According to one 2016 study, about 20 percent of people are exploring another kind of "happy ending"—the kind that involves multiple relationships with multiple people. Polyamory—the practice of having more than one romantic or sexual partner at the same time—is definitely gaining the most visibility in popular culture. It was the fourth most frequently searched relationship term on Google in 2017 [!! First is probably "What do we do when a חזקה דמעיקרא conflicts with a חזקה דהשתא"].
In other words - לא תנאף, the seventh commandment, is going out of style. In Israel, polyamory is becoming popular as well. That is not surprising. When people aren't constricted by G-d then WHY NOT?? If the couple agrees to open up their relationship then live and let live. Nobody is hurting anyone else.
What IS surprising is that Bar Ilan University is having a symposium about this topic. Bar Ilan is a religious university founded by religious people for religious students. It is named after the son of the Netziv of Volozhin, Rabbi Meir Bar Ilan. From the advertisement, it seems that the purpose is not to find ways to prevent this horrific phenomenon from spreading but to objectively and dispassionately analyze it. No rabbis are talking at the symposium [to say things like "G-D SAVE US FROM ADULTERY!!!"], just mental health professionals. How did this happen that a religious university, with a religious leadership, a large number of religious professors, religious donors [one major donor is a fine Yid who used to live across the street from me] and a mostly religious student body has sunk so low??
This is my theory as a partial explanation [Rav Shlomo Volbe z"l writes something similar]:
I am in favor of knowledge. Hiding ourselves from the realities of science, history, philosophy etc. does not make us deeper people nor does it necessarily make us better Jews. The opposite is often the case. We have ample precedent of Gedolei Yisrael who were very knowledgeable even in secular matters and it enhanced their Torah learning and Avodas Hashem.
HOWEVER, in university - every university - there is a spirit of FREE INQUIRY. This means that NOTHING is sacrosanct. Everything can and must be questioned and "objectively" analyzed [even though THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS PURE OBJECTIVITY]. So any person who grew up innocently believing in G-d, Torah Mi-sinai, the integrity of Torah Shebial Peh, a strict moral code etc. etc. is now told to question his beliefs. It doesn't help that the VAST MAJORITY of academics are liberal left-wingers who have little to no reverence for tradition and religion. So when one gets to a college campus, any college campus, he or she is told - implicitly or explicitly - that religion is primitive. It was invented by the ancients who didn't understand science and thus in order to explain things had to invent religion. Today we don't need that anymore. Evolution and science explain everything [except how nothing created everything and a few other "minor details"].
Torah Mi-sinai? You believe THAT? G-d speaks to a nation in the desert? Can't be. Look at all of the contradictions in the Torah [people are told]. It must have been written by different people and had a LOUSY editor who didn't realize how many times the text was contradicting itself. The ancient Jews just copied from other religions with a few improvements. And the attacks on the veracity of the Torah continue in many different variations.
Torah Shebial Peh? The rabbis made it up as they went along.
Morality? Why follow an moral code from 3,300 years ago?? We live in a new generation!! So homosexuality used to be illegal [in 72 countries it still is] and was considered a mental illness until very recently while today it is encouraged. "Gay Pride" it is called. Marriage until very recently was considered the standard way for a couple to live together. Having a child out of wedlock and even premarital sex was considered sinful. Today, NOBODY gets married without having sex first [except for a few Orthodox Jews and li-havdil, Mormons and Muslims]. I saw a statistic that 70 percent [!!] of couples live together before marriage [I assume that this is for the USA].
So, from a critical academic perspective, there is no more objective truth. Everyone does and believes whatever they feel like. To be progressive is to reject religion as being primitive and repressive. DON'T REPRESS!!! BE YOUR TRUE SELF!!!! Don't let a bunch of backward ancients determine how you live.
THAT is the academic approach that is very pervasive. So it is no surprise that a religious university will have a symposium about adultery viewing it as a choice among choices. I choose to be adulterous - you choose not to. As they say in French "À chacun son goût" (pronounced [ah shah koo(n) so(n) goo]) - "(to) each one his taste".
Maybe some of the speakers at this event will present the opinion that this phenomenon is negative and try to find ways to understand why people are polyamorous in order to help them stop. Maybe. But my point remains in place. We live in a generation where traditional morality and beliefs have been jettisoned and one of the main sources of this attitude is the university which is a hotbed of liberalism. According to one study, liberal professors outnumber conservative ones by 12 to 1! "Conservative" means that the person believes in "conserving" traditional values while liberal means
"open to new behavior or opinions and willing to discard traditional values". So the academic approach combined with the people in academia spell the end of morality as we know it.
And to think that people pay upward of $200,000 for a college education....
