The slippery slope

[qatarperegrine]

I was reading The Bookseller of Kabul recently when it suddenly hit me: if Sultan Khan had fled to North America, as he was at one point considering, he would have had to leave his second wife behind.

How weird is that? Expats here in Qatar complain that we have to hide relationships that fall outside of Muslim standards (e.g. same-sex relationships, cohabitation), but if a polygamous Muslim moves to the States he actually has to renounce his legally and religiously sanctioned marriages. We require him to ditch his family. (This applies to refugees as well.)

And, what's more, you can't get a greencard or citizenship if you've practiced polygamy within the past five years. It violates the "good moral character" you must exhibit to qualify.

I sure as heck wouldn't want to be a cowife, and I'm ambivalent about polygamy as a marital option, but I don't really understand how it can be considered so "antithetical to a healthy, stable, traditional family" (to quote my esteemed senator Santorum, in the infamous "man-on-dog" interview) that it must be banished from our borders.

Welcome to the land of the free.....

Comments

[rmitz.livejournal.com]

If you'll recall, we refused to let Utah become a state until they disallowed polygamous marriages legally.

I dunno. I don't like the idea of polygamy because of the bias that the man is the king and the wives are subserviant, but other polyamorous arrangements make more sense to me.

[qatar.livejournal.com]

Yeah, and there's been a Utah judge in the news this very week for being removed from the bench for practicing bigamy. Still, I'd never thought of the immigration issue before.

In Israel

[shmuelisms.livejournal.com]

we don't have civil unions of any form, so all marriage and divorce issues are handled by the respective official religious authorities (Rabbinate, Muslim courts and Christian clergy). It is illegal, TTBOMK, for anyone to create new cases of Polygyny, BUT if someone immigrates here already having multiple wives, then that is perfectly legal. They had to add that caveat due to the polygynous marriages that Yemenite Jews practiced in Yemen, before moving here en-masse (as Jewish religious law, has prohibited polygyny for over a thousand years, the Yemenites being the one group that did not accept this decree).

I have heard that the Rabbinate here will in extremely rare situations, allow a Jew to have a second wife, if through illness or accident, his first wife becomes, mentally incapable of being divorced (which requires competence). Also, this law is very badly enforced, if at all, because for Jews it would be near-impossible to find a Rabbi to perform such a wedding in the first place, and because the police/government doesn't want to make a messy-issue with [mostly Beduin] non-Jews who still practice this (so the country ends up supporting a Beduin sheik with his 13 wives and 70 children).

While you were touring Jordan, I touched upon the topic of perceptions of Polygyny, and actual Jewish practice in ancient times.

Re: In Israel

[qatar.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I read your post about polygyny, including the link to the scary Christian Identity site. I didn't think about it, but that's probably why the polygyny idea was bubbling around in my head.

So how, exactly, did Jewish law prohibit polygyny? And when exactly did this occur? I'd assumed from 1 Timothy 3:2 that it was still permitted in the time of the early church, if not widely practiced. I'm not really sure when Christianity abandoned it.

Polygyny Outlawed, more after a word from our sponsor...

[shmuelisms.livejournal.com]

In the 10th century CE, the leading Jewish authority of European Jewry was Rabbenu Gershom [ben Yehuda] Maor Hagolah - literally "Our Rabbi Gershom, Light of the Diasporah" of Mainz, Germany. He issued many decrees, the two most famous of which were that, on the force of excommunication, a man could not marry a second wife, and that the wife's consent was required for divorce. This ban was immediately binding to all European [aka Ashkenazi] Jews, and over time came to be accepted by almost all Jews, save the Yemenites. Now with the near-destruction of all native Sephardi communities, in the Arab/Muslim countries, and their mass immigration to Israel (or the West), no-one practices polygyny at all, except perhaps amongst the few hundred die-hard Jews that remain in Yemen.

There are many authorities that claim that this ban wasn't innate to Jewish Thought, but in direct response to pressure from Christian Authorities of the time,^[1] who were trying to fight polygyny among the non-Jews.^[2] Indeed, the ban itself says that it is binding "for one thousand years", which have in fact passed.^[3] Those who are against the continued enforcement of this ban, also like to bring a quote, from a later giant in Jewish Thought, Ha'Gaon m'Vilna (literally "The Genius of Vilna", Lithuania). He said something like:

"If I would be successful, in accomplishing two things I would be idle from [learning] Torah and Prayer and go from city to city to eliminate the prohibition of Rabbenu Gershom against taking two wives for with this will bring the Redemption closer, and the second that they should do the Blessing by the Cohanim every day."

As you can probably tell, I'm somewhat conflicted on this issue. There are many good arguments on both sides, and abolishing such a long-standing ban is not a thing to undertake lightly, especially considering that Jews have no universally accepted "central-authority", or even a present Religious Leader of enough stature ^[4] to pull-off something like this, without causing further division and strife (after all, anybody who did not accept the cancellation of the ban, would have to excommunicate anyone who chose to be polygynous). I'm pretty sure that it NOT for me, especially considering my beloved wife's reaction to a truly innocent comment I once made - "[in bewilderment] What could possibly have been their mindset, back then, that they managed to live with multiple wives?". She didn't speak with me for three days...

In any case, even where the Religious Authorities to lift the Halachic ban, there would still remain the major hurdle of changing the secular Israeli Law. There is absolutely no way that the Supreme-Court would allow a [sexist] law that allowed polygyny but not polyandry, and rightly so from a their POV. As polyandry is RATHER prohibited, I highly doubt that ANY Religious Authority would be foolish enough to even consider removing the ban, if only to avoid this Pandora's Box. So this will have to wait at least until we are a Jewish Theocracy...

Which would be grounds to renounce the ban today, as an outside influence.
Wasn't Germany still semi-Pagan at the time?
Some [weakly] argue this expression
is taken NOT to be taken literally, but simply means "forever".

I don't even consider myself knowledgeable to have an opinion on the "rightness" of the ban, and its' continued enforcement. So it's not in my hands, any way. ;-)

Re: Polygyny Outlawed, more after a word from our sponsor...

[qatar.livejournal.com]

It seems odd to me that someone would make a proclamation so in conflict with millenia of Jewish law and practice -- and that it would be so wholeheartedly accepted by the Ashkenazim. I wonder on what basis he came to his conclusion? (I read lots of different options here....)

Do you want Israel to be a Jewish theocracy?

No idea

[shmuelisms.livejournal.com]

I don't think that this proclamation is "so in conflict with millenia of Jewish law and practice", because while it was permitted in principle, in practice it was very rare, and generally frowned upon. I think that the higher prevalence of Sephardic polygyny is also an "outside influence", from the Arab culture, and much less the "base condition" of Jews before the ban. I say this because of how few polygynous marriages we have record of, before the ban. This ban was very unlikely to have been met with an "Oh no, what will we do!?" type of response, simply because it affected very few people (even those already married). Had Rabbenu Gershom expected serious opposition, it is unlikely that the ban would have been made in the first place (basic meta-law - you don't create a decree, that the public can't bare). The only real "conflict" I see with the Law, is IF the ban was created in response to Christian pressure (whether direct or implied).

Do you want Israel to be a Jewish theocracy?

Not exactly. From my POV, the expression Jewish Theocracy is mostly redundant. As I've likely said before, Judaism takes a MUCH more holistic approach to life than probably any other religion/philosophy. Among other things, Jewish Law includes detailed instructions on how people should be governed. But the term "theocracy", is not really applicable in the sense that it is used in English. We are not talking about a Church-run government, but rather a country governed by religious law. If you go to my Perpetual Interview meme entry, and read the entire following sub-thread, I explain in some detail, how the ideal Jewish government is supposed to work, and what the "checks and balances" are. As I also said at the beginning of that comment, this "theocracy" can only possibly come-about by the explicit will of the general public, so again, this wouldn't be a coercive type of "religious dictatorship", but even so, I imagine you'll find the idea too restrictive.

...More...

[shmuelisms.livejournal.com]

I'll bet that Christianity abandoned polygyny when they incorporated the crazy Spartan attitudes and "ideals" regarding women and specifically procreation as something "dirty". While Googling for sources for this comment, I found yet another scary Christian site, dedicated to the topic. These "Nazarene Israelites" "Messianic Jews" want us Jews (and in fact the entire "United House of Yisrael", i.e. including "The Lost Sheep" Christianity) to restore polygyny. Read their "Who We Are" page for some real wackiness laughs - Here Be Weirdos

[qatar.livejournal.com]

I'm not in the book club; it meets on the same night as the Doha Singers. :-( Maybe I'll join after the Christmas concert -- if we have a break before Easter concert rehearsals start!

[aljefairi.livejournal.com]

the problem always rise when we expose ourselves to different cultures...

i wouldnt say inferior, immoral, savege or gender discirmination .. .but rather a different way of living that is decided and accepted by the society ...

David Haines a social anthorpologist have very good explanations for these things in his book "cultural Anthropology"

:)

[qatar.livejournal.com]

I don't think that polgamy is inferior or savage, either. (It does seem strange to me that the rules are different for men and women, though.)

I haven't read David Haines' book, but the cultural anthropology class I took in college was one of my favorite classes ever. What does Haines say?

Haines

[aljefairi.livejournal.com]

Hey,

so haines's basic argument is that in societies there is nothing such as better or worse ... each culture is set according to what best suits the place and what is best is decided through many different generations experiences that build this culture...

:) .. i will give you his book if you want it and if you are still in doha ... TC have a good summer

Re: Haines

[qatar.livejournal.com]

Hey again!

OK, I'm familiar with that argument. It's often called "cultural relativism." It says that cultures evolve to meet the needs of the people in that society, so therefore people outside the society can't really judge whether that culture's decisions are better or worse than anyone else's.

I have some reservations about cultural relativism (I'll post about that in a new post) but I think it's an important starting point when we're dealing with other cultures. That is, I think most of us tend to start out with a negative reaction to other cultures, so it's helpful to be culturally relativistic for long enough to learn about the new culture.

I wonder how cultural relativism can be reconciled with Islam. Isn't there an inclination, in Islam, to see the Qur'an as an absolute against which different cultures can be judged? ("He sent the Book in truth, to judge between people in matters wherein they differed....") Does that make it possible to judge between different societies?

Here's my favorite article about cultural relativism. I'm going to post it in my main blog, too, so that people who aren't following this conversation can read it too.

Confessions of a Former Cultural Relativist.

(I should warn you that it contains some photos you might find objectionable, but he uses them to make important points and it would be hard to understand his lecture without them.)