Ever take some innocently young folks to the zoo on Chol Hamoed? You visit the gazelle and goats, the peacocks and lions, the ducks in the pond, and eventually the young feminist in the party pipes up, “Why don’t the girl animals get to be pretty?”
So you explain, “The girl animals don’t have to be pretty.” You explain that the men animals dress up in their best feathers and furs and go fight over the lady animals. Of course, the young bochur in the group then asserts from around knee level: “Eugh. I would never fight over a girl.”
True, true. We’re not animals, we’re people, so the girls dress up in their best furs and feathers and fight over the guys.
Take, for example, mating season for deer. A few stags get together in a field with a doe or two as spectator. They prance and show off, mock fight, duel, and generally do their best to show how wonderful they are. The doe then walks off with the winner.
Compare to what was once mating season among Jews: a bunch of young ladies in white dresses dancing and singing on a hilltop, competing to prove that they are most desirable. The men ogle for a pleasant afternoon and then walk off with their choice.
OK, that practice wouldn’t go over very well today (along with many other ancient Jewish practices, but that’s off topic), but if we’re not dancing on a hilltop in white dresses, we’re pretty close, dancing off to get the right degrees while wearing the right clothes, presenting our desirable characteristics in neatly organized shidduch “resumes,” and promising dowries to lure the finicky.
Wouldn’t it be oh-so-nice to sit demurely on the side and watch the guys duke it out over us, just once?
well, one difference is nowadays it would have to be hilltop dancing in black dresses
Comment by the talmid — October 7, 2007 @ 8:06 pm