Ninth in an ongoing series of essays
BANGALORE, India — While I was traveling to the Silicon Valley of the East in December 2006 with my Suffolk University M.B.A. class in Boston to study business there for a week, I popped into a local tourist trap to look at some Indian trinkets I had wanted to buy for my family.
As it turned out, the owners (above) were Indian Muslims from the disputed area of Kashmir. And they could not have been nicer. Part of the reason, I’m sure, was the fact that, to them, I was a “rich” American wanting to spend money. But the other half was the fact they were genuinely pleasant since India has a history of tolerance and civility rooted both in thousands of years of culture and also in British politeness from the colonial era. Moreover, at least in terms of Hindus and Buddhists, polytheistic religions tend to be more tolerant than monotheistic ones. (Still, I sometimes found Indian people to be infuriatingly polite — even for someone with American background who is also an Anglophile and Israeli.)
Between haggling on the prices — in retrospect, I was not very good since I had not yet moved to Israel and learned the art — we discussed India and religion over coffee. Their family, so I was told, made rugs and clothing in Kashmir and then sold the products in Bangalore to Westerners like me.
During the trip, I usually hid the fact that I was Jewish — even though we were there over Chanukah — since India has 161 million Muslims, a few of whom would later attack the Chabad house in India in 2008. I only lit a hanukkia (menorah) in my hotel room, though it was probably against regulations.
(I did wear a kippah — a yarmulke — on the first night of the holiday, which the class spent in a restaurant, and I received only a few curious looks in response. India has always had a small Jewish population, but most moved to Israel in modern times.)
But since I was comfortable with the shop owners, I eventually told them on a second visit that I was Jewish because I was fascinated during our discussion of religion in India. (You can take the journalist out of a newspaper, but you can never take the journalist out of him.) The chief owner, the man, seemed merely bemused — probably because he had likely never met a Jew before. (I also told an Egyptian doctor on a boat cruise on the Nile River that I was American, Jewish, and Israeli when I had traveled to Cairo in July 2008, and she was extremely cordial about it. But she added that I should not tell too many people in Egypt about the last two parts.)
So, as I walked with the owner to process my order after finalizing the purchase, we sat at a desk in a back room. (Many places in India, of course, do not have the same rapid-technology in regards to credit-card processing.) Out of politeness and small-talk, I told him that both he and his wife had been extremely nice.
The owner responded, “She’s not my wife; she is my sister.” I apologized for making an incorrect assumption. And then he said something — in all seriousness — that made me dumbstruck, especially since he knew that I was Jewish: “You know, she is not married.” (I was 26 at the time, and I think she was roughly the same age.)
Several of my friends from Boston joined the U.S. Peace Corps after college, and I later heard stories of local men in remote countries offering vast amounts of livestock to the male volunteers in exchange for marrying their daughters. But this was the first time I had ever encountered anything personally. (A few years later, an Israeli girl offered me NIS 20,000 — roughly $5,000 — to marry her so she could obtain a Green Card. I declined.) I was shocked at the implicit offer and did not know how to respond. After a few seconds, I laughed nervously and changed the subject. And that was that.
I had not thought about this story in a long time, but it came mind as I have been observing how the dating world differs between the West (as well as secular Israelis) and Orthodox Jews in general. In essence, it may come down to the head versus the heart.
Modern marriage — the view that two people love each other emotionally (and, if you believe, spiritually) and then decide to build a life and family together — is a relatively new concept that seems to have begun in medieval Europe. Prior to that time, women — at least those in the upper classes — were viewed as property that were a part of business negotiations, familial alliances, and international politics.
In ancient Greece, women were essentially slaves that were viewed as inferior to men. (This is why Greece was not exactly the prototype of a free democracy.) In fact, the highest level of love was viewed at the time as only possibly existing between two men — or even a man and a boy. (This is something they do not teach in high school.) Women were simply a biological necessity with whom it was required to sire offspring.
In medieval Europe, daughters of the upper class were essentially sold to cement alliances between countries and increase the wealth of the family that “sold” the woman to her future husband. (If your daughter was hot, she could be worth 1,000 acres of land!)
However, women were understandably dissatisfied with these arrangements. As a result, the idea of romantic love originated in the medieval West with suitors who attempted to woo wives while their husbands — whom they rarely loved — were away. When husbands were out fighting in the Crusades or charging into battles for months at a time, a troubadour would visit a castle, sing under the window, and hopefully engage in liaisons dangereuses — under the threat of death if he was ever caught.
And this is where the modern construct of marriage — marrying for love — began. (Poor women — those in the Middle Ages who, in the immortal words of Monty Python, “didn’t have sh-t all over them” — were more free to marry those whom they wanted because they had no chance to increase their family’s wealth unless they were exceptionally beautiful. But the attitude of the upper class eventually filtered down the social ladder over decades and centuries.) And as the feminist revolution rightly emancipated women and made them completely equal under the law — at least in Western countries — in the last century, they were finally able to have their own say in whom they marry.
But today, traditional attitudes still remain in certain communities and countries. In places with endemic poverty — and especially where women are still viewed as having lower status, if even unofficially — family members still want their daughters, sisters, and nieces to marry someone with money simply because they want them to have a better life. And for all the headlines proclaiming India’s high-tech revolution, the vast majority of people there are still destitute.
My M.B.A. class toured the facilities of companies like Intel in India, and nearby there was a tent city full of impoverished, unemployed people right next door to a glossy building with shiny windows and full of suit-wearing businessmen. The contrast was striking. I snapped the above picture of a beggar after giving her money, asking if I could take a photo, and then thanking her with the traditional, Indian pose of clasping hands with a slight bow from the waist. I was still in my journalist-mindset, and I thought that the documentation of the poverty was worth any exploitation that she may have felt. I have her 500 rupees — a lot of money for India but worth $11 to me.
Look closely — she has no hands. Her attempt at a smile still haunts me. Most Americans who consider themselves poor are not really poor.
The female shopkeeper was not as poor — most likely, she and her brother were part of India’s merchant middle-class. But I am sure that she would have married me in a heartbeat if I had been interested. It would have been a logical thing to do. In theory, we would have learned to love each other.
In a different way, marriage in Orthodox Judaism is also viewed from a logical standpoint. People consider potential partners first from a rational standpoint — similarity in religious practice, personal goals, future plans, financial security, the number of desired children, and so on. (And as I wrote before, Orthodox Jews are officially shomer negiah as well — no touching before marriage, not even a handshake — even though it’s a not-so-secret reality that few adhere to the practice.)
After they narrow the field down to people who would work rationally, most Orthodox Jews then see with which of those people they have a “connection.” (Still, ultra-Orthodox Jews do not do the second part — they become engaged after two or three dates.) And then, usually within six months or less, they agree to get married. This practice contrasts to that in the Western world — and secular Israel — in which people first decide with whom they have a “connection” and then try to make it work rationally with that person.
From India to Israel to the United States, the dating paradigm seems to consist of two, general approaches:
- first head, then heart (if even the heart)
- first heart, then head
I see benefits and drawbacks to each:
- Head before heart: Running a household is akin to running a small business — every “manager” needs to be on the same page. Love and emotion cannot eliminate conflicts over concrete issues like money, children, religion, money, sex life, and jobs. The initial rush of emotion always dissipates over time and is (hopefully) replaced by a deeper, more-meaningful feeling anyway.
- Heart before head: No one wants to end up in a loveless, sexless marriage. Everyone wants the energetic connection to last forever. Two people can be compatible in every logical way, but sometimes the connection just never appears — imagine a marriage in which both people move to the “friend zone” at best. It is important that such a feeling is present before even considering marriage.
Relations between men and women have always been complicated ever since we evolved into primates, and it is a luxury and issue that someone fortunate and lucky enough to have my life — unlike, say, the destitute in India — can afford to have and analyze. But the issue still exists.
As I reflect on the dating lives of myself and my friends, it becomes evident that men, of course, tend to be more logical while women are generally more emotional. Men make value judgments on a woman’s attractiveness — after all, the definition of beauty is fairly uniform across cultures — and evaluate whether a woman is, to be blunt, crazy. Women, at least when they are younger, put more emphasis on the interpersonal chemistry. (Dates have told my male friends that they just do not “feel” anything — but this is a statement that a man would rarely say.) Females, however, do begin to assign greater emphasis on rational issues like money and security when they begin looking for marriage rather than a so-called hook-up.
Everyone, of course, wants a perfect combination of the head and heart. But unless a person rates, say, eight or higher on the proverbial dating-scale, he or she must become more realistic and make a choice. So, the question still stands: what paradigm, in terms of marriage, should take priority — the head or the heart?
In contrast to places like India, people in the West have the luxury to ponder these issues. But that does not mean it is still simple.
Prior essay: Moving to Israel. Related essay: The Battle of the Sexes.
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I think Newsweek’s Evan Thomas perhaps gets it right when he says, Government Is Not the Problem: we are.
