Mary KennyAdultery sites only seek to demean a serious sin, writes Mary Kenny
Adultery is a sin as old as the hills and we know that because faith systems – such as the Ten Commandments – have gone to some trouble to underline it. The Decalogue carries two warnings against adultery – which, significantly, the Americans call “cheating” – both directly and indirectly (“Thou shalt not commit adultery” and “thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s wife”).
There is even a Jewish joke which illustrates how much adultery matters.
The story is told that Moses descends from the mountain carrying the tablets of stone and gathers the people around him. “The good news is,” he says, “I’ve got Him down to ten.” Pause. “The bad news is – adultery’s still in!”
So we know there has always been temptation to stray from the marriage vows. And where there is human temptation – there is money to be made.
The brokers making a business out of adultery are called Ashley Madison, who I’ve mentioned previously. Their advertising comes lavishly (and uninvited) over the internet and social media: “Life is short. Have an affair”. Yes, I commented, and damage your marriage, possibly make your children miserable and live in fear of everything falling apart.
Well, things did fall apart. The list of Ashley Madison’s clients – those who subscribed to the site with the specific intention of having an affair – was ‘hacked’ into and the data stolen.
The hackers have threatened to expose the private emails and information of the Canadian website’s users, unless the service is closed; and it would not be unfair to say that lives have been ruined. Two suicides have been linked to the adultery website, including a Texas policeman who shot himself after information about his connection with the website was disclosed.
No, it’s not ethical to hack into private information and reveal it. But some people clearly feel so strongly about cheating in relationships that they are moved to do so. The hacking group, calling themselves ‘Impact Team’, have described the Ashley Madison members as “cheating dirtbags”. And that perhaps reflects the anger often felt by a spouse who has been cheated on.
The divorce lawyers are receiving calls from spouses – mainly wives – who found their partner’s name among the leaked data.
Yet, the business generated was astonishing – the adultery site attracted 37 million users globally.
Aside from religious teaching about adultery as a betrayal of the marriage trust, many great works of literature have been written about adultery. The two greatest, surely, are Madame Bovary by Flaubert and Anna Karenina by Tolstoy. These describe the human heart carried off by an illicit passion, and the tragedies that unfold with the consequences. In the hands of a great writer (or opera librettist) there is a grandeur in portraying a fall from grace.
Adultery sites, by contrast, seem such cheapskate, squalid hook-ups.
Judaism and the afterlife
I have often heard it said that Judaism has no specific belief in the afterlife, and I once put that very question to a Rabbi, who was a bit of a wit anyway. “What do Jews believe about the afterlife?” “The afterlife is none of your business!” he exclaimed. “Your job is to do the best you can in this life and leave the afterlife to the Almighty!”
It was an answer worthy of Woody Allen himself, I thought: droll and yet thoughtful.
But now a Jewish theologian has written a letter to the London Times explaining this question much more specifically. Orthodox Rabbinical Judaism “has no doubts about [the afterlife],” writes David Levy of London N3.
“Non-belief in Olam Habah… (the world to come)… amounts to ‘heresy’, to borrow a Christian term. Indeed, the rabbis depict this world as only a preparation for, or a lobby or vestibule to ‘the world to come’.”
The majority of practising Jews, Mr Levy explains, are Orthodox. “Reform Judaism,” by contrast is “barely 200 years old” and, he implies, has weaker historical roots. Reform Judaism is a liberal interpretation of the Jewish faith and is thus perhaps vaguer about its tenets.
Anyway, it was an interesting clarification for me.
No island is an island
I know nothing of stocks and shares, but we are all aware, from history, how serious the fallout can be from a Stock Market crash: the Great Crash of 1929 had a serious impact on many countries, including Ireland. And it had a huge influence on politics: both Communism and Fascism gained in influence and numbers because both rejected the vagaries of “free market capitalism”.
Will “the Great Fall of China”, as last Monday’s stock market plunge is being called, have similar reverberations? The “global economy” is even more closely interwoven today than it was in 1929, so it will certainly have implications for us all.
In economics now, the John Donne phrase is apt: “no man is an island” – and no island is an island.