Likelihood of Success

It’s the end of the year, auld lang syne and all that, so I am indulging in some more “best of” posting, perhaps through New Year’s, in addition to the constant, irresistible stream of stunningly original material.

The post reprinted below was among the first published on this blog. It came up while I was searching for something totally unrelated for purposes of a cross-reference. It turns out, however, not only to be a post I really remember liking — if only because I had finally expressed a thesis, complete with the Murray Slaughter reference, I’d been contemplating for decades — but because it utilizes a quote from Rabbi Israel Salanter that I used (having forgotten about it) about a week ago in this post; when I published the piece below, I had been unable to find its source.

Ultimately I also feel this post has something valuable to say about the way people struggle for ways to resolve their passionate need for connection, and when that need must be denied, however painful, in deference to other spiritual needs and moral priorities. In that respect it may remind regular readers of the theme of the “singing” post I put up late last week. The good news is, this one is much shorter, and a lot less purple. I have, however, added one additional sentence upon reflection.

Thank God, I have a lot more people reading my little thoughts now than when I wrote this one, so perhaps this merits a second look:

Dawn Eden, more than a little interested in the subject, clarifies the word chaste:

[E]veryone is supposed to observe chastity according to their state in life, so there’s single chastity and there’s married chastity. Chastity is really a way to look at all your relationships so that they no longer become mere exchanges of commodities. It’s a plan for your whole life, for your happiness, and for eventually going to heaven. I look at chastity as a way to practice what it’s like to be in heaven.

Huh — live and learn. It reminds me of the Jewish concept of tzeniuth, which is usually translated as “modesty” (typically alluding to modesty in matters of dress) but which I learned really means “dignity.”

There is one use of the word “chaste,” though, that I will always remember. It was on the old Mary Tyler Moore Show, when Murray Slaughter — the crypto-Jewish copywriter played by Gavin McLeod — his heart filled to bursting, finally has to tell Mary that he’s in love with her. (This was before McLeod became captain of, ironically, the Love Boat.) Mary, perpetually single but very desirable, expresses how flattered she is and gently reminds Murray that he’s married (thus avoiding the more painful truth that he’s not in her league). Murray, the literary romantic, resolves it by assuring her that he knows this, he loves his wife, and that he will still always love Mary (“Myeh-ry” as he says it; the Jewish part of his character is not played out as Rhoda Morgenstern’s is, but with that accent in Minneapolis, and his literary pretensions, it’s pretty clear) “pure and chaste from afar.”

I found that very touching, and of course somewhat sad, but also was impressed by the level of maturity that Murray showed in making this acknowledgment. I must have been impressed — I am sure I saw that episode about 30 years ago, and it still sticks with me. Still and all, the higher service for Murray would have been to keep his feelings to himself — this would truly have been pure and chaste and, especially, “afar.” In Jewish sensibility we call this k’rivath hadaath, literally, “the bringing-close of the mind” — for such a revelation of one’s feelings about another, regardless of acceptance or rejection, opens up new mental gateways between the two people in conversation. The Torah teaches us that merely expressing something verbally, among other things, can cross a line of the heart, breach a wall of emotional propriety that protects far more than mere emotions.

How more so is this true for the Murray Slaughters of the world, who can readily make words express what is in their hearts and by so doing open the hearts of others as well.

Murray, in fact, pushes the point and cannot restrain himself from asking Mary if the feeling is mutual. Unfortunately in his case, it isn’t. So she kind of says, “I love ya, buddy” and bear hugs him as his aunt might, thereby bursting his bubble — not as if he could ever have dared to think otherwise.

Yes, Murray would have been better nurturing, or neutering, his secret love secretly. I wish I could remember in whose name I saw this bit of doggerel — it went something like this: “Not everything that is said should be written; not everything that is thought, should be said.” Imagine where the blogosphere would be with such a worldview; and yet this golden rule — and not merely whether my swinging fist implodes your visage — is , perhaps, the very minimum guideline of a civilized, i.e., social, person. Perhaps this too it is of a piece with Dawn’s definition of chastity.