Are Male Earrings Sexy?

From Rabbi Hershel Schacter's "The Mitzvah of Yishuv Eretz Yisrael"

If we persist in staying in Galut even when our punishment is over, we will be following the dangerous precedent set by the Eved Nirtza. A Hebrew slave who grows to enjoy the conditions of his servitude and refuses to go free at the end of his six­ year term is made to undergo a retziah ceremony involving the piercing of his upper ear, after which he remains a slave until the Jubilee year.

One interpretation given to explain the symbolism of piercing the ear is based upon the assumption that the slave was originally sold as a thief, who, when apprehended, had no money with which to pay back his victim. "The ear which heard at Sinai 'Thou shall not steal.' and yet (its owner) went out and stole deserves to be pierced." On this explanation Rabbi Yehoshua Leib Diskin asks why, if the piercing is a punishment for the theft, is it not carried out immediately, but only after six years of servitude? He answers that the true punishment for the theft is being sold into servitude for six years; no other punishment is ordinarily called for. But this particular thief, by displaying reluctance to go free after the six years are up, demonstrates that for him the servitude never constituted a punishment in the first place. On the contrary, he revels in his new surroundings: "I love my master, my wile and children; I shall not go free." For such a man, to whom the punishment of the Torah means nothing, the Torah prescribes an additional punishment - the piercing of the ear.

One can argue that our presence in exile was a punishment and that with our renewed access to Israel, that punishment is over. God forbid that we should sit back and willingly accept surroundings that are, essentially, meant as a punishment. God forbid that, by refusing to recognize the nature of one punishment, we bring upon ourselves another.