Q&A: Mentioning the Four-Letter Name, Immersion of Unmarried Women
Mentioning the Four-Letter Name, Immersion of Unmarried Women
Question
Honorable Rabbi, hello,
You asked that I send this here and not by email. I hope this is the appropriate place from your perspective.
1.
I read that historically people would mention the Tetragrammaton as written in prayers, and it is not clear when they began saying the name Adonai instead. Is it permissible to return to the ancient custom? And if not, why not?
(After all, there are halakhic decisors who permit saying the Name, and only not saying the forty-two-letter Name.)
After all, when the Holy One, blessed be He, said, "This is My name forever," it is clear that He said to Moses in His own voice "YHWH," and did not say "Adonai, God of your fathers." And this is explained very well throughout almost all Torah literature, that the personal name of God is YHWH and all the rest are secondary names and appellations.
And many verses say things like, "Give thanks to the Lord, call upon His name," and "and Samuel among those who call upon His name," implying that one should say His name in prayer. And the plain meaning is His known name, YHWH.
2.
Regarding the enactment of the Rivash about the immersion of unmarried women, he forbids it because of erotic thoughts and seclusion.
If someone wants to do good for his partner when they are not married, as an act of kindness, and to give her pleasure and express love, and not for his own pleasure, "like one compelled by a demon," would that be permitted?
After all, incidental erotic thought is permitted (Ezer Mekudash, Even HaEzer 23: "The Torah was not given to ministering angels"), and when one acts for the sake of a commandment (kindness, another person's pleasure), Chokhmat Shlomo rules on Even HaEzer 23 that even emitting semen is permitted (according to Sefer Chasidim), because he is preoccupied with his task.
(And surely this is not wasted semen, since the semen enters the woman's body; it is only a matter of the prohibition of erotic thought. But in my opinion even emission of semen for the sake of a commandment is permitted, as above in Chokhmat Shlomo, and it is not at all "in vain," which alone is what is forbidden in the Talmud and the Shulchan Arukh.)
(And specifically I mean someone who does this not for his own pleasure, to increase his own enjoyment, but only what comes to him against his will through the woman's pleasure; any unnecessary erotic thought is not for the sake of a commandment, and "he is preoccupied with his task" was not said to permit intentional erotic thoughts, and nevertheless the Torah was not given to ministering angels.)
And for the sake of a commandment that needs to be done and can only be done privately, and is important work, certainly it is permitted to be secluded with a gynecologist, and people do not object even to seclusion with a psychologist. So what is the prohibition of seclusion here?
And even with a prostitute, Hosea was also particular, when he came to her, since he knew her for many days, and provided for her, and really formed a relationship with her so that she would be designated for him and both of them would not belong to another man; and through this he came to her and did kindness with her, as a parable for the kindnesses the Holy One, blessed be He, did with Israel when they became designated to Him and He gives "the grain, the wine, and the oil."
And all this is not in the framework of concubinage, of course.
With thanks and blessings,
Ofir
Answer
1.
That is indeed what is explained in Tosefta Sotah 11:8. See also the commentators on the Tosefta and Maimonides, Laws of Prayer 14:10.
As for the Explicit Name, there is a prohibition against pronouncing the Name according to its letters, and that applies to the Tetragrammaton. The prohibition is not brought by Maimonides and the major halakhic authorities, so this requires some examination. For its source, see Babylonian Talmud Sanhedrin 90a and Pesachim 50a, and Tosafot on Sukkah 5a, s.v. "Kodesh" (and Maharam there), and also on Shevuot 35a, s.v. "Ba-Alef," where it is explained that it is forbidden even to say the letters in the order they are written.
I have not checked this now, but it seems to me that this prohibition is different from the prohibition of uttering God's name in vain, and perhaps that is why in prayer they utter the regular name of God but not the Tetragrammaton (because although it is not in vain, pronouncing the Name according to its letters is forbidden even when not in vain). However, in the sources above (especially in Maimonides) it seems there is no fundamental difference, but only that they were more stringent here; but if it is not in vain, then even pronouncing the Name according to its letters is not forbidden.
Beyond that, the custom is certainly not to say the Tetragrammaton but other names. It may perhaps be explained this way: the difference between the Tetragrammaton (in my humble opinion it is preferable to write it this way and not as you did, although there is room to discuss erasing the Name on the internet) and the other names is that the Tetragrammaton is the essential name (a reference to the object itself, like a person's proper name), whereas the other names are really appellations (not halakhically but linguistically), like descriptions of people. Therefore the first has no meaning beyond being God's name, while the others have a more general meaning. It may be that in prayer one should address Him through His appellations, since they relate to different aspects of Him. Even without looking into it more deeply, I would not recommend changing this.
2.
I did not really understand the question. Do you mean having sexual relations without marriage? In principle, you are not supposed to express love to a woman who is not your wife. And if you want to formalize a physical relationship, marry that woman. The last problem I see here is the immersion of unmarried women. The comparisons to "he is preoccupied with his task," etc., are completely unfounded. What connection is there to a situation where people have relations for your pleasure or hers? The whole thing here seems to me completely baseless.
Discussion on Answer
A person's love for his fellow is not the love of a man for a woman. The same word expresses different meanings in different contexts. In order to have sexual relations, one should build a couplehood framework. Otherwise, you should express your love in other ways, and certainly not on the planes of sex and not even romance. You can open an institute for providing sexual services to anyone who asks as part of your love of humanity. Does that sound reasonable to you?
Forgive me, but there is something distorted in this way of thinking. It's hard for me to accept that this even needs to be explained.
Regarding the question of the immersion of an unmarried woman, you already wrote here:
https://mikyab.net/%D7%A9%D7%95%D7%AA/%D7%98%D7%91%D7%99%D7%9C%D7%AA-%D7%A8%D7%95%D7%95%D7%A7%D7%94-%D7%95%D7%94%D7%99%D7%AA%D7%A8-%D7%A4%D7%99%D7%9C%D7%92%D7%A9/
And this is what you wrote:
"I never understood the strange question of whether to permit unmarried women to immerse. What is the question here? Is there some prohibition against immersing for someone who wants to do so? Even a cat can immerse if it wants to, and even a menstruant woman without seven clean days can immerse (except that she will not become pure that way). Would it enter your mind that if an unmarried woman immerses she will not become pure? So what does it mean not to permit her to immerse? To stop her by force? At most one may ask whether it is permitted to have sexual relations with her after she has immersed, but that is simply the law of relations with an unmarried woman, and that too is not in my hands. The violence of the rabbinate that takes over the ritual baths and decides who is permitted to immerse and how has no halakhic basis whatsoever."
It was very strange for me to read those words. After all, the matter of not immersing is well known from the responsa of the Rivash (425) and is brought in Beit Yosef (183). Of course, the fine line of when one should prevent it and when one should allow it (so that our gain does not become our loss) depends on a dispute, and there are arguments in both directions.
In any case, the halakhic authorities understood that there is room to forbid immersion for unmarried women according to the Rivash, and to prevent women physically from immersing. And I will quote, for example, from Teshuvot Ve-Hanhagot (1:784):
Question: A man sometimes lives in licentiousness, God forbid, with a woman, and she wants to immerse — should she be prevented?
The man cannot divorce his wife, who refuses to accept a bill of divorce, and he lives with another woman in licentiousness because his inclination overpowers him; nevertheless they are not willing to violate the prohibition of a menstruant woman, and she goes to immerse. They asked whether she should be prevented from immersing.
Now I know of an incident that my teacher Rabbi M. Schneider of blessed memory told me, that in one city in Lithuania they began to break out, God forbid, in licentiousness, and the rabbi preached that at least they should not violate the prohibition of a menstruant woman and should go immerse; but afterward it became clear that by this he caused, God forbid, even more people to begin licentious behavior due to the authorization of the ritual bath, and unfortunately the plague of licentiousness spread in the city, God forbid. And so too in the responsa of the Rivash, section 425, in the name of the Rivash, that they abolished the immersion of unmarried menstruant women so that people would not come to be lenient with them.
And this is correct if the rabbi advises going to the ritual bath, for in that case we say that he should not get involved and advise; but here, where she herself is going to immerse, in my opinion the rabbi is not obligated to instruct the ritual bath attendants not to let her enter and thereby actively feed her the prohibition of a menstruant woman. Only where there is a need to make a protective fence is it proper to prevent her immersion in the ritual bath, for making a protective fence is different.
However, I warned that one must be very careful about desecration of God's name, since people may think that we have, God forbid, permitted the licentiousness itself; and one should sanctify only in its proper place and time, and rule according to the need, even to distance her, if that will help make a protective fence or avoid desecration of God's name." (And see also Shu"t Sho'alin Ve-Dorshin 7:68.)
"You can open an institute for providing sexual services to anyone who asks as part of your love of humanity. Does that sound reasonable to you?" That sounds to me like an exaggeration and mockery of my views. Let the Rabbi answer — are all secular people who are in relationships without kiddushin prostitutes? And can a husband not coerce his wife and exploit her? If the Rabbi seriously means to compare a boyfriend-girlfriend relationship to an institute for providing sexual pleasure, then be a bit more specific and define the institute, since such a thing does not exist in reality, and obviously there are very good reasons why not. As long as the Rabbi has not done so, it sounds so hypothetical that it can only serve as a joke at the expense of what I wrote.
Is it permitted to say "Adonai" or "God" without intention? I am used to saying every morning before prayer the sentence that appears in the prayer books: "I hereby intend from now until this time tomorrow that every time I mention the holy Tetragrammaton, which in its writing means 'He was, He is, and He will be,' and in its reading is Adonai, meaning Master of all — and when I mention the name God, my intention should be that He is mighty and all-capable and possesses all powers, the Cause of all causes and the Reason for all reasons, and rules over all worlds."
Can one skip this and simply not have intention when saying God's names?
Ofir, as I understand it, this is not an exaggeration; it is a demonstration that there is no connection between "Love your fellow as yourself" and acts of kindness, on the one hand, and sex and romance, on the other.
These are different domains, and only the shared word is confusing you.
Aharon, I know all that, and still the Mishnah remains in its place. The Rivash and also the Beit Yosef, with all due respect, cannot determine for us what may be done and whether to prevent women from doing something. At most they can instruct (or recommend and request) the women not to immerse. There is not a trace of a halakhic prohibition here so long as an authorized religious court has not established it. And even if there were a halakhic prohibition here, the ritual bath does not belong to me or my father, nor to the Rivash, any more than it belongs to the woman who wants to immerse. Therefore my words remain in place.
I, I did not understand. Where in my words did you see that one may say it without intention? At most, the halakhic authorities wrote to say this even if you estimate that you will not have proper intention later on (and in this regard they were careful that with the Tetragrammaton this should not be done). But ideally one certainly must have intention every time one says God's name, and strictly speaking it is actually forbidden to say it without intention (except that nowadays we do not live up to this, and so they were lenient).
The ritual bath generally belongs to the community, and its leaders (the seven good men of the city) can usually set rules of conduct there.
Can people who want to sit without separation enter every synagogue and do as they wish? Certainly not. So why should a ritual bath be different?
If you want to distinguish between different kinds of ownership, fine. But regarding a ritual bath in the place and time of the Rivash and the Beit Yosef as well — would you still not agree? Are they obligated to let every person in there?
You answered yourself. I am not speaking about a private ritual bath but about a public state ritual bath built from public budgets and therefore controlled by its institutions. In a private ritual bath, do whatever you want.
The same applies to preventing prayer of a different character at the Western Wall. The Wall is not a private place.
1. Thanks for the sources to look into, and for your opinion regarding mentioning the Name.
2. What do you mean by, "In principle, you are not supposed to express love to a woman who is not your wife"?
In terms of what is proper to love — there is the commandment, "Love your fellow as yourself," and the commandment of kindness, and in my opinion it is one of the roots of morality to love every creature.
And why not express the proper love? "From their disgrace we learned their praise, that they were not one thing with the mouth and another in the heart." What is the harm? Does the Rabbi mean that there is a halakhic problem in expressing love to a woman who is not one's wife? And clearly with a married woman one must be careful, but what is the issue with an unmarried woman?