Shlomo Bardin, the visionary founder of Brandeis-Bardin, famously taught that Judaism is “caught, not taught.” He was right, and also only half right. Judaism is contagious. It travels through melody, gesture, hospitality, rhythm, meals, posture, atmosphere. It gets into a person through the body before it ever settles into the mind. That is why camps, retreats, and living communities matter so much. But Judaism is also taught: in texts, in classrooms, in argument, in disciplined practice, in the patient transmission of wisdom from one generation to the next. Jewish life needs both instruction and infection. It needs teaching, and it needs a culture worth catching. The same is true of masculinity.

Men do not become men only because someone lectures them on manhood. They catch masculinity from the room—from fathers and coaches, peers and podcasts, locker rooms and timelines, jokes and silences, what gets praised and what gets mocked. Some of that teaching is explicit; much of it is atmospheric. Which is what makes Leviticus 22:5-6 such a useful metaphor. In its plain sense, the text describes a priest who becomes impure through contact, whether with a swarming thing or another source of impurity, and then remains in that state until evening. What is........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)