Answer

I am completely in favor, on two levels: First, it is a better society to begin with. That is the better way to build it, instead of the repressed sexual hysteria of separation. Second, even if that is not your utopia, it seems to me that the path to separation is not really open to us today except for someone who chooses to return and live his whole life in a closed society (which of course has many other drawbacks).
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Daniel:
Does the Rabbi think it is preferable to raise children in Religious education rather than Haredi education?
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Rabbi:
It is hard to speak in general instructions about matters like these, and in general. But if you want a general guideline, in my opinion definitely yes. There are of course known drawbacks, but the advantages outweigh them tenfold.
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Daniel:
What are the advantages?
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Rabbi:
It is hard to detail everything here, so I will try briefly.
First, openness and education. Second, coping with modernity. Third, a more sober faith. A more moral and genuine society (at least in terms of its attitude toward the surrounding general society and toward the state), with fewer slogans and less nonsense.
All of this of course also endangers religious continuity in the short term, but nevertheless in the long term it is also more sustainable (since someone who went through Haredi education cannot cope with the surrounding world, and therefore condemns himself either to closedness or, in many cases, to dropping out), and in any case it is a more correct path.
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Daniel:
Seemingly, all the advantages the Rabbi mentioned can be provided as additional education at home. You can enrich a child’s education, expose him to and familiarize him with other approaches, educate him toward better faith and morality, and teach him not to accept slogans as if they were Torah from Sinai. But the disadvantages of Religious education are much harder to fix at home. I mean exposure to temptations (“and keep yourself from every evil thing”) that are hard to withstand (bottom line, most people do not withstand them), a society in which Jewish law is not at the top of the priority list (although there are communities where it is, but Religious society in general is not like that), mixing with secular society (“keep far from a bad neighbor and do not associate with the wicked”; Maimonides: “It is a person’s nature to be drawn in his opinions and actions after his friends and companions”), and so on and so on.
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Rabbi:
There are two answers to that:
1. That is what I thought too, and therefore I sent my children to Haredi education. I was mistaken. It is no less hard to make corrective adjustments in the other direction.
2. Achieving devotion to the commandments of God and to a mistaken and distorted religious system is not necessarily a good achievement. This is Maimonides’ parable of the elephant. It is not always right to pay the price of changing the system in order to preserve one’s place within it.
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Yuval:
And what about the statement in the Shulchan Arukh, “A man must distance himself from women very, very much”? How should one relate to that?
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Rabbi:
I do not accept it. Maybe it was correct for its time, and even about that I have great doubt.
See also in section 240 regarding his approach to marital relations. Even after all the excuses, nobody accepts that today.
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Yuval:
I am not sure I understand. “I do not accept it” means that this is the Jewish law but you do not agree with it, or that in your opinion this is not the Jewish law at all?
And if it is the Jewish law, are we allowed to relate to Jewish law that way? Whatever fits our outlook we accept, and whatever does not, we do not accept?
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Rabbi:
The Shulchan Arukh was written in the 16th century. It was not given at Sinai. If Rabbi Yosef Karo writes something according to his understanding, that does not obligate me. Even his regular halakhic rulings are open to criticism, and certainly when he is writing recommendations.
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Yogev:
Hello Rabbi, in my opinion a mixed society should generally be established overall (not to separate cities, buses, workplaces, etc. etc.), but as far as a person’s close friends are concerned, the people he goes out with for pizza on Thursday night or for a trip, that should be separate. In short, a boy’s crowd should ideally be boys, and a girl’s crowd should be girls. That way you have a healthy, modern, normal society from the outset, without frivolity and lightheadedness between women and men, and where everyone can express himself and be who he is. I think from what I have seen of mixed groups (I grew up in a mixed society, and now I study in a hesder yeshiva and I often spend time with male friends without girls), many times things become calculated and unnatural when girls are around. The boys try harder to be funny, the girls feel they need to be prettier… the pretty girl gets lots of attention, and the others also try, but what can you do if beauty is not their strong side, and then their strong side does not get expressed… It is not utopian for boys’ friend groups to be boys and girls’ friend groups to be girls. It is very common in reality. A lot of people also understand that they enjoy themselves more that way. What does the Rabbi think?
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Rabbi:
There is no point getting into such details. To work out a full model, one would have to sit down seriously and think through every detail. Beyond that, it seems to me that even if you do work it out, it is not in your hands. If society is mixed, you have no way to ensure that they will not go out for pizza together.
By the way, these sensitivities exist more in religious society precisely because of the separations. In secular society (if it is moral and of a good level), the relationship is often more natural and less forced, and less attractive women also manage fine and find their place.

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Yair:

The Rabbi always says things that make a lot of sense, but this time I am having trouble understanding.
Suppose that indeed on the halakhic level one can accept the idea of a mixed society in which boys and girls spend all day together, talk for hours and hours at night at the branch, go to a movie and pizza together, sing songs around a bonfire on Lag BaOmer (two female singing voices), and chat together on WhatsApp until late at night.
But in practice the feeling is (because I was in such a place), and many, many friends as well (the honest ones among them), agree with me that such a thing really does not go together with fear of Heaven and a desire to connect to Torah (not an essential principled contradiction, but simply in practice). When an 18-year-old young man meets girls in the evening, he enjoys looking at them, talking with them, and laughing with them; the enjoyment is clearly there, not to mention the looking itself, which the man certainly enjoys.
Around girls, boys behave differently (and likewise girls around boys). I will not succeed in being in the company of girls in the evening and then truly connecting to Talmud in the morning. And reality also seems to be that way: when a person grows stronger religiously and goes to yeshiva, he cuts off ties he had with girls (even though they were “kosher”), because the feeling is that in practice the two things are rivals to one another.
Certainly in secular society they relate to this issue more naturally than in religious society; presumably their erotic thoughts when hugging a woman are close to zero compared to a boy who guards himself. That comes from the erosion of a person’s natural boundaries.
Let us say there were no halakhic problem even in permitting a boy to touch a girl, not out of necessity but for pleasure. Would it be “proper” to act that way? Certainly that does not fit with a life of Torah.
So then, I do not see, in reality, such a great difference (certainly there is some difference, which also needs defining) between touching someone and sitting next to her all night around a bonfire.

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Rabbi:

Hello Yair. All these are real problems, but I am against asceticism. This is the world, and we live in it.
If there are exceptionally elevated people who want to seclude themselves, let them be blessed. But in my opinion it is not right to establish this as a general, binding policy for all youth.

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Yair:

I do not understand why this is asceticism; I will present the boundaries from the other side:
I speak with women when needed, as much as necessary, without cutting things short and missing things. I say hello to women and ask how they are out of basic politeness. I will help a woman if such a need arises, within the bounds of Jewish law of course.
I go out and spend time with friends a lot. I listen to songs and eat tasty foods.
I just do not go out to spend time with women.
That does not seem to me like a model of asceticism at all.
As for setting a general policy for everyone: I think the opposite—that there should be a general policy, even if not binding but as guidance by which the youth would be guided, etc., and whoever in the honesty of his heart sees that his boundary is different can change his boundary. Why put everyone into a situation where the results are known, make it a done deal, and only after years will some people understand what caused a large part of their problems and difficulties, which are numerous enough even without these things?
I myself remember the shock that struck me when I discovered that mixed socializing was “forbidden”; socially it was very hard for me to avoid it, because you look different and strange, and although it bothered me, I had to take a bit of a hit.

And also the claim that this is the world and we live in it.
This is not the world; the world is even more extreme and does many forbidden things too.
Why should we stretch our actions and norms according to the existing world, all the way up to the final boundary where one actually violates clear Jewish law? What about the spirit of the law? (Even if not in a way that would impose an actual obligation on everyone, but as guidance.)
In other words, I would have expected the Rabbi to say that this is the proper way to act, except that you cannot obligate everyone, and that a person like this—who refrains from things that usually are not at all essential, while on the other hand their benefit for his personal development is hardly necessary—would be called a “nazirite” or a “recluse.”

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Rabbi:
Hello Yair. Of course not everything that happens in the world is to be accepted. The line between a normal world and what should be avoided depends on one’s sense of things, so it is hard to explain, and of course differences of opinion are possible. In my opinion, mixed society is indeed part of the normality of the world, and apparently in your opinion it is not. I agree that one should educate people that if someone wants to be an exceptionally elevated person, that should be respected, but I do not agree that this is the correct general educational path.

Take the issue of the smartphone and the internet. Some think that this too is not part of the normal world and forbid it. I think that despite all the problems, it is part of our world. And likewise regarding driving a car, which leads to hundreds of deaths every year. Some think this should be forbidden (see an article by students of Hanan Ariel in Tzohar), and I think this is part of the world and should not be forbidden despite the hard consequences.

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Yair:

I think the issue of accidents and the smartphone is not similar to mixed society (as a representative example let us take: sitting around a bonfire with girls all night). With an iPhone there is a concern that permitted use x will lead to forbidden use y. That is, it is agreed that use x is permitted and there is no problem with it at all (I am not talking about extreme extremists), and therefore your claim is strong that one cannot forbid it, even if there is a high probability that it will come to that.
Likewise regarding traffic accidents: the driving, which is x, may lead to an accident, which is y.
But regarding an all-night bonfire with girls, all the statistics (which probably have not been done, admittedly) would show that there were sinful thoughts, forbidden glances, and desires for members of the opposite sex already within the permitted use x itself. Here y is an integral part, and completely unavoidable, of use x.
In other words, with an iPhone there is a meaningful separation between the permitted use and the forbidden use, and likewise with traffic accidents. In both, it is a concern that one will give rise to the other. But at the bonfire, the concern is certain (what would the law be if traffic accidents had a 100 percent fatality rate? Would it be permitted?). It is not certain to lead to a major transgression, but it is certain to lead to a minor transgression, and mainly certain to create a general emotional state of involvement with unnecessary “infatuations” [even ones where one side is unaware of the other’s feelings toward him or her] that are harmful over a span of years (from close testimonies).
I agree that regarding technical matters—for example, an educational staff—technical things can be done together even if there was an option to separate and do them apart. But social and emotional things? It feels to me as if the Rabbi is saying that there is actually value in doing that together, not just that there is no prohibition against being together, but that what is preferable (for a person considering what to do with himself) is together, and I do not understand how, in reality, that is preferable.

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Rabbi:
The question of degree is different. About sitting around a bonfire or not, one can argue. But when the society is mixed, it is no longer under your control where that starts or ends. Therefore the main discussion is whether the society should be mixed or not, independent of the details.
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Yair:

I do not understand how one can discuss something without seeing the details; “there is nothing in the general category except what is in the particulars.”
It comes out that maybe I too agree to mixed society, because I agree to mixed society in necessary matters, such as commerce, the marketplace, work, even though regarding recreation I do not think so.
Sorry for the length of my remarks, and thank you very much for the responses.

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Rabbi:

You did not understand my intention. It is not that it is unimportant to discuss the details, but that there is no point in discussing them because you have no control over the details. You cannot determine that a mixed society is possible, but only in this and not in that. We are speaking about a general instruction to the public, and therefore there are two main possibilities: either separate or mixed. The details are subject to specific decisions according to place and time, and one must take into account that there is no control over them. Therefore the theoretical decision on the table is only the choice of a principled direction.