                Redemption follows Moral Depravity
                      by Gary M. Cooperberg
                        December 2, 1991
                                
       How wonderful to be "normal" and to join the international family of nations in the
fight against AIDS.  I must tell you how it warmed my heart to see, on Israel television, a
matronly pedagogue lecturing a coed high school class on the virtues of using a condom
during sexual intercourse.  
       It may well be that there are high school students who do consider such
relationships as acceptable "adult" behavior.  It has been learned that the AIDS virus is spread
via such relationships.  In reaction to these facts the moral degradation of western society has
deemed it proper to "educate" high school students on the use of condoms as a method to
avoid contacting AIDS. 
       In other words, society has abandoned its role to teach moral standards.  Rather
than so much as suggest the cessation of premarital sex, not just as a moral wrong, but as the
best way to prevent contacting this serious illness, it has decided to accept, and thus
encourage the practice!
       I can understand the perverted morality of the United States and other western
nations, but it sickens me to see it imported to Israel.  There is no question but that, even in
the Arab countries which have agreed to participate in the international campaign against
AIDS, you will never see the disgusting commercials presenting the explicit discussion of
sexual activity on the part of its country's youth as if it were a perfectly acceptable social
behavior.
       This attempt to cure a disease by treating the symptom rather than the cause will
not only fail to achieve its aim, rather will magnify its prevalence.  The "education" given to
young people, while possibly influencing some to indeed, "protect" themselves, will have a far
greater affect upon the many who might have chosen to avoid premarital sexual encounters
had society chosen to maintain its tabu against it.
       Pre and extra marital sex is not a new phenomenon.  It is an ancient one.  Those
who think it is a "modern" morality need but to refer to the ancient Greeks who tried to import
it to Israel many centuries ago.  In those days, even here in Israel, we had our counterparts of
those who today would counsel, "have a good time, but be careful." 
       Davka it was this very phenomenon that caused Mattityahu to take the drastic
action he did in order to save the Jewish people from the moral decadence of the Greeks. 
How ironic that we find today, the same perversion of morality in Israel yet without it being
forced upon us by an oppressor.
       It is but another indicator that we are bereft of real Jewish leadership.  We can take
a morbid solace in the knowledge that, in the case of our redemption from Egypt, we first had
to sink to the depths of moral depravity before G-d sent Moses to rescue us.  As such our
present redemption must be very close.