[Avodah] Habituation

[kennethgmiller at juno.com]

I wrote:

> I think it is still fair to say that these examples all prove
> that the acts of touching, seeing, or listening to ervah are
> not *inherently* assur. They are assur only when they bring
> one to hirhur or hanaah. The only difference between my first
> guess and these responses, is in the mitigating circumstances
> which hold the hirhur/hanaah down to the zero level.

R' Samuel Svarc responded:

> Incorrect. 'Oseh makom' is assur to look at, if ones very
> looking is distracted then we have 'heterim'.

How is that different than what I said? We agree that in some cases it is assur, and in other cases it is mutar.

RSS continued:

> You're conflating a stock issur of seeing 'ervah' which is
> not dependent on 'hanaah' and is only mitigated when the
> seeing itself is distracted, with an issur that is dependent
> on 'hirur -hanaah', namely, touching.

Are you suggesting that touching is *less* problematic than looking? I have always presumed touching to be equally forbidden, or even more forbidden. (I have no sources for this, only that this is area where halacha is full of "fences", and it seems to me a logical progression: Just as kissing leads to relations, and touching leads to kissing, so too looking leads to touching. In contrast, to forbid touching because it might lead to looking sounds absurd.)

Further: What do you mean when you say that:
(A) the issur is *not* dependent on hanaah, and
(B) the issur *is* mitigated if the person looking is distracted.
What do you mean by that? Isn't the whole point of distraction that it insures the level of hanaah to be minimal or zero? Don't these two concepts work together?

Akiva Miller

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