Question

To Rabbi Michael, greetings,
 
As an introduction, I’ll say that I’m someone who in the past felt I belonged to the religious community and studied in yeshivas, and now I feel that I can’t identify with the religious collective, and I try to observe Jewish law, study Torah, and engage in the commandments, but more in a personal way.

 
The following explanation is meant to clarify why I feel that specifically a secular woman is what I need—

I observe commandments and look for the value-based essence within them (I simply connect to the world of Judaism, to tradition, regardless of any historical status of the giving of the Torah, but I feel the holiness in Jewish law—sometimes in the legal details, sometimes in connection with ideas from the inner dimension of Torah and mystical teaching), and the value-based essence is more important to me than technical observance. There are periods when I feel I need to accept the whole package of Jewish law—sometimes מתוך a thought about mystical holiness—and there are periods when I often break the framework in order to preserve the essence, because the main thing that matters to me is logic. For example, this happens to me especially in prayer, when I break out of the fixed text and start praying in my own words, in the spirit of “Do not make your prayer fixed, but rather supplication.” In general I always pray at home; a synagogue feels too crowded for me. I want my own connection with God, and it’s hard for me to do that in a crowd.
In my thinking I’m very critical and philosophical. I study a lot of philosophy (general and Jewish) and the humanities, and besides Torah study, also other religions. I’m vegan, and I don’t belong to the right-wing bloc. I always feel a bit suffocated in religious society, as though you can’t say just anything; there are so many taboos. That’s how it feels to me. Presumably some people feel similarly in secular society, but I feel much more alive with secular friends when I philosophize with them and talk with them about the world and about natural inner experiences, about reality, about doubts, when I point to injustices that exist also in the religious world I come from, when I say that I keep the commandments because of reason and not because of blind faith, when I critique the sacred texts scientifically and philosophically, etc.
I feel that, essentially, a relationship with a secular woman is much more fitting for my soul. With religious women it’s much harder for me, completely unrelated to sexual openness. On the contrary: I like modest dress, and I have no need at all to move quickly in sexual matters, and I even value a mindset that slows things down—but emotionally, that’s simply the direction for me. I’m already 28 and searching a lot on dating sites and trying to find opportunities and dates, and I also have a disability which, what can you do, in a cruel world labels me, and I don’t have the full range of options in front of me. And people ask pointed questions about why I didn’t serve in the army, and what the implications of the disability are for the future, etc. And the fact is that it’s most important to me that she be philosophical, because otherwise it’s just not enjoyable and there’s no connection, and I need openness of mind…
Also in terms of my views, I can hardly manage in a relationship with a religious woman, and also from a halakhic perspective—even if only because I hold that it is permitted to use electricity on the Sabbath, and that is how I conduct myself, and ideally too, in the hope that people will ask me halakhically about it and I’ll explain my thinking and they’ll follow me as well.

 
The problematic situation as a given reality—

 
But the major problem for me in a relationship with a secular woman is the issue of family purity (we’ll skip over the issue that I embrace concubinage-type relationships as healthy, natural, and romantic relations between two people who truly love one another and want to live together, and that I oppose the acquisition of a woman), because on the one hand, regarding family purity, like every commandment, there is logic to it; and on the other hand, there is also logic in taking the woman’s views and needs into account, and her need for natural flow in these matters, and I don’t see the logic in a specifically two-week distancing rule. If it were a religious woman—great; but if not, it itself sounds to me lacking in substance to demand such a period, and the issue of immersion also feels less substantial to me, and in any case it relates more to the woman’s feeling than to mine. At the same time, I think I would want to ask to try (an experiment for both of us; I also feel a need to examine the matter) to keep two weeks, and to discuss the issue of the mikveh, hoping that this won’t cause my partner great suffering and strong aversion. But logic is more important to me than dry law, and I don’t want this to be what separates me from having a relationship—as if to say that one is unwilling to go out to battle in defense of the homeland because people may die (that is, not to be in a relationship at all because of the issue of mikveh, which is supposed to improve the relationship itself). I know the Rabbi’s approach that the secular side should also take the religious side into account, and at the same time, one of the most important things for me in a relationship is to preserve the logic of compromise—that both of us examine the logic of Jewish law. What can I do—there has to be some kind of compromise, and the compromise I believe in is to examine it together.

 
Therefore I’m trying to find compromises. And I’m thinking of relying on a minority opinion, so that both during periods when I feel more committed to Jewish law and during other periods, I’ll have some kind of anchor, and there won’t be overly severe upheavals in the relationship on this issue. And I thought of a halakhic move that also comes from other lines of thinking regarding reducing the use of immodest media on the internet and the like, something I try as much as possible to overcome because of values of reducing exploitation and objectification in those industries of various kinds.

 
So I want to ask whether this halakhic move is appropriate in a pressing situation, and I’m raising arguments here that relate to a pressing situation. It’s important to me to know that what I’m doing is halakhically plausible, and not just something I’m telling myself to justify things, but rather מתוך an understanding that there are periods in my life when careful observance of Jewish law is very important to me, and periods when it is less so, and I need stability, and also because my psyche is very sensitive (and I use medication that stabilizes it). And for that purpose I’m willing to compromise on a minority opinion.

 
This is the halakhic thinking:

 
—
 
A. I shake hands with women, whether they are unmarried and the issue of niddah is relevant, or whether they are married. (This is part of my life in a secular world, and it seems logical to me.) Halakhically, I rely on the opinion of Rabbi Pedat according to Rabbenu Tam and Rabbi Isaac in Tosafot (on Shabbat 13a—“Rabbenu Tam explains that Rabbi Pedat disagrees, for since the Torah prohibited only intimacy of actual forbidden sexual relations, therefore we should prohibit and decree only something similar to what Scripture prohibited—namely familiar conduct without any change, such as a zav not eating with a zavah; but if he is in his garment and she is in hers, where there is familiar conduct together with a change, Rabbi Pedat would not hold that even with a married woman, if he is in his garment and she is in hers it is permitted. And Rabbi Isaac explained that Rabbi Pedat disagrees because in his view the expression ‘coming near’ applies only to actual forbidden sexual relations”), and on the incident where Rav Huna carried the bride on his back. And because I’m accustomed to this, I usually don’t have lustful thoughts at all, especially since this is the accepted way of the world today, and the issue of lustful thoughts does not override normal social conduct, like the sugya of an alternative route (Bava Batra 57b).
 
B. I hold a moral view that pornography seriously harms both the participants in the industry and the consumers (in my opinion, Maimonides expressed this regarding one who speaks with a woman behind a fence, and it’s the same thing if it’s through a camera, and he wrote that it would be better for him to die, although the commentaries softened this; and this is the same logic as the veganism I hold by). And I feel guilty when I fall into this, for these reasons. I understand that I can’t overcome my impulse, and therefore I think that if this reduces sexual harm and exploitation, then it is correct and proper to release the impulse in a less harmful way (for example through media produced with less exploitation and less prostitution) so as not to reach more severe media (based on Chokhmat Shlomo on Shulchan Arukh, Even HaEzer 23, that one may emit semen for the sake of good deeds, since “the offspring of the righteous are good deeds,” based on Sefer Chasidim, which is also cited in Chelkat Mechokek and Beit Shmuel). In any case, for what follows—the question here is also whether erotic thoughts about one’s wife are preferable to internet media, and not necessarily ejaculation itself.
Even when one lives with a woman, this is very difficult during the two weeks of niddah, because the impulse is used to receiving satisfaction, and the romantic feeling is more accustomed to flowing in the heart.
 
C. Here is the main question—if touch is permitted without actual forbidden sexual relations, according to Rabbenu Tam and Rabbi Isaac on Rabbi Pedat, is it proper to have marital-type sexual relations without actual forbidden sexual relations with one’s wife while she is in niddah, with release of the sexual impulse (which is considered the prohibition of erotic thoughts without a woman), without emission of semen, and possibly among other reasons in order not to use media that causes prostitution and sexual exploitation (and here I truly think this is a moral advantage if otherwise the niddah period leads one into pornography)?
I mean, for example, rubbing body parts together along with a tantric method, in which the semen is blocked and diverted away from the testicles and reaches the urine and mixes with it and is nullified in it before it comes out (and this is somewhat like prostate surgery that blocks the semen ducts, after which they wrote that relations are permitted, for example Tzitz Eliezer, vol. 14, no. 95). And here the erotic thought is about one’s wife, and even when she is in niddah some have written that “he is familiar with her.”
Or perhaps even penetration with a condom according to those who permit it (such as the Rogatchover in Tzafnat Pa’neach, vol. 1 no. 89, vol. 3 no. 164, who argues that there is no emission of semen in vain here at all, only erotic thought)—because does a condom count as intercourse of actual forbidden sexual relations? After all, the nakedness is not uncovered but covered, and certainly this is not talking about seeing the woman, but about the uncovering of the penetrating organ; seeing is certainly not considered actual forbidden sexual relations. And in the case of a man and woman, the category of “like inserting a brush into a tube” does not seem relevant the way it is with two males; rather the question is whether the penetrating organ is uncovered or not uncovered.
And regarding erotic thoughts, there are two grounds for leniency: first, because this is his wife, and second, so that he will not be enticed into media of prostitution.

 
—

 
I ask:
A. In a formal weighing of the minority opinions—does it indeed come out that such relations are permitted (through rubbing body parts together or with a condom)?
B. In a pressing situation, is it possible to rely on this? What is the calculation here?

 
Many thanks.