A few years
ago, I worked at an Orthodox-based Jewish school. (I am a born Catholic.) I knew that some Jews followed struct rules about
male-female touching, but I soon found, as Hamlet said, that the practice was
more honored in the breach. One woman would shake my hand among meeting or
leaving. Another would say “I’m sorry,
but I don’t shake hands with men outside my family.” But on the third hand, about half the parents
had grown up in Latin America, and many of them would promptly kiss me on the
cheek. I recall one Shabbat dinner where
every man or woman who entered (all Jews but my wife and me) kissed each of us
upon arrival. I soon learned to simply
wait with my hands at my side until the woman made the first move.
I bring
this up as a perspective on the Biden brouhaha.
So Biden apparently puts his hands on women’s shoulders, perhaps touches
their hair, or gives a non-sexual,
safely placed kiss. Under the New Puritanism,
this is an invasion of female space or bodily integrity. (Isn’t it odd that it’s so gendered? Have you ever heard of a man-man or
woman-woman objection of the same sort?)
But anyone
who’s experienced other cultures (including I venture to say, anyone named Flores
from southern California and Nevada) knows that such rules are arbitrary and
local. In cross-cultural training, such
as provided by the U.S, State Department, the varieties of “personal space” are
emphasized, lest someone offend either by getting too close or too distant in a
foreign culture.
If there is
any universal underlying all the variants, it is the biological universal that
touch is good. It heals, it prolongs and
even saves life. Harry Harlow proved
decades ago that baby monkeys preferred a furry surrogate mother object to a
wire one that provided food. Nursing
homes and gerontologists universally urge touching the elderly, even those with
dementia. We are a touching
species. And in the U.S. it is
particularly important that we distinguish between what is common to all people
and what is a culturally-inculcated standard.
