Sex.
Ostensibly there is nothing of the sort at Yeshiva University. As the exemplar of American Modern Orthodoxy, YU has something of a pristine reputation. Many parents send their children to YU with the hopes of preventing them from being sucked into the big, bad college world of drinking, drugs and, of course, sex. YU is definitely more sheltered than most places; if someone’s looking for a good time (and by that I mean the kind of good time that involves drinking, drugs or sex, not a night out bowling) it’s easy enough to find.
But peel back the layers of guys who don’t talk to girls until it’s set up by a shadchan (Jewish matchmaker) and girls whose idea of inappropriate behavior is wearing a red shirt. (It’s eye-catching and seductive, for those of you who never attended Bais Yaakov and therefore don’t understand what could possibly be wrong with a red shirt.) Dig a bit among the more modern students, and there you’ll find the more worldly among us.
These scandalous students will touch their boyfriends or girlfriends, either openly or in stolen moments in dark corners when no one is around to see. Allow me to explain the scandal involved: According to Jewish Law, not only is premarital sex a sin, but anything that might lead to it is disallowed as well. Thus, we have the concepts of shomer negiah (“protecting touch,” or avoiding touching members of the opposite sex in any affectionate way) and yichud (avoiding being alone with a member of the opposite sex). As you can imagine, this leads to many a sexually-stifled college student.
So what do we do? The more right-wing students avoid situations in which this becomes a problem by not taking part in anything co-ed. Dating is limited to shadchan-appointed dates, and the dating/engagement period often lasts about half a year. The more left-wing students disregard halacha and treat dating much like the rest of the world does. Then there are the awkward in-between people. Theses are the students who want to have more socially acceptable relationships (dating for months, meeting guys/girls on their own) without having to sacrifice their belief that relationships should be carried out according to halacha–no first kiss, no hugs at the end of a date, not even hand-holding in a movie theater. Strict separation.
In fact, in a completely unscientific survey of my peers at YU, the not-touching only lasts so long. My friends have a range of theories, that shomer negiah lasts anywhere from two months to six months in a relationship, but the general consensus is that shomer negiah is something close to an impossibility for the students who want to have it both ways. People don’t talk about it, but it’s an unspoken understanding. That isn’t to say there is rampant sex taking place every night at YU. In fact, further results from my unscientific survey show that breaking shomer negiah can mean anything from holding hands to getting as close to sex as possible without actual sex. Use your imaginations.
I’ve had conversations about this with enough people to know that the reactions from Modern Orthodox readers will fall into one of two categories:
- The people who have experienced this firsthand and will eagerly expound upon their own theories of shomer negiah.
- Those who have never experienced it will deny that breaking shomer negiah is common, insist that keeping shomer negiah is completely possible and will probably be incensed that I dared to write this post at all.
Those who fall into the second category are of this opinion either because they have never been in a long enough or serious enough relationship to have felt the extreme desire to break shomer negiah, or because they belong to that impressive group of people who are able to withstand the pull of physical intimacy. (An aside: I generally hate euphemisms like “physical intimacy” but it does lend a certain air of credibility to my postulations.)
There is certainly less sex happening at YU than at other colleges, although it is not non-existent. But there’s other stuff going on. And it’s not talked about, which in my (journalistically-biased) opinion is never a good thing.
Good thing I have this blog to change that.
Simi Lampert is an Orthodox Jew and a realist, in the way that cynics like to say, “I’m not cynical, I’m being realistic.” She is a senior at Yeshiva University’s Stern College, and is the editor-in-chief and founder of the YU Beacon. Her column, Modern Unorthodox, appears here on alternating Tuesdays.
