Prostitutes Zion, Whores in Zion (US)

The Jewish minority seeks to defend itself from social absorption and cultural- religious assimilation, by demanding that rabbinic Jews refrain from mundane forms of social contact with the neighboring Gentile such as eating and drinking together. So I came out to meet you; I looked for you and have found you!

Today, therefore, in the ultra-Orthodox community even the purchase of cell phones must be authorized as Prostitutes Zion. To enter experientially into the fantasy world of ancient readers of these tales, we Prostitutes Zion recall that the Judean world is provincial, while the harlot by the sea resides in the center of an urbane Mediterranean culture in its great port cities.

Imagine a small town young man booking a hot weekend in an exclusive hotel in Las Vegas. He must save his money so he can pay top dollar for the penthouse suite. A: It allows talking, only. The software installed in the Kosher Phone makes it reasonably difficult to Prostitutes Zion texting and internet capabilities.

It also does not accept an SD card, has no camera or Bluetooth capabilities. STAR-K recognizes the dangers inherent in unmonitored, unguarded internet access. The significance of the dilemma these rabbis face is the choice between two images of paradise. On one side, there is glamorous sex acquired by money, and on the other, the reward earned by self- control and scrupulous obedience to mitzvot. Religious elites are well- aware that in competing for religious allegiance with a pagan culture of hedonist indulgence they must offer an equally Prostitutes Zion paradise.

If living virtuously in this world requires self-control and delayed gratification, then the next world must provide long-deferred sensual gratifications on a spectacular scale. In the Quran, we find a description of the world-to-come earned by faithful Muslims that mirrors the lavish houses of Prostitutes Zion described in our rabbinic tales. And so it will be. And We shall wed them unto fair ones with wide, lovely eyes.

Thus shall it beand We will wed them with houris pure, beautiful ones. Besides, the penis of the Elected never softens. The erection is eternal; the sensation that you feel each time you make love is utterly delicious and out of this world and were you to experience it in this world you would faint. Each chosen one [i. He thought: I know Prostitutes Zion is no idol-worshipper [so giving him a gift on his pagan holiday is not prohibited].

When he came into Prostitutes Zion house he found him sitting up to his neck in a bath of rosewater and surrounded by naked prostitutes. Prostitutes Zion to Rabbah, Jews need not feel brothel-envy.

The Jewish Prostitutes Zion will Prostitutes Zion any orgy. The disciple of Rabbi Hiyya gives up his worldly satisfaction out of fear for the much greater pain of punishment in the world-to-come.

Authorities say the men were passing out business cards advertising a prostitution operation in unincorporated Zion. Lake County, Illinois Prostitution Defense Attorney. Prostitution. Sex Crimes Defense Lawyer Serving Deerfield, Waukegan, and Zion.

Eventually, however, the student will merit this-worldly sex with his prostitute- turned-wife, while avoiding the punishments of the next world. He will enjoy the best of both worlds as a result of resisting the pleasures he had purchased from this call girl. Surprisingly, in this rabbinic literary genre, what happens during the sexual encounter with the pagan prostitute is truly memorable but not for its orgiastic pleasures, its lavish beds or Prostitutes Zion silk linens.

Our protagonist will never forget the spiritual insights discovered in the depths of moral squalor. Surprisingly, the prostitutes are not blamed for tempting these Jews to sin. This favorable image of the prostitute contrasts starkly with the stock Biblical motif of non-Jewish women as dangerously seductive sexual predators. For example, the Prostitutes Zion of Moab and Amon seduce their father Lot; Delilah entices Samson, betrays him and leads him to his downfall.

She goes on the prowl to entrap her prey, while he does not know his life is Prostitutes Zion stake Prov. Visiting these prostitutes is simply an expensive, if unsavory, male avocation. So too Judah visited Tamar, when he, as a widower, needed some sexual diversion.

What is unusual in the rabbinic stories is the role of the Prostitutes Zion prostitutes in redeeming their clients from sin.

I saw among the fools, I noticed Prostitutes Zion the young men, a youth who had no sense. He was going down the street near her corner, walking along in the direction of her house at twilight, as the day was fading, as the dark of night set in. Then out came a woman to meet him, dressed like a prostitute and with crafty intent.

She is unruly and defiant; her feet never stay at home; now in the street, now in the squares, at every corner she lurks. So I came out to meet you; I looked for you and have found you! I have covered Prostitutes Zion bed with colored linens from Egypt. I have perfumed my bed with myrrh, aloes and cinnamon.

My husband is not at home; he has gone on a long journey. He took his purse filled with money and will not be home till full moon.

All at once he followed her like an ox going to the slaughter,like a deer stepping into a noose till an Prostitutes Zion pierces his liver, like a bird darting into a snare, little knowing it will cost him his life. Now then, Prostitutes Zion sons, listen to me; pay attention to what I say. Do not let your heart turn to her ways or stray into her paths. Many are the victims she has brought down; her slain are a mighty throng.

Her house is a highway to the grave, leading down to the chambers of death. See also Prov. Can we find a Biblical Prostitutes Zion of a prostitute who saves her Jewish client from sin? While many foreign women in the Bible are portrayed as sexual predators and others merely as sex workers, two unique Prostitutes Zion prostitutes help rescue their Jewish clients. Prostitutes Zion I would like to propose a Prostitutes Zion model of the harlot in the Bible in order to contextualize these two prostitutes in our rabbinic tales.

The redemptive harlot is both Prostitutes Zion and cunning. They serve recognized, beneficial social functions, though not prestigious ones. Prostitutes Zion hosts — probably as paying clients — Joshua's hapless spies, and then on her own initiative she hides them from the authorities and Prostitutes Zion the official search party sent by the King of Jericho to her inn.

Providently, she plans the escape route of the spies and, in return, asks for her family to be saved Prostitutes Zion her future conquerors. Rahav and the spies exchange promises guaranteed by an oath.

There and in the Book of Joshua, the Divine command is to exterminate all Canaanites as pagans rather Prostitutes Zion taking their women as spoils of war, lest they become a temptation to the holy people of Israel to prostitute itself to idolatry. Yet Rahav proves herself a powerful monotheist theologian who praises God's acts of salvation of Israel from Egypt.

Rahab, the quintessential outsider, has gone a long way toward transforming herself into an Israelite insider capable of making an exemplary Israelite statement of faith. She merits an explicit mention of her name, while Prostitutes Zion Biblical women who are not matriarchs and the two Hebrew spies themselves remain anonymous.

Spina shows how Rahav and Akhan are juxtaposed as narrative opposites and Prostitutes Zion each undermines the official theology of the Books of Deuteronomy and Joshua that preaches that Israel is the holy community, while the other, ethnic Canaanites are Prostitutes Zion and corrupt idolaters. It is her polar opposite Akhan, from the tribe of Judah, descended from the ancestors of the future royalty of Israel, from Zerah, son of Judah Prostitutes Zion Tamar, who brings shame and moral and military defeat on Israel.

For stealing from the spoils of Jericho Prostitutes Zion had been dedicated exclusively to God, Akhan is excluded from the community and exterminated by ritual stoning along with his whole family. Prostitutes Zion contrast, Rahav and her family are incorporated into the people of Israel forever Joshua Rahav reports, in a religious language echoing the Song of the Red Sea, that the heart of the Canaanites has melted and they will flee the battle Joshua Outsiders are only a confession away from being included, while outsiders are only a violation away from being excluded The lowly level of a Canaanite prostitute becomes an insider of the magnitude of a mother of the faith.

The faith of the outsider is educative Prostitutes Zion Israel, who are inveterate backsliders often attracted to the outside culture. The more Prostitutes Zion the outsider's starting point — an enemy, a Canaanite, a whore — Prostitutes Zion more miraculous the transformation and the recognition of God's truth.

The midrash enhances the trajectory of the "outsider becoming the insider" when Rahav marries Joshua and produces priests and prophets such as Jeremiah24 and Hulda. Tamar dresses up like a prostitute to have intercourse with her father-in-law Judah to produce an heir for herself and her deceased husband, as Judah was supposed to do. She redeems the line of Judah from extinction, but she also teaches Prostitutes Zion a moral lesson when she confronts him. In response, he repents and admits she was right to Prostitutes Zion the harlot with him.

In contemporary cinematography27 Julia Roberts plays that redemptive role as Vivian in "Pretty Woman. She succeeds in opening the eyes of her fabulously wealthy but emotionally scarred, corrupt capitalist client.

Prostitutes Zion a therapist and Prostitutes Zion spiritual counselor, Vivian the prostitute helps him heal his relationship to his father and thereby redeem her employer-cum- patient from his rapacious business practices and from the influence of his unscrupulous partner.

In the end, the poor prostitute and the rich buy-out king fall in love. They Prostitutes Zion one another respectively from a wasted life of prostitution and from a vacuous existence gobbling up and destroying useful but vulnerable businesses. More importantly, they redeem each other from a loveless life of exploitation. Let us keep their image in mind when comparing the less heroic but still redemptive roles the prostitutes play in our rabbinic tales.

This spiritual turning obstructs, or at least delays, the long-awaited consummation of his sexual quest. She tries to figure out what happened to this unusual student and then she decides to follow him home. While Prostitutes Zion tale is very short, it is pregnant with enigmatic meanings. While we hope to find deep spiritual and psychological significance in this narrative, we should not forget the entertainment value of such crowd-pleasing oral storytelling.

But, as for its reward sakhar in the world-to-come, I know not how much it will be]. Go and learn this [principle] from the [light] commandment of tzitzit. But the Hebrew text below is exclusively from TB Menahot Prostitutes Zion.

Parenthetical comments are added to the translation to enable the reader Prostitutes Zion follow the flow of the plot and identify Biblical Prostitutes Zion.

Her maidservant entered [her Prostitutes Zion and said to her: "The man who set the appointment [or, who sent you the gold pieces] is sitting at the entrance of the house. He too ascended in order to sit naked opposite her. He slipped down [from the seventh Prostitutes Zion, and Prostitutes Zion on the ground.

She too slipped down, and sat on the ground. She said to him: "By the Roman Capitol! I have not seen any blemish in you, rather there is no woman as beautiful as you in the whole world! Now they the four tzitzit on my four-cornered garment have appeared to me as four witnesses! Act Prostitutes Zion Her Quest She Prostitutes Zion and apportioned all her wealth: a third to the [Roman] government,xiv a third to the poor, and a third she took with her in her hand. However, under pagan Rome before CE she probably would have had to pay the Roman authorities Prostitutes Zion back taxes since prostitutes were registered entrepreneurs on the tax rolls of the city.

See W. Sanger, The History of Prostitution, 65, 70 xv Yisrael Hazani notes that the associative tie between prostitution and sheets is implicit in the verse you recline like a prostitute Jeremiah And she went to the house of study of Rabbi Hiyya [or Rabbi Meir].

Those beds which she had prepared for you illicitly, she shall prepare for you permissibly! But in Prostitutes Zion story the prostitute's motives are considered pure, even though she also wishes to marry the student. But her purity of motive was inherent in the larger story she told explaining how she obtained the note. Her motive for conversion was "the great miracle that occurred when the tzitzit hit the student in the face. It explores the theological theme of reward for mitzvot in Prostitutes Zion and preaches the value of a particular religious behavior — wearing tzitzit.

Yet from a literary point of view, the tale is independent of Prostitutes Zion Talmudic editing and context, so its primary moral lesson should be derived from the inner workings of the story, and only secondarily from its external context. At the end of the act-by-act commentary in the next chapter, we will look at the whole story and compare its various modern interpretations.

Then it will be appropriate to consider how the ancient interpreters, who first contextualized the story in its Talmudic sugya, fashioned its transitional Prologue and the various Prostitutes Zion found in divergent manuscripts. Such voyages always involve a test of mettle. The classical hero is often Prostitutes Zion in advance of his challenges and outfitted with a talisman, magical weapons or incantations.

For example, Odysseus, possessor of cunning intelligence and versatility, is forewarned and forearmed by his wise patron god, Hermes, for his encounter with the seductive Sirens. The Biblical rationale for wearing these tassel knots is to sound a warning about the temptations of the eyes. If one heeds the tzitzit that remind one to perform the mitzvot wherever one goes, then the tzitzit will bring Divine redemption for us, just as God redeemed Israel from Egypt xviii In some manuscripts, the student sets the time, thus showing he is in command as a paying client.

Of course, the tzitzit do not encourage Prostitutes Zion student to take such a risky voyage in order to become a Prostitutes Zion. They do, however, function as a talisman to save him from temptations during the voyage and to bring him home uncorrupted by the temptation Prostitutes Zion the prostitute which functions in the plot like the seduction of the Sirens for Odysseus.

The talisman works not as a magical protective charm, but as a personified voice of rebuke compelling the student Prostitutes Zion make a moral decision and not to forget the consequences of his actions. Rashi Prostitutes Zion the eyes and the heart meraglim spies for the body.

He uses a word that is pejorative, conveying that things are not always the way they appear. Like spies, our Prostitutes Zion are Prostitutes Zion on the lookout, absorbing new information, making judgments, and arriving at conclusions. Like a spy caught, our eyes can betray us mightily, leading us on and letting our best selves down The passages that precede this commandment are all about spying behavior Prostitutes Zion its worst: superficial visual intake, subjective reporting, and premature judgment.

The emphasis in the spy narrative on the visual is also prominent; we find the use of the eyes mentioned repeatedly: The country that we traversed and scouted is one that devours its settlers. All the people that we saw in it Prostitutes Zion men of great size; we saw the giants there The mitzvah of tzitzit appears here in Numbers because this is where it is needed. This is where the eyes of leaders misled them; how much more so should we care about the dis- tractions posed to commoners, to ordinary individuals on the moral battlefield, not only heroes on a literal battleground.

The tzitzit are a powerful reminder of human weakness Weakness is not hidden from biblical view. It is often in full and uncomfortable view Weakness of the eyes, loss of vision, must be combatted with that which reinforces positive visions. Those epics are, however, composed in poetry in 12 or 24 books,36 while this rabbinic tale is a miniature prose epic.

This mini-epic features an ordinary student, while the Prostitutes Zion portray great aristocrats, founding ancestors, warriors and gods, who established civilizations. The anonymous protagonist trip has become, without his knowing it, a parable Prostitutes Zion a universal voyage of self- discovery, a pilgrim's progress of the soul, which he almost loses at the inn of the harlot by the Prostitutes Zion.

They are also introspective occasions for reflecting on life, achieving wisdom and facing mortality. One discovers the longing for home nostalgia and for true self as a result of encountering the enticing other.

For Odysseus, his test occurs in the world of sirens, the beautiful but ensnaring women — Calypso and Circe — who almost prevent him from making his way home. Aeneas, on the other hand, is on his way from the destruction of his ancestral home, Troy, and on the way to found its heir, Rome. Aeneas is tempted to forget his mission by his encounter with Dido, the beautiful queen of Carthage later the enemy of Rome.

The encounter reveals truth and engenders transformation. Everyday trips can also involve a fateful test of character. In the case of the student, his self-planned pilgrimage lacks formidable obstacles by which to prove himself.

Yet he seems to have no problem raising the funds. We do not know where the student got his money, Prostitutes Zion he may have inherited Prostitutes Zion the spoiled son of a wealthy family. In any case, no suffering or strenuous effort is required to finance this trip. Prostitutes Zion trip itself is described as Prostitutes Zion despite its long distance. Vertical Ascent: Seven Beds When he entered, she prepared for him seven beds, [six] of silver and the highest of gold, and between each bed there was a ladder of silver, but the topmost ladder was of gold.

Yet unlike the natural innocence of Paradise, in this house of prostitution everything is sophisticated artifice — gold and silver, ladders and beds. He climbs past six silver beds and ladders to the golden apex. The ladder, Prostitutes Zion above the other, may recall a royal throne or a staircase Prostitutes Zion the Prostitutes Zion ziggurat, or simply a fairy tale.

For Jacob that nighttime encounter with the divine is profoundly awesome, for it turns out that he Prostitutes Zion sleeping at the Gate of Heaven. Biblical Prostitutes Zion with God are often intrinsically life-threatening Gen. Having survived, Jacob negotiates with God a promise for divine protection both for his journey of escape across the Jordan River to a new and threatening world without parental supervision Prostitutes Zion for his safe return home Gen.

The finale of this trajectory of leaving home, finding his holy grail marriage and maturityand eventually returning home is assured.

On this spot where it all began, it will also climax when Jacob builds a House to God Bethel as he promised. The seven beds mirror the seven heavens of quasi-rabbinic Merkavah mystical literature c. The fact that the highest bed, which is gold, is the Prostitutes Zion in some manuscripts: xx This motif of stacked mattresses resembles somewhat the Prostitutes Zion tale of the princess and the pea in which the princess sleeps atop a large stack of mattresses because she is so sensitive to any mundane discomfort.

This prostitute by the sea has invested in her beautified bedding or bedjust as in the Book of Proverbs, the foreign woman ensnares her prey by proclaiming the charms of her bed: I have covered my bed with colored linens from Egypt. I have perfumed my bed with myrrh, aloes and cinnamon Proverbs Despite the bombastic paraphernalia of the prostitute by the sea and the epic associations of the journey, the actual rabbinic story is only a miserable parody on heavenly journeys and heroic quests by reputable heroes.

He arrives at his destination without overcoming obstacles, as we noted above, and hence without testing his mettle. At the end of his rainbow there is no Holy Grail worthy of an epic journey.

These high-sounding motifs are debased when applied to a sex-weekend with a self-promoting prostitute and a self-deluding client. Perhaps we need to think analogously of the seaside resorts of Prostitutes Zion Mediterranean in the Virgin Islands.

The Rabbinics scholar Mira Balberg41 explains that for Judeans residing in the ancestral, provincial mountains of Judea and Samaria, the Mediterranean Sea and its cosmopolitan culture was exotic; the world of seafarers, such as Phoenicians and Greeks was foreign.

Hence, we Prostitutes Zion not mix with the many nations. Our cities are built far from the sea. We live simply as farmers, raising our children and keeping the laws of our God, while the sea people are ambitious to trade, to accumulate wealth and hence to enter into trade with all the nations of the world. The salt waters of the open seas represent a threatening chaos, while the harlot represents the allure of the forbidden.

To reach these destinations one must cross boundaries, exposing oneself to assault and to shipwreck. Even today, Prostitutes Zion of expensive entertainment often decorate their hotels like exotic palaces, such as the casinos in Las Vegas.

Each virgin was prepared just for his enjoyment with a thorough treatment in perfumed baths for twelve months.

For the Persian king with his vast harem, women, however, have little status. His prestige enhances their standing for example, Esther was just an orphan child of exiles. His choice of one anonymous woman will transform her into a queen. By contrast, in our tale it is the student whose status is elevated by virtue of the celebrity status of the prostitute.

While the student is and remains an ordinary john, the prostitute is a celebrity of her social world. She is a famous, rich femme fatale, a glamorous sex-bomb. Prostitutes Zion night she sits astride the seven layers of gilded beds and displays her lavish financial, sexual and social prestige.

This prostitute is truly independent; men come at her whim and pay for that pleasure. There is no hint that she is being pimped, but rather she is portrayed as a successful, tax-paying entrepreneur at the top of her game.

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What place is there for his fantasies of enhanced self-worth derived from the attentions of a classy whore, when the commercial aspect of the exchange is so explicit? For her, time is allotted in accordance with how much he has paid. He must be shoe-horned into her crowded schedule by her hostess-cum-maid-cum-secretary. Prostitutes Zion great epic voyage is a mountain that produces a molehill.

This long-awaited and Prostitutes Zion rendezvous, though its entourage is glorious, is not intended by either party to be a life-changing affair. Sitting at the Entrance When he arrived, he sat down at the entrance of her house [to await the time appointed or to receive permission to enter].

Her maidservant entered [her house] and said to her: "The man who set the appointment [or, who sent you the gold pieces]44 is sitting at the entrance of the house. He is filled with expectations nurtured by his imagination. God warns Cain using the Prostitutes Zion of the entrance: If you do not do better, sin crouches at the entrance [to your heart] and her desire is directed toward you, though you can Prostitutes Zion over Prostitutes Zion Gen.

Judah also thought, mistakenly, that he would just pay Prostitutes Zion fee and take his pleasures without any long-term consequences. But he was shocked and embarrassed into repentance when Tamar displayed the tokens of his identity, his staff and fringes, to finger the adulterous man who impregnated her. Yet he does not know his life is at stake Prov. The Motive of the Student's Voyage of Conquest Let us dwell for a moment on the original motive of the student to abandon the Beit Midrash and to spend a small fortune on this call girl.

At first glance the answer is simple and straightforward — sexual desire, youthful hormones, human nature. But being a student of a Beit Midrash is not, like college today, a relatively safe place to experiment with ideas, identities, drugs and sex.

A student of Torah, like a disciple in the contemporaneous philosophic schools of Aristotle, Prostitutes Zion and Prostitutes Zion Stoics, is not merely concerned with academic excellence or even ritual punctiliousness. The goal of learning is character-refinement as much as intellectual achievement.

The one who conquers his yetzer. Reason and will are expected to restrain passion. The Rabbis45 understand that the struggle with this powerful drive, the yetzer, occurs on three concentric levels: 1 human beings in general; 2 Jews, in particular; and 3 great rabbis, most of all. We Prostitutes Zion consider each in turn.

Nevertheless, Prostitutes Zion asserts confidently that human beings can rule over these forces. Free will Prostitutes Zion consequently moral responsibility are not obviated by the strength of jealous emotions, for God has given Prostitutes Zion beings the tools to conquer yetzer. Jews are sanctified to God and their holiness is expressed through Prostitutes Zion to more ascetic legal controls on their desires.

The natural pull of men to women takes them outside their biological family. Initially exogamy Prostitutes Zion mandated as natural by the biblical creation story, where man leaves father and mother to find and become one flesh with another, with a woman from outside the family Gen.

As we discussed above, sexual ethics is an identity ethics for the people consecrated at Sinai to be a holy nation Ex. The Jewish minority seeks to defend itself from social absorption and cultural- religious assimilation, by demanding that rabbinic Jews Prostitutes Zion from mundane forms of social contact with the neighboring Gentile such as eating and drinking together.

Sexual, cultural or religious intercourse with the other is demonized, while foreign women are identified with the mythic Prostitutes Zion of the seductive whore.

The prostitute is almost never given the benefit of the doubt, even though, more often than not, the female sexual partner is engaging in consensual sex, while she herself is being exploited by male pimps. Our tale, which shows us Prostitutes Zion sympathetic insider view of the harlot, is therefore an exception to the literary norm in rabbinic literature. Given the long and arduous socialization of rabbinical scholars in the Beit Midrash, their personal Prostitutes Zion to masters, their intellectuality, and their imitation of Divine traits, one would have assumed that conquest Prostitutes Zion their instincts would have been securely accomplished.

Their spiritual and intellectual powers should help them to transcend Prostitutes Zion superficial lure of the hedonist civilization of Rome. Since Rabbis regard Torah study, metaphorically, as an erotic consort, they ought to be able to rise above sexual attraction to women. Rabbinic leaders sought to make their lives into exempla of exceptional will power, a heroic conquest of yetzer. If, however, rabbinic willpower fails them Prostitutes Zion this struggle, then the negative Prostitutes Zion have communal Prostitutes Zion well as personal dimensions.

The values betrayed threaten the meaning of their lives and the authority of the rabbinic institutions they built. Rabbis are surrounded not only by students thirsty for their knowledge, but by disciples emulating them as a living embodiment of Torah values. The rabbis are held up to Prostitutes Zion higher standard. Under the scrutiny of their own conscience and of community gossips, they truly have no private life.

Many rabbinic tales explore rabbinic arrogance and rabbinic desire, but none of those themes emerge Prostitutes Zion our tale. Our student protagonist Prostitutes Zion no great rabbi tempted by Prostitutes Zion. He is not arrogant and over self- confident.

Hence the plot is not about the fall of a great rabbi, for the student is nobody special. He does not rate a name or a title. One day Satan appeared to Prostitutes Zion as a Prostitutes Zion on the opposite bank of the river. Prostitutes Zion there was no ferry, he seized the rope and proceeded across. When he was halfway along the rope, he [Satan] let him go saying: Had they not proclaimed in Heaven, "Take heed of Rabbi Meir and his learning," I would have valued your life at two cents.

Rabbi Akiba used to mock transgressors. One day Satan appeared to him as a woman Prostitutes Zion the top of a palm tree.

Grasping the tree, he went climbing up: but when he was halfway up the tree he [Satan] let him go, saying: Had they not proclaimed in Heaven, "Take heed of Rabbi Akiba and his learning," I would have valued your life at a mere two cents. Rabbi Ilai provides an escape mechanism for less- than-heroic rabbinic Jews who cannot always suppress their desires.

Honest rabbis and their students must admit to the need for periodic release when all else fails.

The Prostitutes Zion of least resistance may be less scandalous and less socially destructive, though clearly not heroic. Hypocrisy is less problematic than repression of oneself. He is not simply discharging irresistible hormonal urges. Rather he has a flair for a theatrical experience. His long trip is not designed simply to distance himself from social shame, or to release built-up instinctual pressure.

That could be accomplished simply, quickly and cheaply with just any prostitute. No, this particular student is pursuing a sexual and romantic fantasy. He has made this a grand project planning, saving, whetting his appetite with anticipated pleasures enhanced by distance, investment and delayed gratification.

He is not engaged in a Prostitutes Zion battle with Satan to test his character nor initially is he guilt-ridden by his desires. As we noted above, he is not a spiritual seeker for whom sexual liberation serves the pursuit of a higher form of life, of a liberating, life-changing source of wisdom.

He is simply a thrill-seeker bent on having an unforgettable, but trivial, Prostitutes Zion. He is a tourist who wishes to savor Prostitutes Zion exotic. He is a provincial looking for a dream weekend in an internationally famous Red-Light district like the one in Amsterdam.

A bit of his daily identity, of home, "trips up" the hero on his Prostitutes Zion at the moment of self-forgetting of erotic ecstasy. In later explaining the significance of his tzitzit to the bewildered harlot, the student piques her curiosity about rabbinic culture. The Rabbis realized how the tzitzit made them standout.

Thus, they were concerned lest non-Jews commit identity-theft and represent themselves even inadvertently as Jews and Prostitutes Zion give Judaism Prostitutes Zion bad reputation.

The tzitzit prevents the student from Prostitutes Zion himself as a wholly other and so the anonymity necessary for unfettered imaginative escapades is undermined. And when they arrived [ready] for that event, his four tzitzit fringes appeared to him like four accusing witnesses,50 and slapped him on the face! Prostitutes Zion student of the yeshiva is identified from the beginning by his beloved mitzvah — tzitzit — and that mitzvah Prostitutes Zion be his unexpected life-preserver.

Somewhat analogously, after returning from battle, some Israeli soldiers talk about the siddur they carried in their chest pocket that absorbed a piece of shrapnel headed for their heart. Even if not religiously observant, the soldiers feel profound respect for the sacred object which like a talisman granted them Divine grace. As in many adventure tales, the unexpected, the accidental, and the trivial become fateful for Prostitutes Zion destiny.

By being hit in Prostitutes Zion face by the Prostitutes Zion, presumably while hurriedly undressing, the student awakens xxvi Alternatively, a non-Jewish prostitute may claim that a Jew had intercourse with her and that will sully his reputation. The four tzitzit become a reminder of Prostitutes Zion he is or wants to be. In Prostitutes Zion illustrations of the Roman period Jews are often shown with special marking on the hem that Prostitutes Zion them out.

This formulation, however, suggests that we are passive victims attracted involuntarily by a fascinating object Prostitutes Zion to our minds. It is the world which disturbs our inner concentration and urges us to engage in activities outside the purview of a Jewish way of life. Scouting is also the term used of the twelve spies sent by Moshe to spy out the land to be taken Num. Spying has the connotations Prostitutes Zion a peeping Tom, but spying is not only voyeuristic.

The spy finds weaknesses and then plots the path to ravishing the object being toured. The male gaze, with which II Samuel 11 begins, turns a leisurely Prostitutes Zion into a violent turning point in the dynasty of David and the young Israeli monarchy. His is not an innocent voyeurism. The male gaze is dangerous precisely because it is so ubiquitous in their society and still in ours.

In fact, Western society has commercialized, legitimated and developed a culture of voyeurism that often shades off into sexual exploits — consensual, commercial and coercive.

Prostitutes Zion Berger in his Ways of Seeing describes the relationship of the gaze, power, and heterosexual desire in European paintings Prostitutes Zion the nude.

Men look at women. Women watch Prostitutes Zion being looked at. This determines not only most relations between men and women but also Prostitutes Zion relation of women to themselves. The surveyor of woman in herself is male: the surveyed female.

Thus she turns herself into Prostitutes Zion object — and most particularly an object of vision: a sight.

For example, Joseph accuses Prostitutes Zion ten brothers of being spies who have come Prostitutes Zion Egypt to expose the erva, the nakedness literally, Prostitutes Zion sexual organs of the land that make her vulnerable to assault Gen. Appropriately, in rabbinic Hebrew the word for forbidden, asur, derives from the Biblical term bound, tied up asur. The Rabbis identified the sign that binds with tefillin. The tzitzit serve as a reminder to observe the mitzvot in every situation.

Keep my commands and you will live; guard my teachings as the apple of your eye. Bind them on your fingers; write them on the tablet of your heart. Bind them always on your heart; fasten them around your neck. When you walk, they will guide you; when Prostitutes Zion lie down to sleep, they will watch over you; when you awake, they will speak to you. Do not lust in your heart after her beauty or let her captivate you with her eyes. It was the ancient custom to attach the tzitzit to the outer garment worn all day.

These Prostitutes Zion verbs effectively summarize and define the pedagogic technique of the ritual system of the Torah: Sight i. Thus, the experience of rituals and the comprehension of their values lead to loftier ethical behavior.

The tzitzit also serve a negative purpose: to bridle the passions and thereby, according to the Sages, to prevent heresy and harlotry. The mind has a powerful and useful strategy to place all standard stimuli in the back of the mind or the periphery of Prostitutes Zion, while focusing attention only on the new and abnormal.

Knowing that our God is powerful and that Divine punishment can be anticipated in some distant future is not usually adequate to rein in our imagination with the meager help of four tassels. There is another weighty symbolic significance to tzitzit, for these tassels remind the wearers Prostitutes Zion the defining relationship of their lives. Rather they are also an identity card worn on our sleeve to proclaim our calling. In Ancient Greece, a person's tunic was decorated at the hem-line to represent the city-state in which he lived.

The tunics were dyed with bright colours like red, Prostitutes Zion or green…. The length of the garment, the presence or lack of stripes, as well as their width and ornamentation, would indicate the wearer's status in Roman society.

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In his commentary on Numbers "Tzitzit—Tassels,"55 Milgrom makes this Prostitutes Zion in his exposition of the original Biblical meaning Prostitutes Zion tzitzit.

Milgrom illuminates the identity function of Prostitutes Zion garments as a tallit with tzitzit which shows the wearer and the non-Jew to whom one belongs — to God. The more important the individual, the more elaborate the hem's embroidery.

The legal force of the hem in ancient Me- sopotamia is evidenced in other ways. In ancient Mari, a professional prophet or dreamer would enclose with his report to the king a lock of his hair and a piece of his hem. They served both as his identification and, more importantly, as a guarantee that his prediction was true. In effect, these articles gave the king legal control over their owner.

Another legal context of the hem is illustrated by clay documents, on which the impression of a hem replaces a signature. Today a nonliterate might sign with a fingerprint; in ancient Mesopotamia, however, it Prostitutes Zion the upper class that might use the hem. Ephraim Speiser Prostitutes Zion that the practice in the synagogue to this day of pressing the edge of the tallit to the Torah scroll is a vestige of the ancient custom.

This act, followed by the recital of blessings, may well have originated as a dramatic reaffirmation of the participant's commitment to the Torah. The blue dye was ex- tracted from the gland of the murex snail 60 in a painstaking process. Though the snails were plentiful, the amount of dye yielded from each was infinitesimal and consequently expensive.

Only the wealthy61 could afford large quantities of this dye. Wearing it calls forth aristocratic self-restraint and bearing. Since all Jews are commanded to wear tzitzit, each Jew is elevated to the level of holiness of a holy community and a priestly kingdom. The biblical rationale for tzitzit concludes by reaffirming the Prostitutes Zion identity of Israel — Thus you shall be reminded to observe all My Prostitutes Zion and to be holy to your God.

Marcus Prostitutes Zion the idea that tzitzit represent Jewish identity to his analysis of Prostitutes Zion story of the student and the harlot. The student, he suggests, is torn between his love of tzitzit and his attraction to the Roman Empire as embodied in the wealth, orgiastic pleasures and idolatrous rituals of the prostitute.

Her ties to the Roman Empire are also revealed when she donates one third of her wealth to the government. The Rabbis expect the student to disavow the lavish advantages of Rome and its harlots, just as Rabbi Shimon Prostitutes Zion Yohai disparaged the material benefits of Roman civilization, its economic prosperity and its building projects in colonized Eretz Yisrael.

Bar Yohai scoffed and claimed that the Romans built markets agora just to offer the wares of the prostitutes. In opposition to Greco-Roman civilization, the tzitzit call the student, who crossed the blue seas to find a Roman prostitute, to come back to the empire of God represented by the royal blue Prostitutes Zion the sky and of the tzitzit. Considering this symbolic analysis, Prostitutes Zion student is confronted with two competing Prostitutes Zion goddesses — the prostitute who represents Agape or Isis and the blue tzitzit which represent the heavenly Shekhina.

The student is confronted with the choice between the Jewish values of his home and the hedonist values of the Roman Prostitutes Zion. He must choose between the malkhut, the royal dominion, of Rome and the dominion of God, the King of the kings of kings.

In the end both Jewish young men, Joseph and the student, refuse the blandishments of these foreign women who represent the power and Prostitutes Zion of the ruling empire.

Both young men reassert their loyalty to the values of their distant home even while disrobing for, or being disrobed by, two powerful, seductive, foreign women. The key crucial object in each story is a garment belonging to the man. In the case of Joseph, the seductress attempts to remove his garment by force; in the case of the student he is removing his garment voluntarily when his tzitzit hit him in the face and break the spell of the palatial whorehouse.

In the end both the student and the prostitute prefer Eretz Yisrael and Jewish identity over Roman identity. When the prostitute chooses to abandon her profession and become a Jew, she first settles her accounts with the past by paying off her debt to the Roman Empire malkhut with one third of her wealth. Thus, both the student and the former call girl explicitly choose a Jewish over a Roman identity.

Life Hangs by a Thread The student's love Prostitutes Zion just one mitzvah is destined to protect his this- worldly Prostitutes Zion as Prostitutes Zion rabbinic Jew as well as his place in the next world. It signifies the last shred of his former identity that calls him back to Prostitutes Zion before he goes over the brink to the other side.

He chose this mitzvah as his own special practice, Prostitutes Zion if it is just one of many mitzvot that he is obligated to observe. The student's whole-hearted devotion to tzitzit, so much so that he takes them with him on this unholy quest, shows that Prostitutes Zion tzitzit are a window Prostitutes Zion his core personality.

His relationship to this Prostitutes Zion manifests an act of Prostitutes Zion for God's mitzvot. No matter all his other sins, this single mitzvah, when performed with a pure heart, is redemptive.

A single mitzvah? Any mitzvah, even the smallest and least significant? The Rabbis struggle to comprehend this radical Prostitutes Zion that any mitzvah — even the most insignificant — has such tremendous efficacy. Any mitzvah really can tilt the scales in summing up a lifetime of effort.

If a person performs a single mitzvah, then they have brought themselves and the entire world to the judgment of innocence and caused them redemption and salvation. Since each mitzvah increases the opportunities Prostitutes Zion sin and bring destruction on the world, the more mitzvot, the greater anxiety each person ought to feel. Another approach to the power of a single mitzvah is found in the summation of the Talmudic Tractate Makkot. Prostitutes Zion a series of midrashim reduce the essential number of mitzvot down fromto 13, to 3, and finally to 1.

One mitzvah done properly is adequate to achieve salvation. Maimonides expands on this radical Mishnaic idea of "the single crucial mitzvah. That is why Rabbi Hananyah says that due to the multiplicity of mitzvot it is unavoidable that one shall perform perfectly [at least] one of them during one's whole life.

So, by that act one merits the soul's immortality. While the story focusses on the special properties of tzitzit, Maimonides finds the redemptive value of the mitzvah not in the price tag attached to a particular ritual, but in the loving quality of Prostitutes Zion religious life crystalized around any mitzvah.

While Maimonides celebrates the love of a mitzvah which disregards reward or punishment, the narrative portrays the student as anxious about Divine punishment. Not Prostitutes Zion, but fear, seems to motivate him.

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He imagines the tzitzit as accusing him before a punitive heavenly court. His attitude to tzitzit is described, not as loving, but as careful Prostitutes Zion about its observance, lest Prostitutes Zion sin. But that spiritually deficient motivation is still enough to redeem him, as the mishnayot in Kiddushin and in Makkot teach us. It is enough to redeem a sinner, who deserves the death sentence at the hands of God karet and the loss of the world- to-come, simply by flogging him, as long as the sinner accepts that punishment with contrition.

Prostitutes Zion we learn that anyone who sits [passively] and does not do a transgression receives the same reward as someone who did do a mitzvah. Those are the words of Rabbi Hananya ben Gamliel. When the student found the strength to Prostitutes Zion his desire at its apex, he earned a great reward.

For example, Odysseus, possessor of cunning intelligence and versatility, is forewarned and forearmed by his wise patron god, Hermes, for his encounter with the seductive Sirens.

That reward is to receive his life back again, the life that would have Prostitutes Zion taken from him for this transgression. This student is saved both by his careful observance of one positive mitzvah and even more because of his heroism in conquering his sexual impulse when he had a grand opportunity to sin and satisfy that desire. Thus, one mitzvah is enough to redeem a Prostitutes Zion sinner. And he slipped down [from the seventh bed], and Prostitutes Zion on the ground.

The slap in the face by the tzitzit returns the student to his rabbinic role as a darshan, as an interpreter of Biblical texts. He offers a sermon placing Prostitutes Zion incident Prostitutes Zion his life into the context of religious calling.

While the student might have thought his jaunt, far from the house of study, would remain secret, it turns out he has brought with him informers to supervise his behavior and to bring back damning evidence of his misbehavior. This warning substantiates that he is acting with full awareness and hence he cannot deny his full responsibility for his actions. Thus, the tzitzit alert the student that if he proceeds to consummate his intercourse with the prostitute, then he will be deemed culpable for the full punishment of his premeditated crime.

In capital crimes, Prostitutes Zion witnesses also throw the first stone. In our tale after the student realizes he has been duly warned, he decides to withdraw himself from the sexual act metaphorically, coitus interruptus. Fear of sin and its long-term consequences outweigh the immediate rewards of short-lived pleasures.

Lake County, Illinois Prostitution Defense Attorney. Prostitution. Sex Crimes Defense Lawyer Serving Deerfield, Waukegan, and Zion. "Prostitutes are ubiquitous in rabbinic fantasy and folklore. In two tales the rabbis repent in the midst of intercourse after having crossed rivers and.

He now knows that someone the Someone is watching. Applying the rabbinic story to contemporary concerns with the corruption of Prostitutes Zion, Erica Brown Prostitutes Zion an analogy between Prostitutes Zion student and his slap-in-the-face moment and the danger that leaders caught up in glamorous trappings of power will forget themselves and their calling: Tzitzit have served as visual or pictorial affirmations.

As important as tzitzit are for the Prostitutes Zion, they are even more significant for the leader, because power and knowledge change people, sometimes disconnecting them from the very values that prompted them to take leadership roles in the first place. To warn against that reality, leaders need protectors and guards.

They need reminders to stay true to a mission and a vision. Power and authority can blur vision. Leaders beware.

I saw myself being the very person I never wanted to be. Brown explains: Over time these self-delusions that the unconscious Prostitutes Zion become self- perpetuating myths, persisting despite the difficulties they cause. We understand what a clouded mirror looks like. There is an image of the self that Prostitutes Zion clearly who we are, but not every feature is offered back in sharp relief. Leaders see themselves in this cloud, but cannot understand how they became this person that Prostitutes Zion never wanted to be.

Vaclav Havel, a former intellectual turned politician and the last president of Czechoslovakia, shared many reflections over the course of his career about the way in which power changes people.

He was wary of it in himself. That is why he loses his bearings. His tzitzit slap him back into reality. She too falls back to the ground.

She is curious, obsessively so, with his newly recovered rabbinic identity. He obliges her and gives her an account Prostitutes Zion who he is, not who he wished to be in appearing at her villa. The coordinates of his intellectual-spiritual identity are the product of his choice, not of his birth as a Jew.

The pursuit of study already indicates a search for rebirth, just as Greek and Roman would-be philosophers sought a path of salvation in the schools of Aristotle, Epicurus, the Stoics or the Neo-Platonists.

The contradiction between his behavior and his school creates cognitive dissonance that the student and now the prostitute try to comprehend.

Prostitutes Zion student, like the epic Prostitutes Zion Odysseus and Aeneas, follows a sexually alluring woman to her far-away lair where in theory he could have been ensnared forever. The danger he braves was losing his identity, his bearings and hence never getting home, just as Odysseus almost betrays his wife and home in order to Prostitutes Zion with Calypso.

Similarly, as we mentioned above, Aeneas nearly abandons his journey to Prostitutes Zion the city of Rome, when he falls in love with Dido, Queen of Carthage. Now having passed the test of his Jewish manhood, not his sexual manhood, he can go home. In stipulating his point of origin for the harlot by the sea, the student in effect enters his new destination in his GPS and then returns home on Prostitutes Zion uneventful voyage not worthy of description. Even his homecoming and the presumed interrogation of the rabbi regarding his whereabouts is passed over Prostitutes Zion silence.

In so far as the prostitute was just a symbolic character serving Prostitutes Zion a test for the real protagonist, the student, it is inadmissible to ask about Prostitutes Zion life after he has overcome her sexual allure. But, as we see, she now becomes a protagonist herself.

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Prostitutes Zion journey is also a search for a marital partner, while, by Prostitutes Zion, his initial quest had been aimed only at an ephemeral sexual experience. Her decision to follow her erstwhile client to Prostitutes Zion him transforms her from an exotic sex object into a conventional woman seeking to settle down.

Yet at the same time her choice to become a rebbetzin makes her a remarkably liberated woman choosing her spouse, her religion, her land and her people, as Ruth does.

The prostitute is inspired to follow his path back to his home even if she must give up her gods and her identity, and even though the student does not encourage her to follow him. The prostitute, like Ruth, is inspired by an unusual human being to stick to him and follow him whatever the obstacles.

Ruth declares to Naomi who is setting off on her way home: Do not press me to leave you or to turn back from following you! Where you die, I will die—there will I be buried. May the Lord do thus and so Prostitutes Zion me, and more as well, if even death parts me from you! Instead, it yielded wild grapes. Why, when I Prostitutes Zion it would yield grapes, Did it yield wild grapes? And I will command the clouds To drop no rain on it.

And He hoped Prostitutes Zion justice, But behold, injustice; For equity, But behold, iniquity! Rebecca W. In Isaiah, the story of Daughter Zion weaves throughout the book and progresses from a picture of abandonment and desolation to one of glorious restoration and divine presence.

But the vision of this espousal goes farther, for the children of Israel also marry Zion… Zion goes beyond human family patterns.

She is a mystical figure of love for the people of Israel. During the time of exile, she lamented their loss… during their time of glory, Prostitutes Zion becomes another kind of mediator between Israel and Gd. Through their mutual devotion Prostitutes Zion the city, Gd and Israel fully join in love together.

She is the sacred bridge that unites them. She is the Prostitutes Zion of the people, part Prostitutes Zion the people, and -- at Prostitutes Zion same time -- focus of its hopes. Frymer-Kensky, Tikva. Hays, Rebecca W. Low, Maggie.

Texts Topics Community Donate. Log in Sign up. Site Language. Zion as Gd's dwelling place Prostitutes Zion is very much the physical city of houses and walls, but Zion is also a person who dwells Prostitutes Zion this physical city. Indeed, over all the glory shall hang a canopy, 6 which shall serve as a pavilion for shade from heat by day and as a shelter for protection Prostitutes Zion drenching rain.