A down side of secular "culture"
They're actually televising a show called "Secret Diary of a Call Girl"?! I'm not ready to give up watching television--why throw out the good shows with the bad?--but I no longer wonder why many yeshivish (moderately right-wing Orthodox) and Chareidi (fervently right-wing Orthodox) Jews won't touch the stuff.
I read Samuel Heilman's "Sliding to the Right: The Contest for the Future of American Jewish Orthodoxy" some months ago, so I don't remember every detail. But it seems to me that part of his point was that one of the reasons for the withdrawal of some segments of the Orthodox community from participation in secular culture--for example, the current preference, among many Chareidim, to avoid college education--is that secular values no longer match religious values as much as they did years ago. There was a time, before the "sexual revolution" of my early adulthood in the 70's, when such things as discreet behavior--even if you "did it," you didn't discuss it--and proper public dress and language were simply an accepted part of the general culture. Now, it's considered perfectly normal and acceptable for television to produce such shows as "Sex in the City," and for some colleges to require students to live in dorms in which the genders are mixed, whether students find such living arrangements acceptable to their religious beliefs or not. Enough said.
I read Samuel Heilman's "Sliding to the Right: The Contest for the Future of American Jewish Orthodoxy" some months ago, so I don't remember every detail. But it seems to me that part of his point was that one of the reasons for the withdrawal of some segments of the Orthodox community from participation in secular culture--for example, the current preference, among many Chareidim, to avoid college education--is that secular values no longer match religious values as much as they did years ago. There was a time, before the "sexual revolution" of my early adulthood in the 70's, when such things as discreet behavior--even if you "did it," you didn't discuss it--and proper public dress and language were simply an accepted part of the general culture. Now, it's considered perfectly normal and acceptable for television to produce such shows as "Sex in the City," and for some colleges to require students to live in dorms in which the genders are mixed, whether students find such living arrangements acceptable to their religious beliefs or not. Enough said.
posted by Shira Salamone at 1:01 PM
2 Comments:
I haven't had a TV for almost a decade, because I noticed where things were going and I opted out. Even the media gets awfully creative. Speaking of horribly vulgar things - Idiocracy was a little too close to reality for me.
Anne, I never watched "Sex in the City." I simply refused, and will continue to do so. See my link to Chana’s post about privacy.
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