Wow…I see.
I think I’ve addressed all of this issue that I can. But I see basically the same arguements being played out over and over again in different threads.
These arguements have little to do with mixed seating, beaches, the role of women, tzinius, shaitels, kollel or the like. It’s like an old professor of mine used to say – you’ve got a catholic & protestant arguing about birth control.
How can I argue about what is and isn’t “appropriate” when we have two different dictionaries? I view with horror a married woman spending an afternoon with another woman’s husband – with or without children; but our definitions of horror are totally different.
This argument is about the role of Halacha in our lives; the role of logic & emotion, Mesorah & society, individualism and collectism, the wisdom of chazal and the wisdom of our age. The identity of a community, and what our ultimate ideals should be – and is a Torah a tax or a goal?
And ultimately, we have two very different visions of what it means to be a Torah Jew in the Twenty First century, following a Torah of 3000 years.
This arguement I cannot tackle, because it leaves the realm of what we have in common, and hence I have no tools with which to respond. Such arguements be definition cannot be argued, and instead are doomed to round in circles until the players get bored of ths subject, and start a new one, without ever really hitting the real issue, because the real issue is far too deep to really deal with.
Morever, it cannot really be argued or proven, because the issue is in the very prism which we view the world. A camera can take a picture of everything, except for itself. We cannot argue about our prism. These, like Frodo’s ring, can only be confronted in the fires of which they were forged, in the realm which is beyond words & logic and certainly beyond debate.
From a sociological perspective, this arguement is creeping up all over the religous world, specifically the Yeshivish community of America, but even in the Charedi world of Eretz Yisrael. And it is fascinating to watch it unfold here, again and again and again…
But, I now see, as I suspected before, that I have little to contribute here. Mea Culpa.