The Prohibition To Look At Women

Question: Why is there a prohibition to look at women?

Answer: It is prohibited to look at women, except for your own wife. It is a spiritual prohibition, while in our corporeal world, everything takes place on the animate level. A man feels pleasure when he looks at women, while a woman doesn’t feel any pleasure from looking at men.

A woman can feel pleasure when she sees men that behave properly and the degree to which they can ascend, correct, and perform actions in the spiritual sense. A man, on the other hand, enjoys looking at a woman’s body.

Question: What’s wrong with that?

Answer: A man engages in that on the animate level, not on the spiritual level, and it distracts him from the goal. There is nothing other than that in this prohibition.
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From the Kabbalah Lesson in Russian 4/24/16