The other day I sat down to watch the early StarWars movies with my children. I have to say that I was horrified by the way the main cast members were presented, with overtones of sexual harassment that would be forbidden in any family oriented movie made today. With that in mind, when I read about accusations of sexual impropriety that took place 30 or 40 years ago, I wonder how we can judge the “enablers” by 21st century mores.

Let’s apply that reasoning to stories of individuals who lived thousands of years ago. Today the idea of an adult desiring to marry a child is viewed (correctly) as pedophilia. Can we apply our values to a society that viewed childhood so differently than we view it today?

We don’t need to go back thousands of years. During the year that I lived in Israel with my family, we were neighbors with a lovely young couple. The husband, who had Eastern European roots, was born and raised in Israel; the wife had immigrated to Israel from Ethiopia as a child. She laughed at the way we showed concern for our first-grader, saying that when she was seven years old in Ethiopia, she was a shepherdess in charge of her own flock of sheep.

I wouldn’t emphasize to my students that Yitzchak married a child, but if it came up I would simply say “Things were very different back in those days.”

Sasson



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/06/2018 12:02PM by mlb.