Door l'Door*

Beware the latest threat to Jewish life: self-locking doors. You know the ones: they lock by themselves when you close them. Well, thank God for Israeli Rabbis Shmuel Wosner and Nissim Karelitz who have ruled that men and woman in rooms with self-locking doors may be violating the Jewish prohibition against just such heterosexual intimacy, and urging Jews to avoid using such locks and entering such rooms.

This is no small danger. In a recent survey of Jewish men between the ages of 120 and 121, not a single respondent denied feelings of sexual arousal when standing next to a woman in a room with self-locking doors.

For those Jews for whom avoiding self-locking doors is impossible, the rabbis urge that the doors be left slightly ajar. This solution, however, is far too liberal. What if someone walks by, notices the door is ajar and innocently closes it? What then? How long before the couple behind the just closed door loses control and engages in prohibited acts such as sexual intercourse or, God forbid, praying aloud together?

No, the only solution is to replace these locks. Or, better yet, do away with doors.

Look, I admit to being in a room without self-locking doors and accidently closing the door, inadvertently pushing a large file cabinet up against it, and then unknowingly heaping all the other furniture in the room against the file cabinet. And I have done this when there is no one else in the room with me at all. If this could happen to me, just think what might happen to you!

So, in the interest of living a good Jewish life, please, people, no more doors.

*This title, Door l'Door is a play on the Hebrew dor l'dor, generation to generation. Its sort of funny if you know the Hebrew. It isn't funny if you don't. It is even a little annoying if you have to read a footnote that explains it. Footnotes and jokes don't usually go together. So maybe this wasn't the best title, but it was the best I had. And so there it is. If you've got a better one, please post it.