Our Gemara on the top of Amud Aleph continues its discussion why there is a rabbinic decree that Gentiles have a status of tumas zav. Really Gentiles are not subject at all to the laws of purity, and they are not carriers of tumah (Nazir 62b). So why did the rabbis impose this strict form of impurity upon them?

The Sages were concerned about Jewish children being exposed to inappropriate sexual contact during playtime with their gentile neighbors whom they believed were less careful about protecting their children from sexual abuse. They therefore decreed that gentile children be considered to have the impurity of a Zav so that the Jewish children would not play with the gentile children. This decree was enacted to protect them from being subjected to improper sexual contact (Shabbos 17b).

One would think it would have been more effective to just educate and warn parents about the dangers of inappropriate sexual contact and/or abuse, as we attempt to do nowadays.

We must conclude that either one of two possible concerns made public education on this matter difficult. Either the rabbis who enacted this decree felt the standards of modest speech would be violated if they stated their concerns directly. Or their warnings would go unheeded because the average parent considered such acts unthinkable, even by their less modest gentile neighbors. (See our blogpost earlier on Avodah Zara 35, which discussed how the rabbis sometimes chose to keep the reasons for their decrees secret, so that they would not be rejected.)The rabbis therefore resorted to the fear of impurity as a way to influence parental behavior and protect the children, taking care of safety concerns without overwhelming people with information beyond their ability to process emotionally.

This is an example of how the rabbis saw a reality that the common folk did not, and used existing taboos and beliefs to create new ones instead of trying to educate concepts and ideas that the regular folk could not handle. As the line goes, “Do you really want to know the truth? You can’t handle the truth!!”

People might say today we could handle the truth, because for us sexuality is less taboo. However, before we get arrogant about our supposed superiority and sophistication over the ancients, consider the following: Every society has taboos and fears that they cannot fully acknowledge consciously, it is a part of the human condition that we must deny our frailty and mortality. The ancients saw the raw power of sex to create, but also take a person over, and understood full well sits dangers and power. In a post Freudian world, post sexual revolution, people are less inhibited sexually. However, how many people can say “I love you” without intense discomfort? How many people can acknowledge mental illness or physical mortality without anxiety? How does society see the beauty and power of the life-growing pregnant woman? (By disrespecting her and forcing her to be compared to social norms such as going back to work in 6 weeks and having flat abs in less than that!?!) Those are our new taboos. Taboos don’t go away, they just change forms of expression.