What I learned from Radiohead

I love music, all types of music... I've been searching for months for a definitive answer to what is "good", or at least not assur, music and haven't come up with any answers.

Months ago, after I stopped listening to the interplay of Thom's beautiful voice and the instrumentation, I listened to the words of this song and by the third hearing I realized that the song is about someone trying to convince another to do something pretty high on the ladder of aveiros.

The gemara in Sotah (daf 2a) gives suggestions as to Rebbi's juxtaposition of Sotah after Nazir:

למה נסמכה פרשת נזיר לפרשת סוטה? לומר לך שכל הרואה סוטה בקלקלה יזיר אעצמו מן היין

Rashi comments that the reason for the vow was to prevent קלות ראש. A drash that I heard in the name of Rabbi Moshe Feinstein speaks out the question that we should all be asking: Why would someone who watched a woman die because of עריות have to worry about קלות ראש; as he/she should be permanently sobered up by the experience and sufficiently strong to distance one's self from עריות?

The reason is a window into human nature that resonates with me even though I am troubled by the implications... Exposure to indecent acts desensitizes even the most pious soul. As countless accounts from people trapped in the throes of war and famine have shown; over time, incidents that would horrify most of humanity become commonplace, mundane. Viewers of the sotah in her disgrace would no longer have minds free of the concept of adultery, after watching the punishment meted out in the fashion of the Torah it would be rather indelibly marked into their brains. The memory would lie there tantalizing them with the forbidden. True, they would remember the "downside" to getting caught, but the temptation to all that is prohibited would tango with their yetzer hara waiting for a weak moment to invite its victim to the dance floor.

So while (in my opinion) we aren't meant to live cloistered lives, in the model of the amish or an order of monks, we aren't meant to place stumbling blocks before ourselves; life will surely place enough of those in our way without our help. If I am honest then, I might throw out certain Radiohead songs and continue through my entire music collection, waging war against the yetzer hara… But I have this one question, “What happens when you’re already ‘corrupted’?” Does it matter that I heard the Beatles sing about the same topics while in the womb? That I already have the kernel in my mind; like a splinter, ruining the perfection in an otherwise smooth board?

I choose the third way, but it might be a cop out; I choose to interpret the lines “Forget about your house of cards/And I'll do mine. Fall off the table…” to be about the uncertainty of making choices that have consequences, instead of a would-be lover trying to convince a woman to be his paramour.

Maybe that’ll do?

The video is "House of Cards" by Radiohead, it's got an interesting backstory.

Labels: dvar torah, Sotah