Profile Rabbi Dovid E. Eidensohn

Saturday, August 25, 2018

Living Alone with Biology and Suspicions


Living Alone and Sinning
By Rabbi Dovid E. Eidensohn
Rambam[1] says, “It is a mitsvah of the rabbis [not the Torah] that a man should not live without a wife, lest he sin with evil thoughts. Nor should a woman live without a man, so that people will not suspect her of sinning with men not her husband.”
The Magid Mishneh there in the Rambam says that his source is a gemora in Yevomose 62b where the gemora accepts the teaching of Rabbi Yehoshua in this matter. The Maharsha in Yevomose 63A go into this subject in depth and quotes sources going back to the beginning of creation that some creations such as proper human beings are designed to thrive in this world, whereas to merit this level one needs a proper marriage, a man with a woman, for the sake of the man and for the sake of the woman. A man without a woman or the opposite can produce a creation that floats here and there and enters the world of not proper creations.
We can understand these deeper thoughts or not, but the plain teaching of the gemora and the Rambam are that a man without a wife and a woman without a husband violate the rabbinical decree of not living with sinful thoughts or people suspecting you of sinning. We can, without delving into Medrashic or Kabbalistic mystery, understand very well that a man without a functioning marriage is a candidate for sinful thoughts and worse, and a woman without a functioning marriage may be suspected as to how she manages to deal with her biology alone. Nothing mystical about that.
The gemora goes further by saying that a man who reaches the age of twenty and is not interested in marriage, of him we say, “his bones have exploded,” whatever that means, but it is not a compliment. Bones hold the body together, and when they “explode,” the human being drifts into the second phase of humanity, we discussed earlier in the Maharsha, and it is not a compliment. Today, huge numbers of people, young and not married, have all kinds of opportunities to marry and refuse it, for whatever reason. Do they sin? Are they suspected of giving in to their biology? What do you think?



[1] Ishuse 15:16


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