Of kings and courtiers
By SHMULEY BOTEACH
The Jerusalem Post
Apr 21, 2008
About two months ago, my wife and I visited the Fundamentalist Mormon
community of Colorado City, Arizona, the base of imprisoned leader
Warren Jeffs. I had always wanted to see for myself how this community
lives.
Arriving late in the afternoon, we went to the main supermarket, where
tens of fundamentalist Mormons were out buying food with their
families. They were understandably suspicious of these intruders and
reluctant to engage us in conversation. After a while, the manager of
the store came over to us and asked, with considerable warmth, if we
had found what we were looking for. He politely confessed that the
community was unused to outsiders and hinted that perhaps it was time
for us to continue on our journey.
I told him that I was an Orthodox rabbi, that I had, thank God, eight
kids, and that it was nice to see so many children in a community. I
also told him that I had a long-standing relation****p with the Mormon
Church, and that I had always wanted to visit the Fundamentalist
Mormons as well. He told me that if I was friendly with the official
Mormon Church, then no doubt I had a negative view of their community
- to which I responded that I tended to make judgments based on my own
observations rather than on what I had been told. We spoke a little to
some of the young mothers we met, although I could not say whether any
of these women were younger than the age of consent.
The people were pleasant, albeit suspicious. They lived lives bereft
of any extravagance, and that was about all I could conclude in such a
short visit.
A month later, the Texas authorities entered the Fundamentalist Mormon
conclave in Texas and removed over 400 kids they said were in imminent
danger of abuse and under-age marriage. To the extent that any of this
is true, and some of it seems to be, this is extremely troubling. No
amount of love for children or marriage can ever justify under-age
marriage, statutory rape, or forcing a woman to marry against her
will, all of which is not only illegal but deeply sinful.
BUT EVER since the Texas raid, I have also found myself on the
defensive answering questions from curious friends about Judaism's
approach to polygamy, with many believing that our faith allows the
practice. Nothing could be further from the truth.
The Bible makes it clear that God created Adam and Eve, not Adam, Eve,
Cindy and Bonnie. The ideal of monogamy is thus established at the
very outset of Creation. Similarly Abraham, the first Jew, has one
wife, Sarah, until she pushes him to take another wife since she is
barren. Likewise, Isaac is completely monogamous, and Jacob intends to
be so as well until he is tricked by his own father-in-law into
marrying the wrong woman; which will later necessitate marrying the
right one as well.
The only real biblical examples of men with many wives are the Jewish
kings, like David and Solomon. When it came to kings, who back in
ancient times would usurp whatever women they craved, the Bible sought
to impose upon Jewish rulers a respect for women. This was done by
allowing them to take women beyond their original wives so long as
they married them, which would thereby grant them rights, as opposed
to simply being used and discarded. But this was a concession to a
virile male nature and never an ideal to be upheld. Monogamy was
always the standard to which men were directed.
Later, after biblical times, Rabbeinu Gershom took the monogamous
standard and made it law, enacting an edict binding on all European
Jewry outlawing polygamy forever. And that has been the Jewish norm
for more than 1,000 years.
THERE IS good reason to outlaw polygamy. Marriage is the most romantic
institution because it establishes the inviolate uniqueness of its
participants. A woman is made to feel that she is the one and only to
her husband. A husband's devotion confers upon his wife the blessings
of primacy and exclusivity. But polygamy subverts that pledge,
establi****ng not a woman's uniqueness, but her ordinariness. Her
husband marries her with the express understanding that she alone will
not satisfy him. He requires others. She is inadequate.
Likewise, she is forced now to compete for his affections for the rest
of her life, thereby immersing her in an unnatural competition for the
man who has already pledged himself to her. This competition also
erodes the natural, universal sisterhood of women, engaged as they
are, even after marriage, in rivalry for the affections of the same
man.
In this sense, polygamy leads not to peace and harmony but to
altercation and strife. How can any polygamous marriage be happy when,
by its very nature, it does not bring people together but drives them
apart?
Marriage is the foundation of every civilized society precisely
because of its civilizing influences. Marriage takes a man and a woman
who are strangers to each other, orchestrates them together into
inseparable flesh, and lends children a stable and secure environment
within which to be raised.
Polygamy, in contrast, offers children a model not of security but of
rivalry, not of confidence but of permanent insecurity, as the members
of a single household compete to be favorites. It is a toxic
environment in which men are kings and women are courtiers.
After marrying and sacrificing all for her husband, no woman should
ever have to feel that she is still not good enough. Likewise, in the
Jewish religion no woman can ever be forced to marry a man who is not
her choice. As the Bible makes clear in the story of Rebecca's
court****p with Isaac, her family says that we must "ask the maiden" if
she wishes to follow Eliezer, the matchmaker, and marry Isaac. Only
with her consent can the deed be done.
Every marriage must be based on the exercise of free will to transform
a stranger into our one and only.
http://www.truthandgrace.com/polygamy.htm
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