Shave and a haircut......Shampoo !

You know how it is in the morning, you drag yourself out of warm blankets, no wait….you crawl back in till the next snooze cycle.

O.K., now you draaaag yourself out of the warm blankets, pad over to the bathroom, try not to look at yourself in the mirror through swollen, crusty, eyes. Hug your arms to your body from the chill, relieve that full bladder, and then into the shower.

Now, because I hate cold winter mornings, I have adjusted all of my morning grooming to take place in the hot shower.

Toothbrush…check.

Toothpaste…check.

Panasonic “wet and dry” with non-fogging mirror and moisturizing gel…yes and yes and yes.

Everything is more pleasurable when you have warm steam rising around you, and the obligatory morning shave is no exception. I like to set a stream of searing water on my back before I lather up to trim the stubblies.

But this morning, my wife has left a package of shick disposable shavers on the ledge, and my hand hesitates as I reach for my tried and true electric.

Can’t I just try it one morning to see what it is like ??

Now anytime I contemplate breaking orthodox dogma, a well trained, yeshiva inclined, portion of my brain, hailing back to the days of my unflinching religious beliefs, when I swallowed anything quoted from appropriate authority whole; begins to set off alarm bells.

"Something bad will happen to me if I do this…something bad will happen to someone I love and I will regret it forever…."

“Bullshit” ! Says rationality… “ancient superstitions one and all, I’ll pay that as much heed as I do black cats and Friday the 13th.”

I picked up the Razor, fermenting in my mind; that it was way to early to make these decisions, but was there really any decision of consequence here ??? Did I in any way believe in consequences or damages that occurred from shaving with a different implement ??

“Something will go wrong during surgery today….your patients will suffer, your cases will go badly…your hands will shake, you’ll have complications,” insists my leftover Yeshiva personality with all the authority of a yenting bubby, this time with even more vigor than when I go for the lights on Shabbos.

I hesitate and look at the two choices, and, I begin to use the fall back of the overly cautious: Intra religional semi rationality. The practice by which one re-enters religious beliefs long left by the wayside, donning them once again for the purpose of redemonstrating their internal inconsistencies.

Now I know what the posuk says…It says don’t touch a blade to your face. Clearly the meaning was that the Jewish nation had a look to it, a style, and that style was a beard !!

But of course when the clean-shaven look became a necessity for business in the forties and fifties, the chachamim looked at this prohibition hyper literally. Ossuring only the touching of the blade to the face.


But this micro screen film…protects me against an issur dioraisah ??

It seems implausible. A loophole a child would use to get out of homework. How many times had I nicked myself with this razor? Wasn’t that the blade touching my face anyway ??

And who was this God whom would readily deal eternal damnation to the bearer of the razor in my left hand, but blessing to the user of the shaver in my right ?? He begins to sound more and more like a cosmic vending machine. He cannot but deliver based on the button pushed. There is no thought or insight just mechanical response to stimuli. But what warrants heaven and hell ? Weren’t both instruments doing the same thing, accomplishing the same goal, using the same method ??

And how would this fit with the Modern orthodox Ideal that viewed sins as a metaphysical tarnish to a soul in a spiritual world, thus obviating the need to ever explain the reasons for anything. Did this mean that in some other world beyond comprehension, babes were crying and women fainting as the blade made it’s first smooth descent down my cheek, and spiritual calamity befell their universe, the very same realm in which my soul dwelled so happily before metal and plastic cooperated to shear those tiny hairs from my face?

Could I make myself believe that this act, even if there was a spiritual world, could possibly be detrimental??

The answer, you see, is in my smooth face….soft as a baby’s bottom some would say !


But the reason I bring this up is not so you can all marvel at my heresy,(but feel free too) or morning routine (immitation is the sincerest form of flattery); it is because, it seems to me that, orthodoxy has nothing to do with morality, but it has supplanted moralism, and desires to stand in it’s place, to drink it’s wine, sit in it’s chair and sleep with it’s woman. Orthodoxy enforces it’s self under very moral terms. One feels bad when disobeying orthodoxy in very much the same way that one feels bad when betraying a friend, cheating, stealing, or acting innaproprietly in other ways.

Judaism may have started off with very moral concerns, but that has all been legislated away now. To my mind morality involves looking at a situation and applying a mix of logic and compassion, with empathy and sympathy being main ingredients. But there are no such requirements for orthodoxy…only following the law as interpreted. That is the only rule. Even when it doesn’t seem to coincide with one’s innate moral sense !!

I remember, even as a devout believer being irritated by the non-humanistic portions of orthodoxy, be it slave, homosexual, or disenfranchised woman….it didn’t seem to be right. But, I was told, because it came from God, it must be right, and I was therefore encouraged and in fact strongly reprimanded by my yeshiva training to interpret and reconstrue my own opinions as devilish implants from the secular world. They had no right to my mind, and my main efforts should be spent expulsing them.

I think this dichotomy exists in the orthodox world in large scale….There is what we innately feel is right, and there is what we “should feel and do”, because that is what God said, and he is right in and objective way that we can never approach.

But it seems to me now that this attitude is even worlds apart from the great leaders that orthodoxy lauds as it’s own.

When society had progressed enough that an “eye for an eye” had become anathema, our greats listened to their hearts and vigorously reinterpreted the text.

Sure some will insist that this was halacha misinai and always meant to be this way, but I think they will be shown false upon insisting that religion never changes…it does… just very slowly, and voicing great nostalgia and regret. We learned to live without a temple…we created a service outside the rules of sacrifice and blood. Some even believe that at the coming of the messiah sacrifice will not be reinstituted, because humanity has changed so much that we no longer recognize this as a just way to connect with God. Surely, this shows that advancing human morality should influence religion, at least according to some of our great ancients.


I think it is time for the serious religious thinkers of our times to treat the serious issues of our times.

1 ) Human morality no longer coincides with Orthodox declarations. We barely recognize the world we are being taught represents something so much higher than our own flimsy moral standards. Most educated moderns cringe at the idea of returning to anyting close to biblical justice, even when it is watered down by the rabbinate. I think our former greats would have sensed the schism that exists. How else did Rabeinu gershom know it was time to stop polygamy. I think our former greats would of acted.

2) Modernity does not require people to believe in anything without support, let alone sky Gods. Modernity has shown a method for attaining data about the world around us that has Predictive power. No other model for attaining data has demonstrated any predictive power….ever. In most cases where the Bible has assertions about the world they are revealed through science to be little more than fables. Are we to believe that God could not create a fable to satisfy a more primitive audience that was also factually correct?…..then let him fall from his throne of omnipotence. Does he place these errors to test us?…then let us agree we cannot know how to serve a trickster God, for where does the trick end and the instructions begin?

Modernity has brought us to a place of intellectual honesty, where we believe things to a degree. That degree is mandated by the level of support and evidence. When something losses evidence and support we believe it to a lesser degree. No honest person can watch the confrontation of Judaism and modernity and not see Orthodoxy slipping down the wrungs of believability. To do so would require a dishonest mandate. Swearing fealty to absolute belief in the face of diminishing evidence may be the pinnacle of faith, but it is the dung heap of reason.


Do I think any Rabbi will look into these problems honestly….no, because the honest conclusions leave religion in the same state as a hope or a dream.

No one bases life and death decisions on diyukim from pisukim that are most likely just ancient fables. Why would you run to the dreamer for a psak, why would his fantasy be more important than what you felt in your heart was right for your loved one.

No one looks for morality out of what is most likely recordings of archaic governance. No one looks back to ancient ideals of slavery and misogyny to draw conclusions in a modern world.

No one except those who are afraid to confront their own systems of beliefs and see it for what it is.