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?
