Rachel Uchitel, best known as Tiger Woods’ favorite mistress has inked a deal to pose for Playboy. But there’s a catch: she has three weeks to back out, no strings attached, in case she discovers her inner-Jewish modesty. Besides, she only plans to bare her top half and backside anyway.
Perhaps beneath her fame-hungry, gold-digging mistress exterior, Uchitel is just a nice Jewish girl trying to make her way in the world. (Yes, she really is: read about it here.) And what better way to punctuate the Tiger-fame-wave than by leveraging her notoriety into a high profile Playboy spread?
But if what she’s looking for is a way out, the Torah has her covered. What exactly does the good book say about posing in the nude?
Luckily Los Angeles is host to uber-hip dean Rabbi Brad Artson, who presides over the Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies at American Jewish University. In an essay on Parashat Yitro, Artson writes about the difference between nudity and nakedness.
Nudity, he says, is a state of personal intimacy and trust, “beautiful and simple” like a baby’s tush; Nakedness, however, is a state of mind and implies a lack of protection, vulnerability, objectification.
“Nakedness can also be an assault on those forced to view another person undressed,” Artson writes. “Only someone very powerful, arrogant, or angry (socially or sexually) is in a position to impose their nakedness on others. To be forced to confront someone’s nakedness can be jarring. To endure someone’s exhibitionism is to have one’s privacy and modesty shredded.”
Hmmm… Playboy as assault on personal dignity. Of course! Revenge.
But there may be another motive yet…
Of all the mistresses in the woods, Uchitel was considered by Tiger the most fair. A recent Vanity Fair spread investigating the Woods scandal referred to her as “The Love Affair,” because, according to the magazine, Uchitel and Woods had a relationship that was “based not only on lust but also on love.” In his essay, Artson quotes a 13th century Spanish text, the Sefer Ha-Hinnukh that says, “For out of one’s action is the heart acted upon.”
Now that could mean one of two things: either she’s hoping her exhibitionism and sexual freedom will help her get over him, or maybe, just maybe, she’s trying to win him back.
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