Should Israel Restore Polygyny?

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Are we about to witness a new phenomenon in Israel in the coming years – one man married to several women? Tens of thousands of leaflets were distributed in synagogues across the country recently, promoting the ancient custom and presenting it as a solution for the single daughters of Israel.

The phenomenon of a man married to several women (polygamy) was common among the people of Israel in ancient times. King Solomon was married to 1,000 women, King Rehoboam had 78 wives, and King David had "only" 18.

About 1,000 years ago, however, Rabbi Gershom issued a ban on bigamy, forbidding the custom among Ashkenazi Jews. Sephardic men abandoned the tradition as well in the past centuries, settling for only one woman.

The ads distributed in the synagogues appeared in the "Shabbat B'Shabbato" weekly bulletin. They encourage Jewish Sephardic men to return to the ancient custom, and include a quote from a halachic paper written by Rabbi Ovadia Yosef several years ago, which does not rule out the polygamy phenomenon: "Courts imposing aggravated punishments on Sephardim over this matter are wrong."

It's unclear whether Rabbi Ovadia would still support polygamy these days, but the leaflet authors argue that according to Halacha, it is not longer forbidden among Sephardic circles today.

The flyers direct their readers to the website of the "Jewish Home" organization, which includes quotes from a series of rabbinical religious authorities throughout history, implying that the rule forbidding polygamy has expired. The website also includes personal stories of men and women with experience in polygamy.

The Srugim website revealed that the ads were funded by a group of single religious women who have given up on finding a match.

One of the women, 39, said: "I am a single religious woman who is afraid of losing the ability to become a mother." She added that there were 27 other women like her who would be happy to marry a married man.

"I'm a 39 year old religious single woman that is worried that she will soon no longer be able to be a mother. Two years ago, I enquired about sperm donation, but all my rabbanim rejected the issue, and I also felt it was a terrible thing for a child no to have a father.

According to Sara (not the real name) she was advised of a halachic solution of wedding a married man. Sara, brought up the idea to her fellow single and divorced female friends who are in a similar situation, and they set up a support group with the encouragement of Rabbanim. They joined forced with the organization "The complete Jewish Home" that provides advice and solutions on the subject of polygamous marriages.

Sara continues and explains that there are 27 female members in her "support group" in Jerusalem, all of whom are religious, religious light or chozrim Be'teshuva

Polygamy may be banned by the state constitution and abolished by the predominant religion, but it is still practiced by ultra-orthodox followers of the faith, some who want it made lawful to avoid sticky legal and moral questions.

...Political pressure to loosen the prohibition on polygamy for Sephardi Jews who came to Israel from Muslim countries is growing, a researcher told the American Anthropological Association's annual meeting, which concluded Sunday in the nation's capital.

But the push in Israel for legalized polygyny...stems not from a shortage of marriage-age men, an abundance of single women or an upswing in demand for multiple brides. Anthropologist S. Zev Kalifon of Bar-Ilan University in Israel said the call by former Sephardi Chief Rabbi Ovadia Yoseph to legalize polygyny is part of a political movement to restore conservative traditions and lash out against popular notions of social equality.

"They feel that the secular world which they met in Israel when they immigrated in the 1950s destroyed the patriarchal Sephardi family and its values," said Kalifon. "The ban on polygyny is seen as something modern, an expression of western or European values."

Stories in the Old Testament indicate polygamy was an accepted part of the social order and is technically legal under Jewish law. But the practice has been banned for Jews in Europe since the 11th century,
when rabbinate leaders sought to ease tensions between Jews and their Christian neighbors, who considered polygamy barbaric.

Kalifon said the view of polygamy for the Jewish people differed significantly from that of early leaders of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which renounced the practice by the turn of the 20th century. "What Joseph Smith and Brigham Young did was make polygyny an ideal, with an ideal man having more than one wife," he said. "In Judaism, it is permitted but definitely not encouraged, [and] was never considered an ideal."

While European or "Ashkenazi" Jews adopted the rabbinical adjustment to ban polygamy as a binding tradition, the Sephardi Jews outside of Europe continued to take second wives. Two wives is
the "unspoken cap" for Sephardi Jews, said Kalifon.

Polygamy among Jews is not limited to Sephardim. Jews living in the predominantly Arab country of Yemen still practice polygamy under the belief that Israel's rabbis are wrong in their prohibition of plural marriage. Yemeni Jews have an "unspoken cap" of four wives, rather than two. "If a man can satisfy four women at the same time, then good for him," the Yemeni chief rabbi in Raydah, Yemen, told the Associated Press last year.

Another group of polygamists associating with Judaism are the "Black Hebrews," some 2,000 African-Americans who emigrated illegally from urban Chicago to Israel in the early 1970s, claiming to be
descendants of "one of the lost tribes of Israel." Besides practicing polygamy, the members are strict vegetarians and eat only raw food for four weeks each year.

When Israel became a state in 1949, the ban on polygamy became legally binding on all Jewish residents. Yet some Sephardi Jews in Israel continue to take second wives in "underground" marriages performed by rabbis who oppose the legal ban. Kalifon said these plural marriages by Sephardi Jews have created a mire of legal problems.

Kalifon doubts any groundswell of would-be polygamist Sephardim is the motivation behind Rabbi Yoseph's campaign, given that most of his congregants are poor immigrants who are unable to support multiple wives. "Polygyny, if done right, is a good way to go bankrupt," said Kalifon. He contends the pro-polygamy movement is spurred more by moral issues than legal, financial or demographic concerns.

"Advocating polygyny reminds these [Ashkenazim] rabbis that they 'gave in' to outside pressures, changed tradition to fit in to the European world and strayed from the way of our forefathers," said Kalifon. "Polygyny says that Sephardi Jews are closer to the tradition, purer in their observation of Judaism and less assimilated into the modern world. The desire to reinstate polygyny can be seen as a symbol of the uniqueness of the Sephardi religious worldview and a test of their growing political strength."

Ironic that the Jews and Muslims hate each other, when really they are so similar.

Ironic that the Jews and Muslims hate each other, when really they are so similar.

Where are all the single Israeli men? Are they marrying non-Jews, or remaining single, or what? I think Israel should look into why there aren't enough Jewish guys to go around.

Ireland used to have the same problem (sorry, I know I always bring Ireland into everything!). In their case, it was caused by a combination of high male emigration and mamma's-boy syndrome - a lot of guys just stayed on the family farm their whole lives and never established their own home or family.

Israel, in accordance with Western ethics, has made polygamy illegal. Provisions were instituted to allow for existing polygamous families immigrating from countries where the practice was legal. Furthermore, former chief rabbi Ovadia Yosef has come out in favor of legalizing polygamy and the practice of pilegesh (concubine) by the Israeli government.

Tzvi Zohar, a professor from the Bar-Ilan University, recently suggested that based on the opinions of leading halachic authorities, the concept of concubines may serve as a practical Halachic justification for premarital or non-marital cohabitation.

According to an article by Professor Tzvi Zohar of Bar Ilan University, which has aroused fervent debate in religious Zionist circles, the answer is yes, but only if the relationship is based on mutual respect and the woman immerses herself in a mikve [ritual bath]. Zohar's article, which appears in the latest edition of Akdamot, an academic journal on Jewish thought published by Beit Morasha, analyzes the opinions of leading halachic authorities from the Middle Ages, such as Nachmanides, to the modern era, such as Rabbi Ya'acov Emden, and shows that many permitted sexual relations without marriage. In the arrangement, sanctioned by Jewish law according to these opinions, the woman becomes a pilegesh, or concubine. Neither the man nor the woman has any obligations or rights. Both must adhere to family purity laws in accordance with halacha. According to halacha, a man is not allowed to come into physical contact with a woman after she has menstruated until she has immersed herself in a mikve. This prohibition is called nida. Young religious men and women who are committed to the halacha need no longer struggle with their libido, argues Zohar. All those hormones can be channeled into a kosher communion that is free of marital obligations. The article sparked major interest. "Never since we first established Akdamot ten years ago has there been so much interest in an article," said Avi Berholz, Akdamot's chief editor. "The rabbis are angry at us for publishing an article which they feel undermines the Jewish family," said Berholz. "But more liberal elements within religious Zionism thank us for presenting this opinion." Rabbi Ohad Tohar-Lev, who heads the Israeli program at Lindenbaum (Bruria), a yeshiva for young women aged 18 to 22, said that he fears the article will encourage more young religious people to have sexual intercourse before marriage. "It legitimizes licentiousness," said Tohar-Lev, who, as a head of an institution that prepares religious women for army service, is considered liberal. "There are certain laws that are best kept secret. Zohar's article will give some young people the justification they were looking for. Nobody wants to be a sinner." Y., 21, a student at Lindenbaum, said that she has single religious friends who already know about Zohar's solution and have used it. "The woman simply goes to a mikve before having sex and that's it." But Y. said that many of her friends, while committed to orthodoxy, do not adhere to the rules of nida. "I do not know whether they have intercourse. But I see them touching one another."

There are certain laws that are best kept secret.

Given our evolved mating psychology, the puzzle is not why societies are polygynous; it's why any society is monogamous, especially one in which males are highly unequal, (like ours).

Monogamy gives huge advantages to societies which practice it. It arose, like philosophy, among the Greeks, passed through the Romans, and then the Christian church took it over as an ideal and managed over the course of around a thousand years to establish it as the norm in Europe, even for the aristocracy....

Societies possessing norms that more effectively shape, harness, reinforce, and suppress aspects of our evolved psychology in ways that benefit the group as a whole in competition with other societies spread at the expense of societies possessing fewer group-beneficial norms. Monogamy may have spread, and continue to spread, because monogamous societies are more competitive: monogamy seems to redirect male motivations in ways that generate lower crime rates, greater GDP per capita, and better outcomes for children....

The men who fail to get wives will be driven by competition that it increasingly dangerous to society and to themselves. There is good data to show that unmarried men are more violent and more generally criminal than married ones, other things being equal. The worst affected are the poor and uneducated who are also the least likely to prosper in a free market in women where the winners can collect as many women as they can handle.

But the winners, who get wives of their own, find their own behaviour distorted by polygamy. Because the competition for women is so fierce, making them valuable objects rather than loveable people, men, whether fathers, husbands, or brother, must control them more carefully. The same dynamic places pressure on the recruitment of younger and younger brides into the marriage market, because in a polygynous society you can never have enough of them. Finally, the men will reduce their investment in any particular wives and children, partly because their resources will be much more widely spread; partly because they will increasingly spend their efforts on getting more wives rather than looking after the ones they have.

The anthropologically peculiar institutions of imposed monogamous marriage may be one of the foundations of Western civilisation, and may explain why democratic ideals and notions of human rights first emerged as a Western phenomenon.

David Friedman and Steve Sailer have argued that polygamy tends to benefit most women and disadvantage most men, under the assumption that most men and women do not practice it. The idea is firstly that many women would prefer half or one third of someone especially appealing to being the single spouse of someone that does not provide as much economic utility to them. Secondly, that the remaining women have a better market for finding a spouse themselves. Say that 20% of women are married to 10% of men, that leaves 90% of men to compete over the remaining 80% of women. Friedman uses this viewpoint to argue in favor of legalizing polygamy, while Sailer uses it to argue against legalizing it...

Stanley Kurtz, a fellow at the Hudson Institute, lamented the modern arguments increasingly being made by various intellectuals who call for de-criminalizing polygamy. Kurtz concluded, "Marriage, as its ultramodern critics would like to say, is indeed about choosing one's partner, and about freedom in a society that values freedom. But that's not the only thing it is about. As the Supreme Court justices who unanimously decided Reynolds in 1878 understood, marriage is also about sustaining the conditions in which freedom can thrive. Polygamy in all its forms is a recipe for social structures that inhibit and ultimately undermine social freedom and democracy. A hard-won lesson of Western history is that genuine democratic self-rule begins at the hearth of the monogamous family.

Men making up the law as the go along again, typical of religion.

How about a woman marrying ten men. What's good for the Goose is good for the Ganda...

Men making up the law as the go along again, typical of religion.

How about a woman marrying ten men. What's good for the Goose is good for the Ganda...

The Jewish-Muslim conflict is entirely about Israel, and nothing more.