Q&A: Looking at a Woman’s Picture on a Computer
Looking at a Woman’s Picture on a Computer
Question
Why shouldn’t looking at a woman’s picture on a computer be prohibited under the rule about looking at colorful women’s garments, which the Sages forbade? If it is forbidden to look at the clothes of a woman one knows, then all the more so it should be forbidden to see her clothes [or lack of clothes…] together with her attached picture.
And it does not make sense to say that only “garments” are forbidden but a picture of a woman wearing those garments was not forbidden. What difference is there [for the better]? And would watching animals mating on a computer not be forbidden just because it is only a picture, when the principle is the same [or even worse]?
Answer
One must distinguish between a formal prohibition and an essential one. If you are concerned about looking at a woman on a computer, there is room to discuss it. But with a formal prohibition, what was forbidden was forbidden, and what was not, was not. Beyond that, there are situations in which it is impossible to prohibit something, because one simply cannot live that way. To forbid pictures of women on a computer would mean not looking at a computer. As we can plainly see, nobody is careful even about looking at clothes.
Discussion on Answer
When there is a halakha that cannot be implemented, it falls away. See examples in Tosafot, s.v. “Imor,” Avodah Zarah 15a, and also Tosafot, s.v. “Tashikh,” Bava Metzia 70b, and elsewhere. Of course, one must discuss which laws and under which circumstances, and this is not the place. Usually laws whose purpose is to create distance from a prohibition will fall away in such situations, but it seems to me not only those.
In parentheses you wrote a different claim (that even if when something cannot be done the law falls away, here it can be done, though with difficulty). I do not fully agree with that either. Usually the discussion is precisely when it can be done only with difficulty. When it cannot be done at all, or when it is a matter of danger to life, then obviously it falls away and there is no need for the whole discussion. Even in the cases brought by Tosafot above, it is not a matter of actual danger to life, because otherwise there would have been no need to write any of this at all.
Even a Torah law?
For example, if walking in the street on the Sabbath were forbidden according to the definition of the labor of writing or some other labor [because of satellites and cameras], would you permit walking in the street because the law is not implementable without great difficulty?
Likewise, if it were proven that by the breath from our mouths we activate air conditioners and various devices, would you not require people on the Sabbath to breathe into a closed vessel in order to prevent that? [Assuming there is a Torah prohibition involved.]
I qualified my remarks above. I do not have a general criterion. Everything depends on the type of prohibition and the circumstances.
It seems that treating the prohibition against looking at women’s clothing and the like as an act that the Sages prohibited is incorrect. The prohibition is to avoid becoming impure at night, and the Sages only pointed out several things that are liable to bring a person to that. If a picture on a computer is more stimulating, then it is forbidden even without the Sages explicitly decreeing it.
A follow-up question for the Rabbi—
Beyond “each case on its own merits,” do you have any insights (in a post or a more detailed answer) about the criteria for a halakha falling away?
You can simply look outside and see what the public has decided to abandon, but I’m not sure whether in every situation that is the yardstick, and whether we should align ourselves with it.
For Torah-level laws, it seems to me not so (unless in reality the situation is truly absurd).
Does every rabbinic prohibition, then, fall away?
That is too general a question. I have just now finished writing a book about it (the third in the trilogy).
The first argument I can accept, but I didn’t understand the second argument. Why, if something is impossible, should the prohibition be voided [assuming not like your reasoning that “what was forbidden was forbidden”]? With that claim one could cancel many laws. [“Looking” here does not just mean seeing, but taking an interested gaze, and that is something one can guard against, even if with difficulty.]