A Hasidic writer is incensed that the popular series Unorthodox depicts ultraorthodox sex as “aberrant… [and solely] devoted to producing babies … [a] procreation … done without any sensitivity, tenderness, or human emotion.” The show even features couples keeping their clothes on while procreating. Nonsense! It’s a “hateful libel… a voyeuristic libel.”
There are problems here. Nowhere does Eli Spitzer tell us the truth about Hasidic humpery… I mean, I gather he’s hinting it’s actually a stripped down hootenany, but, as Gwendolyn points out to Jack, yes, but you don’t say it.
I mean, I wonder what it is in ultraorthodox life, its attitude toward women, modesty, and – whisper the word – sex, that inclines audiences to grant credence to a very very twisted portrayal of men and women in bed, a portrayal characterized by such extreme depths of repression, ignorance, desperation, and shame as to beggar belief? Religious fundamentalists who erase the Chancellor of Germany’s image from their publications because she’s a woman… Who instruct their sons that women are to be erased, made invisible, because they are impure, or, as an ultraorthodox woman explains:
It’s very, very, very, very, very hard for a nonreligious person to understand the purity of eyes… By us, men don’t look at women’s photos, period. As long as you don’t know that, then it sounds ridiculous, or changing history or events. But we’re not here to get the events the way they are. We are here to keep the eyes.
I wonder why people assume the plausibility of sick sex among people who consider looking at images of women – or God forbid – sitting next to one on a plane – to be an act of impurity.
No. UD is sorry, but Eli is going to have to do more than shout libel in The Forward. We of the impure world have every reason to assume that women have as bad a time in bed as they do in most other ultraorthodox venues. Prove us wrong, Eli…. or hey! Maybe consider the possibility that a woman would be a more credible source on this particular subject – since you’re basically attacking as a malicious lie a formerly ultraorthodox woman’s account of her sex life with her husband. Does it seem odd to anyone else that a man considers himself the right person to defend female sexual pleasure? So let’s hear from the girls! C’mon, girls!
************
Or maybe we could hear from the boys? Here’s one:
Aron had tried to leave the Hasidic community, but he struggled to assimilate into the secular world. Many of the yeshivas in Brooklyn teach in Yiddish and provide less than two hours of secular education a day. Aron had a heavy Yiddish accent, a rudimentary grasp of written English, and no diploma. In a video filmed by a friend, Aron complained about his limited education and social skills. He said that he didn’t know how to interact with women—he had been forbidden to mingle with them or look them in the eye—and no one had taught him “what your body is about.” He had struggled to process what was happening when [a sex criminal, Baruch] ]Lebovits, a pious man, put his mouth on Aron’s penis. “My head, like, exploded,” he said. “Call it an epiphany, I guess.”