On Modesty and the Law of Unintended Consequences

One of the earliest messages that is drummed in to Chareidi youth is the need for a strict separation between the sexes. Contact with women and girls, boys are told, will lead to impure and immoral thoughts. Reading novels, watching movies and perusing magazines (only for the articles, naturally) will only lead to dirty desires and a filthy mind.

Therefore, any form of contact with the opposite gender, be it friendship (WARNING: MP3 link may cause brain to explode), casual conversation, or even sharing a seat on a bus, is absolutely prohibited in the mind of Chareidi teachers and their disciples.

I do understand the purpose of this form of indoctrination. The Torah is certainly quite clear about forbidden relationships and the seriousness of violating those prohibitions.

However, I think the Chareidi approach causes more harm than it prevents. I happen to have traveled through many segments of society, ranging from non-Jewish (college and workplace) to Modern Orthodox to Chareidi, and can state with confidence that no group of males is more sex-obsessed and easily aroused than Chareidi youth.

The consequence of sheltering our children to such a degree is that it becomes necessary to issue absurd edicts to help Chareidi youth curb their self-inflicted desires. For example, Rabbi Forcheimer, a mainstream posek and rav in Lakewood, released a CD last year where he admonished the holy kollel women of Lakewood for engaging in the following disgusting practice:

Apparently, kollel wives have been dropping off their husbands in front (gasp!) of the beis medrash building, "thus causing a tremendous Michshol for the bochurim and other Yungerleit." He went on to inform the women that although it they acquire much reward "for bringing the husbands to learn and supporting them, [they] lose it all by causing the bochurim to have bad thoughts , because then these bochurim can't learn all afternoon as a result of this."

Are these teenaged boys and married men the successful products of the Chareidi education system? Are we proud that we have bred a generation of males who will be so affected by the sight of a modestly dressed woman in a car, that they will be unable to concentrate and control their lascivious thoughts for the next several hours? What exactly have we accomplished here?

I would suggest that the Chareidi approach, despite its claims to the contrary, teaches males to view females purely as objects of sexual desire (forbidden objects, of course). The lack of contact (above age 5) merely serves to reinforce this unhealthy impression. The result is the sexually frustrated and utterly out-of-control 23-year-old Chareidi male, who is aroused by the sight of women walking while swinging their arms.

To repeat my above question - what have we accomplished here?

J.D.