Jewish Men, Women, and Shomer Negiah

BOSTON — One time, I was on a date with a won­der­ful girl. The evening was amaz­ing — a tasty din­ner, a few drinks, and great con­ver­sa­tion. We were laugh­ing and jok­ing. Every­thing was going extremely well, unlike most of the sto­ries I hear from other Jew­ish men.

Shomer Negiah

Then, after she vol­un­teered to give me a lift to my apart­ment, I gave her a kiss on the cheek just before I left the car. At the exact moment that my lips touched her cheek, I felt an imme­di­ate sense of cold revul­sion. All of the energy and excite­ment of the date dis­ap­peared in a puff of dis­gust. Some­how I knew that she had also sensed the same feel­ing, and that was the first and last time we saw each other.

Dat­ing colum­nists can opine all they want about attrib­utes like looks, money, and per­son­al­ity. But the hard fact is that some­times there is sim­ply no phys­i­cal chem­istry between two peo­ple even though they get along extremely well. (I think the lat­est the­o­ries on the rea­sons have to do with hor­mones and immune-system com­pat­i­bil­ity.)

This leads me to an obser­va­tion. In tra­di­tional, Ortho­dox Judaism — and prob­a­bly in sev­eral other reli­gions and tra­di­tional cul­tures as well — Jew­ish sin­gles are not sup­posed to touch another mem­ber of the oppo­site sex that is nei­ther a close rel­a­tive nor a spouse. Not even a hug or a hand­shake. This is the Tal­mu­dic prin­ci­ple of shomer negiah, which is meant to avoid any temp­ta­tion to have pre­mar­i­tal sex or com­mit adul­tery — a hand­shake can turn into a hug, which can turn into a kiss, and so on. Although, as Frum Satire wryly notes, there is even a hazy line in Ortho­dox com­mu­ni­ties.

Ortho­dox Dating

But, as I noted above — and as count­less sin­gle and formerly-single peo­ple have prob­a­bly also seen — some­times there is sim­ply no chem­istry when peo­ple start to become inti­mate phys­i­cally. Some­times just kiss­ing some­one or hold­ing a person’s hand can reveal whether there is any chem­istry. It is dif­fi­cult to see if chem­istry exists when the most a cou­ple can do is sit close to each other and talk. (Under tra­di­tional, Jew­ish law, the cou­ple can­not even be in the same room alone.)

Now, it is obvi­ous that chem­istry is indeed impor­tant in a mar­riage. But my ques­tion is: How do Ortho­dox Jews who fol­low shomer negiah deter­mine if there is any chem­istry in a rela­tion­ship? Maybe I’m a typically-dense guy who is clue­less about these types of things, but I do won­der since I’m a newly-observant, modern-Orthodox Jew here in Israel who is still learning.