[Avodah] the cohen gadol and marriage to a pubescent girl

[Arie Folger]

REPhLM wrote:
> The second aspect, harm or not: as far as I know, current psychology
> assumes that, bar exceptions, sexual relations with a 12-year old are
> harmful. I don't know enough about the matter to have an opinion, other
> than that intercourse between a 12-year old and a 40-50-year old isn't a
> comforting concept. I'm aware that this is probably a result of growing up
> in "Western society". I suppose sexual relations without a stable emotional
> background aren't healthy at any age, adn this kind of background is less
> there, statistically, among 12-year olds.

I once asked r. David Pelcovitz about that in YU, when we were taking a 
counseling course on the topic of abuse. According to him, this is entirely 
societal. He mentioned some primitive cultures where the coming of age 
ceremony consisted of boys performing publically a ma'aseh meguneh on their 
fathers, and according to antropologists dealing with these cultures, the 
boys weren't harmed in any way.

A large part of children's rights we hold nowadays dear, flow from a desire to 
let children be children, something which in the past was not a given; it is 
a luxury flowing forth from our higher average life expectancy and greater 
material prosperity.

However, generally, we do consider a large age gap problematic, which is why 
the gemara states we would discourage yibum in such cases.
-- 
Arie Folger
http://www.ariefolger.googlepages.com