SEPARATING THE ADULT FROM ADULTERY
formulate a public policy that has the goal of strongly encouraging conformity and compliance with these expressed ideals. A very real probability exists that among the tools used to attain this goal there will need to be some clearly articulated disincentives for those who might otherwise be only too willing to engage in undesirable behaviors. The fact that these deterrents might find their greatest effect through repeated enunciation rather than actual activation will not diminish their vital role in plainly transmitting the critical core interests of society.
Thousands of years ago the Ten Commandments were chiseled into the foundation stones of Judaism . No Jew since has taken issue with their significance. The Decalogue started out prohibiting adultery because adultery tore at the very fabric of Judaism ’s divine vision of society, founded on committed relationships of kiddushin. Centuries later, the same Jewish vision lives on among its contemporary inheritors. Both liberal and traditional forms of halakhah, therefore, carry a mandate to do everything possible to safeguard the sanctity of marital relationships within the context of every new generation. This mandate, unchanged by the passing millennia, conveys a message that is as relevant today as ever and that is once again worthy of revitalized attention.
Notes
1; Exod. 20:14 and Deut. 5:18.
2. Indeed, adultery is referred to not only directly in the Seventh Commandment, but obliquely as well in the Tenth Commandment’s reference to coveting one’ neighbor’s wife.
4. See infra at p. 10ff.
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