Why is the halakhic truth that a married woman is forbidden, but multiple wives are permitted? What is that halakhic value that dictates this?

A few minutes ago I said I have no idea. Did you get some report that Elijah revealed himself to me in the meantime? I haven’t heard from him lately.

To answer your question, it’s common to say that in the ancient world it was very important to know from whose seed a certain person came (for inheritance, etc.), and therefore if a woman has more than one husband and gives birth to a child, they wouldn’t know to whom he is attributed. That’s unlike a man who has more than one wife, where there’s no problem saying with certainty who his mother and father are.
But that’s more of a technical reason, not some classic Torah guidance you may have been looking for.

Rabbi, it wasn’t clear that the “I have no idea” referred to the first part of the question.
In any case, I’ve seen several times that the Rabbi resolves an apparent contradiction between Jewish law and morality by arguing that Jewish law is independent of morality, but I don’t remember ever seeing the Rabbi address the halakhic value that underlies the law itself (correct me if I’m wrong). The trick of separating Jewish law from morality is brilliant—once there’s a contradiction between Jewish law and morality, then no problem: there’s simply some halakhic value that in this case overrides the moral value. That value, admittedly, is hidden from everyone’s eyes, but trust me—it exists. (A bit reminiscent of Russell’s teapot.)
To me that’s an amazing evasion of the question.

Well, now we’ve reached the dictionary. “Evasion” means answering around the issue. A direct answer that I have no idea is not evasion.
Ask me what theory unifies quantum mechanics with relativity and I’ll answer: I have no idea. Is that evasion? Seems to me you need a different dictionary.

To David,
I have no principled problem with that answer, but it doesn’t explain the ban of Rabbenu Gershom, and I’m also not sure it fits—lineage is so important that it rises to the level of the death penalty and one of the three gravest sins?
It seems the way to explain it would be why the Torah did permit multiple wives even though in principle it’s undesirable, and not why it forbade a married woman. Then with Rabbenu Gershom’s ban, the reason to forbid multiple wives is simply that in his generation the reason to permit it no longer applied.

Rabbi, the evasion is not in the answer that you have no idea, but in the very separation between Jewish law and morality. That separation was created, in my view, in order to get rid of the need to answer directly questions about Jewish law and morality—in other words, to allow an answer of “you have no idea” (since after all, you’re not expected to think up halakhic values on your own). In my dictionary, evasion is “avoidance of dealing with something” (Academy dictionary, and that’s the accepted meaning..), and that’s exactly what the Rabbi is doing in separating Jewish law from morality.

I think there was a misunderstanding: when Shaul said evasion he didn’t mean that the answer—“I have no idea”—is evasion, but rather that the way of explaining the contradiction between Jewish law and morality is evasive, because it says there’s some exalted value to Jewish law that overrides the morality we understand or is hidden from human eyes, as Shaul said—and that’s what he was trying to understand.

You’ll need to replace the dictionary again. The separation between Jewish law and morality wasn’t meant to answer anything. It’s simply a fact, and I showed that unequivocally in a column that dealt with it. But once you adopt it, it turns out that the question of Jewish law and morality doesn’t arise. The question assumes that Jewish law is supposed to fit morality, and now it turns out that it isn’t. And again, this becomes clear on its own, not as an answer to questions of Jewish law and morality. It’s not an ad hoc excuse. Non-moral laws do not raise the same difficulty, but their existence proves that Jewish law has religious goals unrelated to morality.
By the same token, you could ask why the laws of biology are not moral, or why the laws of health are not tasty. Those are questions rooted in a categorical confusion.
Now you can ask what religious values Jewish law is striving toward, and my answer is: I have no idea.
If that seems like evasion to you, then there really is a problem with your dictionary.

So if it’s a fact—okay, Jewish law isn’t always moral—what do we do now, just accept it because that’s how it is? I also don’t think you can compare it to laws of nature, which are obviously inanimate, non-volitional, and random. Nature is certainly not moral; when a disease attacks a person it really doesn’t care whether he’s a pure one-day-old baby, and a medicine doesn’t care that it heals a murderer. Those are completely different kinds of laws.
Jewish law—even if it was written by God, who is an intelligent, thinking being with desires—can’t write something just arbitrarily immoral. You yourself said that God expects us to be moral.

Yes. I explained that. God wants us to be moral, and also to achieve the religious goals. It is not in His hands to write something else. See column 457 regarding morality, and there in the talkbacks or in the responsa the possibility came up that this may also be true regarding Jewish law.
God, being a moral being, wants us to be healthy and wants us to enjoy ourselves. So why does the reality He created not always allow that? And why does morality not always allow that? And why does Jewish law not always allow that?
The fact that God wants the attainment of several goals that sometimes conflict doesn’t mean He doesn’t want one of them.

Completely aside from that, there is no moral problem whatsoever (not even a primitive one) with marrying two women, nor with the fact that it isn’t the other way around. This whole current reality today does not stem from some kind of modern morality, but from the fact that women have become more assertive (which is not a problem in itself, of course—unless it comes at the expense of their femininity, in which case it’s no longer assertiveness), but mainly from the fact that men have become very mentally weak (which is a very big problem). On the primitive level of sexual attraction between men and women, nothing has changed even since the period of our “being” mammals, where that’s the situation. No male (among mammals, generally speaking) in nature will allow another male to mate with his female—but not vice versa. In nature females want only one male: the strongest male. It’s a biological matter that perhaps should be investigated, or maybe it’s already known why it is this way. On the spiritual and emotional level too there should be such a fit. Of course there is no obligation to marry several women (and it’s doubtful whether there is the financial or emotional ability), but as far as I’m concerned, a real man (that is, masculine) ought to have the capacity to be so attractive in terms of his masculinity that women would be drawn to him to the point that they would agree to be second and third wives, etc. Likewise, such a real man is not pluralistic and not tolerant of the possibility that his wife would conduct a relationship with another man, and every woman in practice would scorn such a man (would not see him as a man) and would ultimately leave him.
By contrast, femininity doesn’t have that aspect, as I said. Females want the strongest male there is, and only one such male. Femininity is indeed a human matter and more than just an animal instinct, but it rests atop that level and does not replace it.

As stated, this is not the reason the Torah forbade or permitted something in this area. It simply left the existing state of the ancient world in place, with some restrictions that do not contradict reason (forbidden sexual relations, etc.). And Rabbenu Gershom’s ban too was not basically meant to make the original Torah law more “moral” (especially in the eyes of the gentiles), but because it was apparently the need of the hour.

A similar principle, by the way, also applies regarding a married woman. For all that the sages mentioned that “the Torah spoke against the evil inclination,” they had no problem mentioning elsewhere in passing that David had 400 sons from beautiful women… All today’s talk about morality in this matter is connected to the fact that warfare today is face-to-face and aggressive like in the ancient world. It’s a natural phenomenon among males (not only mammals) that after physical struggles (especially over territory and females) and victory in such struggles, testosterone levels rise a great deal in the victor’s body (at that time). In such a situation, to restrain the sexual urge and the aggression that comes with such an increase in testosterone was probably something on the verge of an impulse that cannot be conquered. I can calmly guess that if the Torah had forbidden the beautiful captive woman, then the peoples of that time would have said the Torah was abnormal and stupid, etc. In the end, you can’t find favor in everyone’s eyes. In this case the Torah created a kind of balance between the animal reality and the human reality (it required marrying the beautiful captive woman before the rape, or only after one time—there is a tannaitic dispute).

First of all, I don’t think that if a woman is assertive she isn’t feminine. And if women, biologically or however you want to call it, have less of a problem with their man having several wives, that doesn’t mean it’s okay—it’s still primitive, don’t normalize it (besides, a woman can be very jealous and possessive, so it makes sense that she too would want to be the only woman for her man…).
Second, I don’t think modern morality is only because women became more assertive, but also because it’s simply the most sensible and what works best.
Just like in the past they thought a woman belonged “in the kitchen,” which also seems primitive to me, women today are proving in practice how untrue that is. It’s not always the case that primitiveness = the “pure and rooted” truth.

To Adi,
You didn’t understand.
I didn’t say that if a woman is assertive then she isn’t feminine, but that it can happen, and often does. In that case it’s not right to call them assertive but aggressive. That is indeed the common case. Pure assertiveness—that is, on the one hand the woman is not a sucker (and knows not to give up what’s hers), but she is also not coarse and rough and shouty and neurotic, but feminine—is very, very rare. For women it is even harder to find that balance than for men, among whom it too is hardly found. I know very few women like that in my life. Those were probably also the ancient prophetesses (Deborah, Miriam), or Abigail wife of David.

Second, regarding whether the woman does or doesn’t have a problem with her husband having additional wives, that neither detracts from nor adds to her femininity. What I said was that I think a man should have such a level of attractiveness that it would break and overcome every desire for exclusivity (and possessiveness and jealousy) for the sake of a relationship with him… The woman is not relevant at all to this discussion.
Primitiveness in its plain sense is not something normal or abnormal, but something basic and primary. There’s nothing here that needs to be normalized. If there were a very great man whom many educated and successful women would want as a husband even if he had several wives already, there would be nothing abnormal about that (and not primitive in the negative sense—not developed), because everything would be with consent and awareness. Such a man—if the rest of the people of his country felt toward him that they were like children—could also be king over them, and that too would not be primitive (in the negative sense).
The reality today is that most men have become very mentally weak (compared to the past), not to say actual softies. Globally this is not a decline but part of human development. Just as when a person becomes educated and wiser he also engages less in physical fitness and loses physical ability and strength and muscle mass. Besides that, when a person becomes wiser he also becomes more fearful and therefore weaker. But ultimately that is a serious flaw. Wholeness is wisdom and strength and courage and a strong mentality. And that will happen in the next stage of human social development. Even today you can see how mentally weak the West is compared to the East, and how the Americans (and the Europeans) grovel before the evil Iranians who are physically dozens of times weaker than they are, just out of fear of changes in oil prices and a drop in their material standard of living.

In truth there is nothing more self-evident about monogamy than about polygamy. There are people for whom it suits their personality and authority and masculinity and their financial abilities, and there are those for whom it does not.
And it certainly doesn’t work better—and that is especially so when in the West divorce rates are 50% (that’s what people keep saying, and in Israel 33%), and people also keep saying morning and night that marriage is not a natural thing and there is infidelity, etc. Marriage is indeed something unnatural—but it is supposed to be supernatural (just as the human being, relative to animals, is supernatural). And once that super-naturality is supplied, it can also work with one man and a thousand women.

Primitiveness is not the rooted truth, but any human behavioral norm that fights it head-on and tries to uproot it from its foundation is a lie and a falsification destined to collapse. Man is supposed to be “supernatural,” not merely “unnatural.” By the way, I’m writing this from life experience and observation, not in order to justify or explain the laws of the Torah. True, I was always religious and didn’t know all this. But in every such contradiction between the Torah and modern worldviews and society, I knew to leave things as requiring further study and not get worked up by every difficulty (thanks to excellent education from a very young age). If two things feel true to me (or I believe in their truth) and they contradict each other, I won’t reject one because of the other, and I’ll wait for the third text that will decide between them. By the way, until today, that has worked wonderfully. And in everything connected to norms of human society, almost always (always, except slavery for now—and even today you won’t find anyone asking why the Torah didn’t forbid slavery. I even have an almost complete explanation for why the punishment for rape is so lenient relative to today) the Torah ultimately “won,” after many years of thought and reflection, over the feeling of “morality” or the modern norm. That does not happen, by the way, between the Torah and the scientific view of reality (of the natural sciences).

Wow, okay, I’ll try to respond to what you said because it seems you brought in all kinds of topics,
and I want to make a bit of order in my head.
I’m glad you changed the term from assertiveness to aggressiveness; that definitely better describes what you wanted to explain last time (that it’s less feminine), but you’re talking about some kind of special balance—I’d like you to explain more what you mean. Most women are what, exactly? What direction are you aiming at? You also keep saying that men have become mentally weak and softies. To me that’s just a claim; maybe it’s true in certain contexts, like you said that the more a person is wise and studies, the less physically strong he is, but generally I don’t think that’s the situation. Maybe you say it because women have become stronger and more influential, so the men are weakening, but that’s just an excuse. Someone who wants to be strong and influential shouldn’t be bothered by other people also being strong; there’s room for everyone (at least there should be in a proper society. The fact that some people try to outdo or belittle others isn’t ideal…)
As for one man with many women—I can agree that in theory it can work, but on the practical and implementational level it’s not all that relevant, especially after the whole modern revolution (women’s access to higher education, the right to vote). In that context you said, and I quote: “Primitiveness is not the rooted truth, but any human behavioral norm that fights it head-on and tries to uproot it from its foundation is a lie and a falsification destined to collapse”—if by definition multiple women for one man is the primitive state (and I’ll add that this also exists among animals, like several lionesses for one lion…), then what are you saying people are trying to uproot? Reality proves that it simply works, and I said that before too, so I don’t see it collapsing anytime soon—if anything, it seems to be on the rise and developing.
In this part you already drifted to a somewhat different topic, but I’ll say anyway that you do seem to look at things critically and broadly, and not dismiss or confirm things too quickly.
You also raised the topic of slavery as something that, if I understood correctly, does not align with the norms of human society—but what does that have to do with the punishment for rape? (It’s also interesting why it really is relatively lenient.)
And you also wrote that the Torah “won” over the feeling of “morality” or the modern norm, and that this does not happen between the Torah and the scientific view of reality—meaning there it doesn’t “win”? Because from what I know, usually when there are scientific contradictions between Torah and science, people interpret it as allegory, metaphor, or even an acceptable human error that should not lead one to reject the whole Torah because of it.

I wrote a comment as long as the exile, and because of a technical problem it wasn’t posted. So I’ll write briefly.

I mean that the overwhelming majority of women do not have such a balance. Assertiveness among them is much rarer than among men, among whom it too is almost nonexistent nowadays (“one man among a thousand I found,” etc., “I found none”). I don’t know what I’m supposed to be excusing when you say I’m trying to make excuses. Excuses are given for difficulties. What difficulty am I trying to excuse? I’m saying explicitly that men have become softies. Women by themselves have no strength or influence over society as a whole, unless men give it to them and allow them such influence. If only because men are stronger than women both physically and mentally. If women have become more educated, then by the same token men have also become more educated. All women’s progress in the social hierarchy stems, broadly speaking, from the ego of men and from men’s war and competition with each other. There is no real “progress” here. If women were all to decide to go out against all men (as progressive feminists of various sorts want to do), they would return to the Stone Age in terms of consciousness and education. Don’t fool yourself with this idea that “there’s room for everyone.” The overwhelming majority of men (except for a few righteous figures like Rabbi Kook and Rabbi Ashlag) compete with one another, even subconsciously, and women all the more so.

Multiple wives is not something primitive in itself, but something that existed in primitive reality because of the very large gap (mental, educational, and economic) that existed between men and women (a gap like between adults and children). There is no point in uprooting it (just as there is no point in encouraging it), since in truth there is no point in reducing the gap between men and women (especially when it comes at the expense of men’s advancement), just as there is likewise no point in increasing the existing gap. Preoccupation with gaps and reducing them is sociology without value (something of value is something that advances humanity as a whole as one organism, like finding a cure for cancer, for example). That is: primitiveness is not in itself a negative thing but a basic one. It becomes negative in a place where there is an expectation that the basic thing should develop, and for some reason it still has not developed. Or alternatively, a primitive reality is negative or coarse relative to a more developed reality than itself, and that too only if one thinks that the primitive reality should already have developed. A child is primitive (childish thinking is primitive), but there is nothing wrong with being a child. There is a problem with being a child who never grows up and is already 250 years old and still a child (even if physically he hasn’t aged a single day since age 8). Even today, if a great and wise man were to arise relative to whom many women would feel like children in relation to an adult (there is a big mental gap), then no one would feel any problem with all of them marrying him. On the contrary, reality actually shows that a man who has the option of a relationship with many other attractive women is considered even more desirable in the eyes of every current partner he has. For some strange reason, jealousy increases a woman’s desire for her partner.
Reality does not prove that monogamy is what works, since today the divorce rate in developed Western society is a thousand times higher than that of primitive societies and even of ancient times. And that’s even after filtering out the effect of lack of divorce due to shame and social pressure that exists in primitive societies—and certainly not in ancient times. In short, polygamy (with the full consent of all participants) is a completely legitimate thing, especially in the eyes of someone who considers himself liberal.

I mentioned slavery and the punishment for rape as two more realities in which there is a contradiction between the Torah’s attitude toward them and the modern attitude, and I also claimed that I have a good explanation for the case of rape too. Slavery is really the only thing that existed in the ancient world that truly is not connected to primitive reality (in the neutral sense).

Regarding contradictions between Torah and science, the contradiction is much more than some isolated issue like the contradiction between the age of the world according to science and according to the Torah, or the matter of the evolution of the human species from animals or its creation as a separate creature. I don’t believe in and don’t like excuses (“metaphors”) in order to keep living the usual sleepy religious life. As far as I’m concerned, if there is no indication that part of the Torah is not supposed to be interpreted in its plain simple sense (an indication from other parts of the Torah or from the rest of Scripture), then it should be interpreted in its plain simple sense. For example, I believe the world was created in six days of 24 hours like ours. Instead of excuses, I look for real explanations that illuminate the eyes. A real explanation gives you much more than just resolving difficulties. And here the gap between Torah and science is very large, because there is between them a gap of language (and therefore worldview) in explaining natural and human reality. The language of science is the language of mechanical science and blind, random deterministic causality, as opposed to the language of the Torah, which is a mythological language—that is, of a world purposefully created teleologically, with prior intention, by an intelligence that oversees it and is fashioned in human-like terms. Therefore the thought that needs to be invested here is far beyond what has been invested up to now (there is indeed an explanation for this gap in Kabbalah and in the writings of Rabbi Moshe Chaim Luzzatto and the Maharal, but I cannot elaborate here).