, as they had not raped anyone. It called out to them even afterwards, when they had corrupted their human essence by rapine: "And also afterwards when the sons of the powerful came to the daughters of the Adam and they gave birth for them." Never does this voice go silent. It cries out: "You are worthy of being close to G-d. You must not fall, you must rise."

However, what did people do with this tendency encouraged by the inner voice? "They are the powerful ones who were from antiquity the men of renown." They quieted this voice by becoming conquerors, by more rapine and savagery. People, even today, are celebrated not for their closeness to G-d, but for how much power they have over others.

A great rabbi, Reb Shneur Zalman of Liadi, once was riding in a wagon. He suddenly called to the driver, "Beryl, do you need a vodka?" Beryl replied, "Rabbi, how did you know that I was just consumed with a thirst?" The rabbi replied, "Every day a heavenly voice goes forth and arouses people, and I just heard the voice. I was inspired to love G-d, and I knew that you would want a vodka."

The voice of "the land" calls out to us. Nature will not tolerate a fallen person. We have, however, the free choice to respond to the call of "the land" by achieving power over others, and becoming important by drinking, taking drugs and "wiping out the competition" in business. These are the "powerful" people, the slaughterers and murderers whose names are familiar to everyone. Do we know the saints of the past or do we know the generals? How many people did Napoleon and Alexander cause to die? They are the heroes of history.

(6,5) "And G-d saw that the evil of the man was great upon the land, and that all structure of thoughts of his heart was only evil all of the day."

The evil was great "upon the land." Of course, it was upon the land. This is superfluous. However, in the context of our previous discussion, we understand perfectly. As long as man had nothing to remind him of goodness, he was not so wicked and culpable. Only when the "land" cried out to man that he was high and spiritual, worthy of G-d and surely worthy of not being raped, did people hear and become intentional sinners-they thus forfeited their right to mercy.

Life is filled with "land" reminders, impulses within our soul and nature that remind us to love others and ourselves. When we ignore these eternal voices, we are wicked. Our wickedness is "great" because we defy our spiritual nature.

G-d waited to see the result of the battle between the "land" reminders of goodness and the despair of people. Perhaps they would wrestle with their conflicting forces. Perhaps they would spend a few hours a day thinking of rapine and a few hours a day thinking about decency. Only when people utterly rejected good thoughts and chose to devote their entire day and lives to evil did G-d reject them.

This is a very important principle in life and especially in marriage. We must not be black and white. We must accept that there are gradations. Even when we decide that somebody must be bad, even when our fury with our spouse or fellow is grounded in solid evidence, we must try to pause and think a good thought. Can we squeeze one in?

There was the rabbi who heard a Jew, in a bad mood, blaspheme. The rabbi said, "You see, when he is in a bad mood he blames it on G-d, and he is angry at G-d. This shows that he really believes in G-d." Another person would say, "Look at that heinous sinner, the blasphemer."

Within our failings are often rays of light. Why do people get angry? They are on occasion upset about something for good reasons. Their response is wrong, but their provocation may have been right. Sometimes we are angry, period, and need to let it out on somebody. We pick our spouse because we trust them not to abuse us in our moment of need, and to accept our anger for our benefit. If the spouse looks at it that way, fine, but if not, there are fights. Ultimately, however, the anger and the abuse were rooted, not in denigration of the other, but in trust. We must separate the two, the anger and its cause, and not throw out the baby with the bath water.

G-d waited to see if at least something good was left. If there was, it could develop. "Even if one of a thousand says something good," we have hope. If not, there is despair.

At one convention for the honor of the Torah, the hall lights were turned out, and one match was lit. Everyone noticed it. "That is what one person against the world can do," said the speaker. "Just one person, one deed, in a darkness, can be seen."

"And all YETSER thoughts of his heart were only evil all day." What does YETSER mean? Our working translation was "structure." There is, however, another idea in the literal translation.

The word YETSER is related to the word YETSIRO or "formation." We take a clay clump and work it. We "form" it into anything we want. This is "formation." It is taking something and making it into something else. Our lives are processes of "formation." We take one thing or many things together and make a cake from them, a marriage, or whatever. The human being lives to "form." His makes his life out of disparate entities, and forms and unites them to serve his inner directives. We hope that even a wicked person, in between evil acts, thinks about decency. Is there a drop of regret or penitence in the heart? The bible blames the people of the time of Noah not just for evil deeds, and not only for their evil thoughts. The entire slant of their lives was towards evil. The formative process was directed to bad things. The YETSER, the formation force, was evil. For this came the Flood.

The formative force was programmed for evil "all day." Our day has many moods and cycles. Some divide the day into one hour of this kind of mental process, and the following half hour of another. We study math during one section of that time and we think creatively during the other section. Within the range of our "day", we can go from one extreme to the other. Not so the people at the time of Noah. They were evil "all day." They were consumed with evil.

This deep decline was powered by sexual sins. Sexual sins have the power to disconnect our soul and plug it into the sewer. There is sometimes nothing left but pedophilia and drugs. Sexuality is perhaps the greatest energy-source. It can raise us to heaven or it can plunge us in the opposite direction. Everything depends on what our self-essence is, our self-esteem and self-acceptance. When we connect with heaven, our sexuality is heavenly. When we fall in our own estimation, we fall away from G-d, and our lives and sexuality turn negative and destructive.

Polarity

Here we discuss the "male" and "female" polarity of sexuality. The challenge of sexuality, according to Mr. Edward Eichal, a noted sexologist, is that people are not comfortable with polarity. A man is a man and a woman is a woman. When the male comes to the female, she is not easily accommodated. Studies show just how high the rates of dissatisfaction with sexuality are, some as high as eighty percent. Therefore, some sexologists despair and tell us to ignore heterosexuality, because opposite genders are incompatible. Homosexuality, on the other hand, produces a culture of unfaithfulness, which is shattering to the faithful. Some therefore refuse sexuality with others, and relieve themselves with "auto-processes."

The issue, however, is not polarity. Opposite genders are compatible, and always have been. The modern secular world refuses the male and female the opportunity to be truly male or female. Especially the female is confused about her role. What is a woman? She has to work, she has to go into the male world, and yet, she is supposed to be a wife and mother. Who is she? Can she be a wife if she is not respected? Can she be a mother when she has no power to control her children? A nurse once told me, with obvious pain, that her marriage would be without children, because today, who knows what they will become, and you can't control them. Can such a woman be happy with life? Often, people reveal their frustrations during sexuality, because there the inner truths will out, and the fake smile for the office and street will not do.

The solution is to realize the intense damage done when we confuse our gender roles. A man must be a man and a woman a woman, just as they are in Orthodox Judaism. In every community where men and women are confused about their gender role, we have serious problems in marriage, family and sexuality. Those who despair and declare that homosexuality is the answer should remember the sad example of Gloria Steinhem. She, a beauty who lived as a prostitute, finally tired of her shame, and called to women to reject men and to become lesbians. Two generations of secular women heeded her cry, and gave up men. Now, at the age of 67, she has married, and her followers are devastated. We can go here and there, or even take drugs, but until a man is a man, and a woman is a woman and they mate, people are not going to find what they need.

The Flood came about because people violated women and eventually lost interest in them. They turned to homosexuality. The frustration of a failed relationship with women does that, as it did for a long time to Gloria Steinhem. Although by nature a natural man wants a natural woman, this is only when a man feels good and is prepared to honor and respect a woman. A man who feels like "taking" cannot find in a woman what he wants, one, because she is not a woman when he "takes" her, and secondly, because without a man to arouse her, the woman is not going to perform properly. Eventually, frustration and recriminations lead to coldness and failure in sex, and the core of the relationship, indeed, the core of the two individuals, is corrupted and gone.

Homosexuality is such a situation. It is the corruption of proper sexuality, and the confusion of gender ideals. Homosexuality is also a violation of the previously discussed Names of G-d system, whereby proper male and female sexuality unleashes great heavenly Male and Female forces. Therefore, the rabbis taught, in the Talmud and Cabala, that homosexuality is not only a sin; it is a loss of direction, a morass, so that "you are lost in it." The word TOEVO means "abomination." However, there is also an Aggadic "play" on the word, turning it for arcane discussion into two words, "you are lost in it." This means that there are intellectual or even sexual sins whereby we remain within the same framework despite our sin. When we sin, however, with homosexuality, we confuse our entire essence, and in this world and the higher dimensions, the male and female polarity system is confused and disintegrate. Dissolution of gender roles produces spiritual dissolution, until we are without a map or compass, floating in the jetsam of a shattered system of supernal lights and humanity.

We now come in the bible to the generation of Noah, the decline of heterosexual sex, rapine, and ultimately, homosexuality and bestiality. There is a great difference between heterosexual and homosexual sex. Heterosexual sex is enjoyed once, twice, five times a week, with a partner or with several partners, but it is rarely "stuffed" as is homosexual sex. A homosexual may have anal intercourse with fifteen people in one night; he often doesn't know any of them. Whatever a homosexual finds in sex, it has nothing to do with sex. When a person has sex without love, without knowing or caring who the partner is, sexuality becomes a mere chemical reflex, like a bath or massage. People are unimportant. This, however, is a mistake.

When a person has heterosexual sex with a loving and permanent partner, a wife, the act satisfies and fulfills. It releases all of the energies and emotional toxins it was supposed to release. If, however, the act makes the person feel lowly, if the act encourages and maximizes negative thoughts and impulses, the sexuality creates more toxins. Just as the alcoholic must drink, but afterwards rues it, so those with compulsive addictions, especially in sex, finish their day raging with loneliness and self-debasement. Each attempt to satisfy simply digs the pit deeper, and it never is filled up.

One who has sex to still anxiety is desperate for something he cannot find. He must sooth his pain with the opiates of sex, drugs or eating. He has sex with a partner and does not end the anxiety, and soothes it only temporarily. In a few minutes he is off and running to find someone else. Fifteen in a night is common. There are bathhouses where people come and have homosexual intercourse with dozens of total strangers. The anxieties that produce such drives are toxic and they maximize toxic forces; they take a fallen soul and push it lower into the sewer. Artificial highs often lead to lows worse than the original anxiety. Perverse sexuality to relieve anxiety produces even worse anxiety, until the person is running around the block, finding everybody in sight, spraying into his infected anus cans and cans of lubricant, but he has none for his heart and soul. Every failure at relief simply fuels the fire of anxiety higher, and drives the person to still lower and lower perversities and denigration, which produces more anxiety, which produces more perverse sexuality, etc., in an endless cycle.

Can a human being sleep with a beast? Can a human being stop feeling human? Of course. What can be done about it is another subject and does not belong here. It invokes many a deep discussion of religion, psychology and biology. We don't say, however, that a human being that becomes fallen is not worthy of redemption, or that we can wag a finger. As one lesbian said, "I hope my children don't become gay." Being gay is a painful life. Those who have it may come out of the closet and demand respect, but they are not filled with joy at being gay. What they do and what we do to help them find a life is another topic. It is too important to be squeezed between two passages of our exegesis and gender discussion. "There will still be a set time for this to be seen."

Let us continue the story of Noah and the Flood. We now come to a twist on the subject of polarity.

Polarity of Good and Evil Forces

The polarity of male and female is simply part of the polar system that fills the universe, such as positive and negative electrical charges, and polarity in the atomic structure in quarks and electrons. We will now study the polarity of good and evil, as it applies to the human mind and spirituality.

(6,6) "And G-d regretted that He made the Adam [humankind] in the land, and He was saddened to His heart." Of course, G-d is not mortal and does not regret what He did. How then can the passage say, "G-d regretted that He made the Adam in the land"? There is much "spilled ink" over this question. Our discussion, however, has already discovered the pattern that will answer this question. How can G-d regret what He made? Note, it does not say that G-d regretted making Adam. It says, "And G-d regretted that He made the Adam [humankind] in the land." Why does it say, "in the land"? Of course, Adam was in the land. Was he in the sky?

We mentioned before that Adam is sometimes described as being "upon the ground," and sometimes as being "in the land." We said that "ground" is a low level, whereas "land" is a high level. We also said that "land" is the spiritual energies in nature; they pulsate and suffuse one's environment so when man falls, something tugs him back up. G-d did not regret making Adam. He regretted making Adam "in the land." His regret was that the land was calling to Adam and arousing him to return from his falling and failing. When Adam refused this call, he became obstinate and increasingly wicked. The "land" placed by G-d as a spiritual help to Adam now turned against Adam and made him evil. This G-d regretted. Realizing that to keep people going like this allowed the higher forces and energies of "land" to be corrupted and feed the evil force, G-d stopped the vicious decline with the Flood. It is one thing to be evil and use evil forces. Still worse, is to be evil and use good forces. Evil, to triumph, must co-opt good forces. The worst slaughters are for religious and idealistic reasons.

In marriage, this is an important idea. Often, the good force, our idealism, is a threat, not help. There are women who love their husbands so much that they push them to try impossible ambitions, and the husbands fail and are broken. There are husbands who love their children so much that they torture them to improve them. The pain we bring to our spouses and children is far worse than the pain we bring to our worse enemies.

Recall the teaching of Rabbi Yisroel Salanter, the nineteenth century saint and scholar. He taught that there are in each of us good and evil forces, and that they are always in balance, somehow. There is, says Rabbi Salanter, an internal and external dimension in each of us. One is good and one is bad, but never are both either good or bad. If the internal is good, the external is evil. If the internal is evil, the external is good.

Thus, righteous people, whose external is pure good, have a pure evil internal. When they open the door slightly to evil and thus release the internal, the repressed pure evil rushes out and does incredible evil. On the other hand, the wicked have evil externals but good internals. When the evil person opens the door slightly to goodness, and thus releases the internal, the repressed pure good rushes out and does incredible good. There is always a balance. One or the other of the internal and external in us is good, and the other evil.

During the Second World War, rabbis struggling to save people from Hitler often found salvation among the worst people, even while "good" people refused to help. A ferocious Communist, bent on tormenting rabbis, relented and saved them. A gangster with blood on his hands saved a group of Jews and refused payment.

When people lose control and obey their compulsions, they violate their freedom and self-respect, a great evil. This takes place in the external, where the deeds are done. Inside, however, in the internal, there is a balance of good. With each new depraved act, the internal goodness strengthens. This is one of the reasons that the compulsive-addicted person has such a hideous cycle of pain, relief and worse pain. Once he relieves himself with one act of evil, good forces flow into the internal and challenge him to do good. However, the external, where deeds are, is evil. The evil external senses this challenge from the good internal, and a great tension is set up. This produces anxiety, and the person solves it either by seeking solutions to satisfy his good part, or by plunging further into the opiates of pleasure seeking for temporary relief. If he commits evil, good energy flows into his internal, challenges the external, which makes him anxious. He then takes more opiates of pleasure etc., and so goes the cycle. If only the person can somehow attach himself to the steadily increasing good energies in his internal, he may save himself. It is no easy task, and the secular wisdom is that only a powerful spiritual experience can raise the person to utilize it. This is the process of the Twelve Steps program for addictions.

Once the person invokes his spirituality, however, he has a mighty army of internalized goodness awaiting marching orders. He has to break the barrier and let that good force flow in. Many people, alcoholics, homosexuals, drug addicts, etc., have succeeded in changing.

Keep in mind that we are never far from our opposite essence, for good or evil. This makes us cautious, and it gives us hope.

Let us digress a bit to study one aspect of the terror of idealism in the service of evil. Jewish persecution by the nations is mentioned in the bible. It began with Isaac, strengthened with Jacob, and the next generation, Joseph, saw the entire Jewish nation in Egypt. They arrived and were honored, but slowly, the grip of exile tightened, until the Jews were slaves, even thrown into the river to die.

The Jews left Egypt and entered Canaan, and had various wars with surrounding nations. During the entire biblical period, we find only nationalistic wars. We never find that a gentile nation came to convert the Jews, to deny them freedom of religion, or to blaspheme G-d. Only Goliath blasphemed, and he did so only out of military challenge, to provoke some Jew to fight him. The Philistines fought with the Jews and were cruel at times, but they never interfered with Judaism and never forced anyone to convert to their religion. Thus, true anti-Semitism does not exist in the entire biblical period. The bible ends with Babylonia and Persia, two mighty empires who had religions but did not force the Jews to accept them. Babylonia raised up the Jewish rabbis to the highest positions, as did Persia. Persia even paid for part of the rebuilding of the Temple, and the Persian king honored the Jews and their temple. Only occasionally do we find that some king who was good to Jews in general made a nationalistic fervor out of religion, and the Jews suffered. This, however, was only indirectly aimed at Jews, and had nothing to do with anti-Semitism, at least from the king's part, even if jealous or hating courtiers manipulated the king. Even this latter kind of persecution is found only in the very end of the Biblical period, with Babylonia and Persia.

The post-biblical period began with the Greeks. The Greeks were "higher" people than the Babylonians and Persians. The Greeks were aflame with the science of Aristotle and the philosophy of Plato. They began to force Jews away from their religion. Thus, anti-Judaism arrived with the Greeks, not before. We see that the higher nation makes more trouble for the Jews than the primitive un-idealistic ones.

After the Greeks came pagan Romans; they were influenced by Greece but not so philosophical and "high." The Romans made trouble for the Jews, but it was mostly about empire, not about religion. Until the time of Constantine and his embrace of Christianity, the Jews had excellent relations with many Roman emperors, and leading rabbis were senior courtiers, close friends of the royal family. The mother of the emperor would personally greet one of the rabbis when he came to Rome, calling to him with the most effusive praise. (The Talmud makes it clear that the Roman destruction of the Temple was not aimed at Judaism, but was a nationalistic and empire problem.)

All of this changed with Roman Christianity. Christianity made it clear from the beginning that it would tolerate no other religion but itself. This was why Rome first persecuted Christians. When Constantine converted, one of the first happenings was an attack on a Roman synagogue. The emperor was upset, but a Bishop told him that it was his Christian duty to persecute the Jews. The Church kidnapped Jewish children, burnt Jews at the stake, forced entire communities to convert, and put Jews into the synagogue and burnt them alive. The church invented calumny upon calumny about Jews, that they drank Christian blood, that they had horns, and since the church had a monopoly on religion and learning, people believed it. The life of a Jew was misery. This was the work of the Church.

We see a pattern. The primitive pagan does not hate Jews per se and does not offend their religion. The Greek despises Judaism and the Christian hates Jews and fights Judaism. The higher person falls lower. The idealist is the worst offender. When the Communists took over Russia, they "purified the revolution" by simply slaughtering many of those who made the revolution in the first place. Need we say that they slaughtered everyone else as well? Stalin starved to death tens of millions of peasants.

When Stalin did this, the intellectuals of the West were silent, or supportive. Some of them were busy stealing atomic secrets for Stalin from America. They hated America and wanted Soviet Russia to control the world. Thus did idealists show their values. The religious people and the idealists make Jews and others suffer more than do pagans and primitive people. The higher they are, the lower they fall.

Thus, G-d regretted making man "in the land." The "land" indicates a higher person. This higher person, the philosophers and spiritual people, those who sought a deity and religion, became the lowest scum, far lower than the gross pagan. The "land" causes this; therefore, G-d regretted making man "in the land," rather than in a simple and primitive setting. The "land" called out to man, and man responded with utter depravity. Without the call of the "land," man would have been content with minor sin. The "land" caused the true fall.

"And He was saddened to His heart." Does G-d have a heart? Maimonides says that all biblical anthropomorphism, such as references to G-d's hands or heart, are allegorical. G-d has no form. What is the allegory of the heart?

There is a teaching that G-d said, "I did not reveal the Redemption time from My heart to My mouth." The "heart" of G-d is His inner thoughts. The "mouth" is the revealed thoughts. Sometimes, we think one thing to ourselves, and don't want to tell it to others, because it is too private. G-d's heart is the inner will of G-d, one that is so close to His Truth that He does not reveal it to others. What is the idea in our context, that G-d was sad to His heart?

Furthermore, it says, "and He was saddened to His heart." It does not say, "He was sad in His heart." "To his heart" means that the pain reached only "to his heart" but not inside of it. It appeared, as far as people are concerned, that G-d regretted, but of course, G-d's Essence does not truly regret. Thus, the regret did not reach "into" the heart, only "to" it, or approaching it.

(6,7) "And G-d said, 'I will erase the Adam that I created from the face of the earth (ground), from man to animal unto creeping things and including the fowl of the heaven, because I regret that I made them."

From the face of the "ground" is not the "land." G-d created man from the "face of the ground," without the "land" inspiration as mentioned earlier. In this "ground" level, man's body was similar to the beasts and fowl; however, it boasted a soul. Once man ignores the soul, the world has no meaning. Man will plunge to the depths, as he did, and infect the very ground, and the very animals and fowl. Even they, say the rabbis, sinned by mating with other species. Man polluted the world utterly. It had to be destroyed.

The problem with this passage is that it is not true. G-d did not erase man. Noah and his family remained. G-d is saying, in response to the "land" thought we discussed in the previous passage, that He would erase the "ground" people who are like animals, and ignore their soul. He will not erase Noah who is a "land" and inspired spiritual person.

Therefore, the next passage is: "And Noah found favor in the eyes of G-d."

Sexual Sins and Robbery

We will skip a few passages in the beginning of the story of Noah, and begin again in 6,11: "And the land became dissolute before G-d, and the land was filled with robbery." Rashi in his commentary tell us that "dissolute" refers to sexual sins. "Robbery" means that.

Why does it say that the land became dissolute "before G-d"? Just say that the land became dissolute. Was the dissolution "before G-d"? It was sexual sins done privately or even publicly but not "before G-d," as if it could be.

Sexual sins don't necessarily affect other people, only one's spirituality and relationship to G-d. Therefore, when talking of sexual sins, it says, "before G-d." Robbery, on the other hand, affects people. One does not rob in public because people will be outraged. In the time of Noah, however, robbery was commonplace, so nobody was embarrassed to steal. "And the land was filled with robbery." It does not mention G-d regarding robbery, because it wants to show that people had no fear of G-d when they sinned sexually, and had no fear of people when they sinned with stealing.

The Medrash says that people robbed in those days with trickery, not knives. For instance, a person would put out a pot of beans to sell. Each person would steal one bean, until the pot was empty. The owner of the pot could not get the courts to arrest a person for stealing one bean, and so, the civic code itself contributed to thievery, even though the individual thief stole only a small amount.

The cunning in usurping the law is a mighty sin of its own. The Medrash says that G-d saw this cleverness and said, "You want to be shrewd and twist the Law. I will twist nature and bring the Flood."

Rabbi Yehuda the Pious, a major Medieval authority, says that in family and marriage, there are opportunities to "twist the law," and to hurt someone. There is for this twisting an account in heaven. One man refused to marry off his relative, because he wanted her money. He became sick, and before he died, confessed his sin, and said that he was dying because he let his relative suffer so that he could inherit her money. There are people who technically have grounds to break a marriage and let the spouse and children suffer. For such legal excuses one should tremble.

A businessman who was a scholar manipulated his business so that he could win a court case against his partner. The rabbi admonished him. "You have used the Torah for this, and the Torah does not like it." The man immediately confessed.

In both phrases, "the land became dissolute before G-d," and "the land was filled with robbery" the Torah mentions "land." Remember that "land" is the higher level of earth, indicating that from within nature a heavenly voice goes out to call people to self-respect and decency. Now the "land" was corrupt and evil forces captured good energies.

The two phrases differ. Regarding sexual dissolution it says, "the land became dissolute." Regarding stealing it says, "and the land was filled with robbery." There is a difference. Land becoming dissolute means the fiber of the land was corrupted. Land filled with robbery means that the land itself was not corrupted but was filled with robbery, like a sack that holds things inside of it. Inside was robbery but the sack itself was not robbery. What does this mean?

It seems to mean that sexual crimes were far worse than robbery. Sexual crimes ruined the "sack" but robbery did not. Robbery only went "into the sack" without ruining the sack. This, however, is wrong.

In passage 13, Rashi tells us, "The decree against them was only sealed because of robbery." If so, robbery was the worst problem. Indeed, there are those who argue that homosexuality is a biblical "abomination," so we should hate homosexuals. They don't know that the bible considers white-collar crime, violation of trust, not only an abomination, but also four similar terms of extreme censure. In fact, the homosexual has terrible compulsions from the deepest part of his nature to sin. The thief could work honestly, but deliberately sins. This is far worse.

The land, the goodness in nature, was created to reveal goodness. It was a sack filled with love and happiness, obeying G-d and decency. Now that "the land" was corrupted, it became a sack filled with robbery. When G-d saw what the sack was producing, He realized that the land was utterly ruined. Its ruination was at first apparent only by the rot of the sack. Later, things got worse and its ruining was seen by the contents of the sack. When the sack held robbery, and robbery that filled the world, it showed that goodness had been co-opted by evil, and the "land" now served the vilest of all sins, stealing. The rabbis teach, "If there is a box filled with sins, what pops out first to complain and prosecute? Stealing." Sexual sins produced a rotten sack, but the true evil of the sack was when it filled itself with further sin, and robbery.

Rabbi Abraham Danzig, a senior disciple of Rabbi Elijah of Vilna, was one of the great scholars of the eighteenth century; he produced many classic books. Rabbi Danzig refused any rabbinical position and supported himself in business. He asked that on his tombstone only one thing should be said about him, that he, to the best of his knowledge, was honest in monetary dealings. The holy works say that the success of a family depends a lot on the honesty of the money in it.

Is there a connection between sexual sins and robbery? The Talmud teaches that there is a concept of "boundaries of the world." Just as we don't go into our neighbor's field or house, we don't violate the boundaries of nature. Sexual sins violate the boundaries of nature. From there, one violates the conventional boundaries of property. Ultimately, a sexual sinner can lose all boundaries. Thus, homosexuality is considered "he is lost there," as the boundaries have disappeared.

There are those who feel that a society can do just fine with people sinning sexually. This, however, is not true. When one sins sexually, their being in the Image of G-d is corrupted and their good lights become dissolute. They then turn from their private affairs to rob and damage society. First, a person begins with pornography, and then comes what comes, and often, it ends in pedophilia. A few years ago, a terrible child-murderer was executed. Before he died, he spoke to a minister. He said that he was a child of a deeply religious family. He found some magazines with pornography and was taken by them. One thing led to another, until he murdered many children hideously. As his time to die came, a crowd gathered outside the prison, cheering his death. It began as sexual sins and ended in rapine and murder.

There are people who would never take a penny belonging to another. However, they think nothing of "robbing" their family, of not performing their duties as husband or wife. Just as in real robbery, people rationalize that they are not stealing, so in marital stealing people have all types of excuses. "This is not really stealing," and "the other one owes me," or "he/she is bad so why should I be good." The Talmud says that there are understood obligations in marriage. Robbery means more than pulling money from someone else's safe. It means that in marriage and life, there are obligations. If you do not fulfill them, you are a thief.

Another connection between sexuality and honesty is that sexuality can build or destroy us. A positive sexuality makes us into decent people, and then we are honest. A negative sexuality makes us dissolute, and we are inhuman. The world is filled with people who have every type of sexually transmitted disease, including HIV, and they just keep on infecting people. A woman just filed charges against her husband for infecting her with AIDS. He knew he was sick, but married her anyway. His punishment? Five years probation. In America sexual crimes are not important, nor are women.

6,12) "And G-d saw the land and behold it was dissolute, because all flesh corrupted its way upon the land." Rashi explains, "Even domesticated animals, wild beasts, and fowl mated with foreign species."

It would seem that there were three levels. One, people sinned with illicit sex. This led to a breakdown of the "land" or higher elements of life, and people robbed. "The land was filled with robbery." Once robbery entered the picture, even the animals became corrupt sexually. What is the connection between these three levels? Do the levels of illicit sex, robbery and animals' mating foreign species lead one to the other?

Illicit sex crosses every boundary; adultery, disease, and perversity. From there, it is a small step to robbery, because compulsive and illicit sexuality has already broken down all boundaries. Life is about boundaries. When sex breaks it down, we cannot understand the sin of stealing. Thus, sexual sin becomes the "sack" for robbery.

When people engage in evil, the energies of nature are corrupted, until even the animals are affected. A few years ago in California, a study showed that homosexuality in gulls, a species of birds, had increased. This followed the increase in human homosexuality in California.

(6,13) "And G-d said to Noah, 'The end of all flesh has come before Me, because the land is filled with robbery because of them, and I am going to destroy them with the land.'"

"The end of all flesh" means the extreme of evil that cannot be allowed to continue. It "has come before Me." The deeds of people reach into the heavens. Good deeds delight the heavens, and sins pain the heavens.

"Because the land is filled with robbery." Rashi says that the decree was sealed because of robbery. What is meant by "the land is filled with robbery because of them"? Unkelus renders this, "because of them doing evil." We could add, in connection with our discussion, that "the land is filled with robbery because of them" implies that the sexual sins destroyed the fabric of boundaries in life, and from this came robbery. Thus, the robbery is invoked not by a passing desire for someone's money, but by a complete breakdown in the structure of boundaries and standards in society.

When the world dissipates into chaos, the individuals who began this process feel free to indulge. G-d says, "the land is filled with robbery because of them." Each person is connected directly to the chaos by the sins they did. Chaos seems overwhelming, and we can't imagine any individual as the perpetrator of such worldwide catastrophe. However, in heaven, the accountings are exact. Everyone has his hand in the chaos, and everyone will have to account for each deed.

Accountability is crucial for individuals and society. Great and elderly rabbis were seen going about in the street in the very early morning fixing things so people would not fall and hurt themselves, or shoveling snow so that people could walk easily. They did these deeds at a time when nobody would see them, but eventually, the truth was known. This is accountability. If everyone says, "for me the world was created," they pull and push as hard as they can to promote a better world. This is certainly true of family. If we feel accountable for the family, we will put our shoulder to the wheel. Sometimes, there is a strong person who works, and another who does not. Recriminations eventually result. Everyone must do their share.

Another explanation for "the land is filled with robbery because of them," is that every deed carries with it the signature and picture of the sinner. This means that a sin is connected to the sinner. Our energies for good or evil rise to heaven and permeate the world. When they do, they represent us, and we are there for better or worse. G-d said, "The deeds are damaging heaven and earth, and the people who perpetrate these deeds are connected to them and are present in the damage."

The idea that people are connected to their sins is an interesting one. Firstly, it means that people are responsible for their deeds. Secondly, it means that a person is responsible for the deeds and the fallout of the deed. For instance, someone steals a loaf of bread from a desperately poor person who has nothing else to eat. The thief only stole a loaf of bread worth a dollar, but his sin is murder, because the person starves to death. Thus, our minor deeds can become major ones. Similarly, when we give a starving person a loaf of bread, we have only donated a dollar, but we have saved a life. Our deeds connect us to their aftermaths.

Another idea is that people are connected with their deeds. For instance, if a person lights a fire in someone's house, and the house burns down, the lighter of the fire is responsible. He cannot say, "I only lit a small spark." He burned down the house, because the fire he lit has the power to consume much more.

The same is true with people who do things and release energies. The energies are connected to the one who lit them. Furthermore, the energies, as they expand, as they grow, as with fire, consume, destroy, and transfer the new energies of consuming and destroying back to the original perpetrator. The person is now molded and created by his handiwork, by every smoking ember in the house he destroyed. Each spark of evil returns to its originator and becomes part of his essence. The perpetrator is thus a product of his deeds, and reflects their energy exactly. We are the product of our children, and we are the product of our deeds. They mold us, even as we molded them.

Therefore, the rabbis say, "Do not consider that you build your children. Your children build you."

In marriage, family and human relationships, we release energies and deeds that strongly affect the lives of others, for good and bad. What we do comes back to us, informs, molds, and creates us. The cycle of giving to others and then becoming the product and emergent of that giving is the cycle of life.

"And I will destroy them with the land." The land, recall, means the higher energies of nature. When it becomes corrupted, it must be destroyed. People corrupted the good energies of nature and turned it to evil, and so it, along with the people who destroyed it, must be destroyed.

We have one thing left to discuss in this passage, the "end of all flesh." It is too juicy a word to be ignored, and the Cabala deals with it extensively. For our purposes, we will only say that there are good processes and evil ones. A good force grows, sustains and creates life, higher and higher. Evil shrinks our perspectives into selfishness. It seeks to conquer and destroy others so that we control and make others smaller. Thus, ideally, people must grow and become larger and infinite. Infinity has no "end." When people go in the other direction, they become smaller and smaller, until they reach the "end." This negation of the infinite and open-ended process of life means death and destruction. The world that becomes an end must end. Evil thus provides for its end.

The rabbis say that there are forces that are so powerful in their evil that we have no way of opposing it. Such a force was Soviet Communism. In its time, it had almost no opposition among the secular intellectuals, and threatened the globe. The great Rabbi Yisroel Meyer Kagan said that such a force could not be battled to a halt, although he wished that something could be done. However, he said, it will last seventy years and die of its own volition. And so it was. The holy man's prophecy was fulfilled. When the Soviet Union collapsed, the leading expert on the Soviet Union, George Kennan said, "It is a miracle." It is "the end" of an evil force; all evil forces must end. The student of history will note that the end of Hitler was hastened by his own great military mistakes. A person who began with success after success suddenly began making blunder after blunder, such as pouring troops into North Africa in time to be captured and Pauling's surrender in Russia after Hitler refused to allow him to retreat. This is "the end," as the evil force expends its energies and withers. May it wither speedily and in our day.

As we approach the End of Days, the great idealisms that plagued the world will be revealed as evil, and slowly choke. Yet, the End of Days will see a ferocious effort of Evil to remain alive. The candle, before it is extinguished, crackles and makes loud noises. So will evil forces, before they are extinguished, crackle and make great noises, but that is their death process. This is the teaching of Rabbi Elchonon Wasserman, the disciple of Rabbi Yisroel Mayer Kagan.

Noah was a righteous man. G-d saved him in the Ark together with his family, animals, fowl and plants. Noah emerged from the Ark and rebuilt the world. However, there was a sad incident, as told in the bible.

(Genesis 9,20) "And Noah, the man of the earth (ground), began, and he planted a vineyard."

When we study the bible, we see that "man was born to toil," and some translate, "born to sin." Sin is so close to us. If we sin, it isn't so earth shattering. If, however, a Patriarch and senior prophet of the bible fails, it hurts much more. Noah is one of the great biblical heroes. He stood against the entire world. He built an ark over a period of decades, warning people of their doom, and they didn't appreciate hearing this. Noah was fearless and righteous. The bible even says, "Noah was a righteous man, blemish less was he in his generation. Noah walked with G-d." Noah built the Ark, lived in it during the flood, and suffered, and finally, emerged to a new world. The old world was gone. "Noah began and he planted a vineyard." Sadly, Noah failed and became drunk.

Now let us go into the passage and its subtle interpretation. If you don't like deeper and Cabalistic ideas, just skip down. "And Noah began." In Hebrew, "began," is from CHULIN. CHULIN is related to CHOLOL, or "emptiness." A corpse is CHOLOL because it is missing life. Any vessel we want to fill is CHOLOL because it lacks whatever is to be spilled into it. One beginning a task is lacking something; otherwise, why begin it? Noah began a task because he was missing something. "And Noah began VAYOCHOL." This seems innocuous, but actually, it is a serious problem.

There are two traits, male and female: kindness and strength. Kindness "gives" and strength "takes." Male is self-abnegation and female is self-actualization. We must begin with kindness because "the world will be built with kindness." Noah began with "emptiness," the female trait. A woman is NEKAIVO or "hole" because she is the vessel that has to be filled, the self that must be actualized. Noah began life after the Flood in the female mode. He was CHOLOL or empty. He should have been "male" or "filled" with energies to give others. Instead, he "took" and did not "give."

White is male or kindness and red is female or strength. Wine is (usually) red: "Do not look at the redness of wine." Noah was not only in a female mood of CHOLOL or "emptiness," awaiting something to receive, resolve and actualize, he planted red wine, a female essence. This double female energy was a double problem. The proper process is for the male to search and negate himself and find himself and his wife through her. She resolves and reveals. Noah began, in one step, the female process of "red" and "revealing." For this he was punished and "revealed" naked in his drunkenness. Because he invoked female and not kindness-male forces, his son Ham raped him as if he was a female. Others say he was castrated. The point is: he was treated or made into a non-male, or female. This was the result of his dabbling in and invoking female forces without male kindness.

Noah lived in a time when G-d invoked justice and strength to punish the entire world. Noah seems thus justified in invoking a female justice process and denigrating the male. Did G-d not do that? However, Noah's mistake was that people could never function without kindness. We cannot exist as perfect people, because we are not. Therefore, we must invoke kindness, and fear justice.

All of us have, from our parents, teachers and experiences, various ideals and concepts. When we marry, have families and human relationships, we often find that others do not share our visions and goals. Those of us who have visions and goals engraved in marble in our hearts cannot easily let go. We must struggle to find kindness and malleability in order to survive among others. If we invoke "strength" and "taking", we will not be able to sustain relationships.

The rabbis say, "G-d wanted to make a world of rigid justice. He saw that it could not survive, so He joined mercy to justice." G-d, by so doing, showed us how to bend our strong convictions for the sake of peace and family. We must always combine mercy with our strong convictions. Of course, there are times when we cannot cross the line. We must ask advice from holy and wise people when to end a relationship or when to bend in our deepest convictions.

The "female force" of strength and rigid justice is important; without it, we would have no standards. On the other hand, standards can destroy families. Can we bend them? Can we destroy our families? These questions deserve more than a snap decision. We must consult the wise and those who are not personally involved to assist us in making a decision.

A woman once told me that she had it with her husband, because he does such and such. I told her that doing such and such is really a minor sin, if it is one. However, to break up a family with children is surely a terrible sin.

(9,21) "And he (Noah) drank from the wine and he became intoxicated. And he was revealed in the midst of her (literally translation - working translation "his") tent." Noah seems overwhelmed by pain and the destruction of his world. He drinks wine to mellow his travail in the ark. He finds solace in drink and loses his sense of propriety; he goes unclothed in his tent.

"Her tent" was the tend of Noah's wife. She entered the ark and exited with Noah, as is stated in passage 8,16. We mentioned elsewhere that the home is the female dimension, and the Schechina rests in the merit of the woman. A man who comes into this holy abode and becomes drunk and naked profanes the sanctity of the place and brings great evil upon himself.

Sipurno comments that Noah began by planting grapes for wine, which is not admirable, but not so terrible. He got drunk and acted foolishly, and ultimately came to great evil. We thus see that a small thing can bring to a major problem. This is important in practical life. People don't start out being adulterers or fornicators, but if they are exposed to certain environments, they may fail and sin. We hope not to be in the frying pan and escape, but never to enter the frying pan. Jewish law makes it clear that we are to be very careful about getting into the frying pan. We stay out. We are not allowed to be alone with women who are not our wives or very close relatives, such as mother or daughter. We are not allowed to read books that arouse us to lust, nor may we watch television and movies that teach us concupiscence. We don't send our children to schools of mixed boys and girls, and we don't allow our children to dance with the other gender. Those who do allow these things are asking of their children to enter the frying pan and emerge unscathed.

Let us discuss "nakedness" in the context of raising children and keeping ourselves from harm. The passage tells us that Noah became "revealed" in his tent. Obviously, later something worse than nakedness happened, but this was the beginning of the destruction. "Nakedness" is something utterly rejected by Judaism. "Nobody is more objectionable than a nudist." In the Garden of Eden, people were unclothed, and they cohabited openly. Outside the Garden, sex and nakedness became private. The spiritual energies of sexuality and nakedness could be fully revealed in the Garden of Eden without damage, but outside of the Garden, these energies, when revealed publicly, attract evil forces and wrong comes from them. Recall that the snake saw Adam and Eve cohabiting publicly and was aroused to entice Eve and destroy the human race. The evil force is fully active, certainly outside of the Garden. We therefore do not tempt it by public sex and nudity.

The snake or Evil Force is an angel of G-d who just does his job, to test people so that they can have reward. The happiest person in town when you defy the evil inclination is the Satan. The angriest one when you listen to him is the Satan. He wants to be rebuffed to please G-d, not to be accepted to anger G-d. However, the parameters of his job are that when sexual energies are revealed he goes into action, and there is trouble.

Whenever you find mixing of the sexes, you find destruction. In the latest Federal Education Bill, there is a grant for single-sex schools. How can boys and girls, in their biological prime, sit in class for hours and not be distracted? College students are terribly vulnerable; they no longer have the security of childhood and home, and they have yet to find their place as adults. Can they be tossed into the pressure of sex on a campus? College students have one of the highest rates of suicide.

When the New York City police department first integrated women into patrols, almost every man who had a woman partner divorced his wife and left his children. It was not really his fault, although we can think what we want. You cannot sit with some young lovely for several hours a day, go home to your wife and feel the same.

Modesty in Hebrew is TSENEEYUSE. It means to hide something, to conceal. It means to maintain a low profile. Just as there is a command for one to be modest in the street, so there is a sin to be too modest in the home. One who demands too much modesty in the bedroom has violated a cardinal term of marriage; this is grounds for rabbinical divorce. Modesty does not mean that a woman does not have sex. It does not mean that she does not fulfill herself. It means that she does not do so publicly. What is right for the home is not right for the street.

Today there is no modesty in the street, and there is no successful intimacy in the home. A woman who gives away too much is despised, and doesn't she know it. Her anger surfaces in the bedroom, but she gains nothing but frustration.

Modesty is very nice for a girl like my daughters who leave the driving to me. They know, first, that a boy they want appreciates a modest girl. Therefore, they will try to impress others with their modesty. Secondly, they have no fear that they have to catch the fly on the run. They are not running. They are growing up like a normal adolescent and know that daddy and mommy are tearing their hair out and pumping the phone to get more and more information on this or that boy. Therefore, she has no need to create a high profile.

Secular girl, on the other hand, is in a fast food market. A boy will or will not notice her in a flash of a second. She must be naked enough to be noticed. If she is lucky, if you call it that, the boy will notice. One thing he notices is that she is desperate enough to dress in such a way, so she must be easy picking. She is. He despises her, she despises herself, and they make it and break it. Even if the girl does whatever the boy wants, in the fast food market, he will eventually notice someone else. He will eventually tire of this one. A slut is best designed for a one-night stand, for relief, not for long-range relationships. Secular girl, deep down, beneath her nakedness, is a woman. She needs one-night stands like she needs spiders and worms on her table. The frustration mounts. Her biological and social needs require her to consent, but her soul rebels. Ultimately, she either sluts herself completely to avoid the frustration and contention between two opposite forces, or she maintains the tension until it eats away at her heart, or she may, as many have tried, eschew men completely, and perhaps become a lesbian.

The Medieval rabbinic authority Meiri says, "A woman is loved in proportion to her dignity." A man respects a woman who respects herself. He will take other women, spit them out, and relieve himself, but she remains a toilet. She knows it. He knows it. She knows that he knows it. He doesn't care that she knows that he knows it.

(9,21) "And Ham, the father of Canaan, saw the nakedness of his father, and he told it to the two brothers outside." Why mention that Ham was the father of Canaan? Ham was the father of four sons, (passage 10,6) Kush, Egypt, Put and Canaan, so why mention only one of them? Why, indeed, mention any son? Obviously, Canaan was involved somehow in the story. Sipurno explains that Canaan castrated Noah to prevent him from having more children. The more children, the smaller share each one had of the world. Every new child would take a share in the new world, and Canaan did not want this. Ham, it seems, either encouraged his son to do this, or saw him do it and did not protest.

We will not go deeper into the story about Noah and his family problems. We do, however, want to study about the motive of the castration, which was done so as not to increase people. Today, when the world population is six billion people and rapidly increasing, many people want to slow down the growth, and feel that there are too many people. The Talmud says that G-d has a container for souls, and that the world must accommodate all of them. When the container finally empties, Messiah and Redemption will come. Thus, those who deprive the world of souls make things worse.

In Jewish law, seed and children are very holy, and abortion and birth control are only considered in desperate situations.