adapted from Jay Michaelson’s, God in Your Body: Kabbalah, Mindfulness and Embodied Spiritual Practice (Jewish Lights, 2007)

I once heard a modest man bemoan the fact that it is human nature to have physical pleasure from sex. He preferred that there be no feeling of pleasure at all, so that he could have sex solely to fulfill the command of his creator… and I thought that way myself… Later, however, God favored me with a gift of grace, granting me understanding of the true meaning of sanctification during sexual intercourse: that it comes precisely from feeling physical pleasure. This secret is wondrous, deep and awesome.
Rabbi Baruch of Kosov (i)

It goes without saying that sexuality captures our attention, thanks to aeons of evolution and culture. Individually, it triggers us, inviting both judgment and excitement. Communally, our culture is obsessed with sex—not despite America’s puritanical denigration of sexuality, but precisely because of it. The more liberation, the more condemnation; and the more condemnation, the more titillation. Sex is the sacrament that’s been turned into sin—and from there, into innuendo, industry, and obsession. So where, in this mess, is one to find an embodied spiritual path that both embraces sexual expression and pursues the holy? And what would an authentically Jewish sexual ethic look like in a contemporary context?


Alas, for us today, the first step is a subtractive, rather than an additive one: to become aware of attitudes of condemnation and comparison, both of which tend to define sexuality in terms of something it isn’t, or shouldn’t, be, rather than what it is. Our culture provides a toxic soil for nurturing healthy, spiritual sexuality, and years of cultural conditioning, guilt, and assumptions are not quickly erased—not because guilt is what we “really” feel, “deep down,” but simply because guilt, judgment, shame, and the rest are what most of us have been taught the longest. It’s pointless to deny that, in our culture, religion and sexuality are opposed to one another, even though, in the Jewish tradition, they are anything but. So, what’s needed is neither a denial nor an embrace of our culture’s sexual hangups, but an openness, a curiosity, and a witness-consciousness as we explore how to know God through Jewish sacred sexuality.

Second, in approaching Jewish teachings around sexuality, the difference between what Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi calls “restoration” and “renewal” becomes very apparent. One looking to restore some imagined past Judaism, in which everything was better than it is today, will hold fast to a literal reading of literal laws, even when this “literal” reading is amplified by generations of commentary far more stringent than the original text. One looking to renew Judaism, on the other hand, looks to the teachings of the past, and attempts to translate them into the present. The difference is in how we read. For example, in the case of sexuality, a restorationist must say that no sexual activity outside of heterosexual marriage can be condoned. Indeed, even within marriage, additional layers of law constrain sexual expression to procreative acts only. So, if our definition of “kosher sex” is limited to the proscriptions of Byzantine or Medieval Judaism, the band of acceptable sexual expression is narrow indeed. (Then again, it would also include polygamy, the dominant form of Jewish family relationship for the majority of Jewish history, illustrating how most literalists are selective literalists.)

However, the alternative does not have to be rudderless hedonism, with no thought of spirituality, ethics, or holiness. Renewal, rather than restoration, takes seriously the impulses behind past laws and practices, even as it understands the historical contexts in which those impulses were expressed. For instance, there are at least two ways to read the talmudic edict that a man must make love to his wife every day, unless under certain circumstances. One is to read the rule as being about husband and wife. Another is to translate the sex-positive injunction into the meaningful relationships we hold today. Just as the talmudic rabbis required frequent, healthy sexual activity within their world; so we should in ours.

Obviously, there is a tendency in this approach to shape our “translation” to be whatever we want it to be. That is why discernment and seriousness is required. Sometimes the result may seem more lenient; other times, as regarding polygamy or the Talmud’s approval of marriage to nine-year-old girls, more strict. The key is to maintain a serious commitment to our tradition’s sexual values, even as the containers for those values evolve. Of course, sages from previous generations would likely be shocked to have their ideas applied to unmarried partners, to gay people, or any any context outside of a committed, dyadic relationship. But they would also be shocked by the Internet, cars, and TV.

Sex is Holy

Let’s begin with first principles. The body has been wired for sexual pleasure—and if by God, then clearly God desired that sex be delightful. In the mainstream Jewish tradition, the common notion that sex is a necessary evil, or somehow opposed to religious sentiment, is almost wholly absent. On the contrary, the first commandment given to humankind is to be fruitful and multiply. And there is much more to sex than procreation—biblical heroes are intensely sexual beings, full of passion. The matriarchs Leah and Rachel use aphrodisiacs on their husband, Jacob, with no inkling in the text that passion, in and of itself, is “wrong.” Sarah’s beauty is celebrated, Joseph’s is reknowned. Of course, when passion leads to ethical transgression—as when King David’s lust for Bathsheba causes him to have her husband killed in battle—the Bible in unambiguous in its condemnation. But nowhere is there a notion that sex itself should be avoided.

This is not to say that sex in the Bible is simple. On the contrary, as scholars have noted, the Bible depicts sex is that which is kadosh (sacred, set-apart, holy) and also that which can contaminate, even destroy. Fecundity and genealogy are central preoccupations, especially in passages which regulate priestly behavior. Taharah means both purity and pregnancy; tumah refers to both impurity and menstruation. Sex isn’t simple, and it isn’t merely kosher—it’s powerful, magical, dangerous, holy.

So too in the talmudic tradition, where sex is celebrated, feared, regulated, and endlessly discussed. First, most rabbis frowned on celibacy. The Talmud in Yevamot 8:7 records Rabbi Eleazar ben Azariah as saying that “anyone who does not engage in procreation nullifies the Divine image.” Yet Talmudix sex is much more than procreation. If the tales in the Talmud are any indication, our sages were passionate beings, whose attitude toward sexual matters ranged from boastful pride (even about the size of their anatomy) (ii) to extreme reverence for beauty and its power to bring about inspiration or calamity. The Talmud is not prudish; it recommends foods for good sex (iii), discusses multiple orgasm (Niddah 13a) and the length of time required for sexual intercourse (Sotah 4a), frowns upon wearing clothes during sex (Ketubot 48a), and explicitly permits oral sex (Nedarim 20a-b). It is also insistent that a husband provide his wife with sexual pleasure during “her time” (onatah), listing the required frequency of sex according to the occupation of the husband: every day for those with no job, twice a week for laborers, once a week for mule drivers, once a month for camel drivers, once every six months for sailors. (iv)

Within the Talmud’s various parameters, sexual love is celebrated and sanctified. One of the sheva brachot, the seven blessings recited after a wedding, celebrates the “joy” of bride and groom, which, if other uses of the term are any indication, refers to the physical ecstasy of consummating the marriage. The Talmud saw love of God as reflecting sexual love:

Said Rav Ktina: “When the Israelites were coming on pilgrimage to the temple
in Jerusalem the priests were folding up the curtains and showing them the two
Cherubs that were in the midst of lovemaking with each other and telling them:
‘See your love with God, like the love of masculine and feminine.’” (vi)

Most importantly, unlike the chaste Adam and Eve in the Christian tradition, rabbinic sources include sex in paradise. (vii) In short, for the rabbis, sex is neither good nor bad; it’s powerful.

In the Jewish mystical literature, we find a more complicated, but perhaps even more erotically affirming, trend. One might think that the Kabbalah, concerned as it is with higher states of consciousness, would have an ascetic impulse. After all, the less energy is disbursed in sexual activity, the more it’s available for study, meditation, and yearning for the Divine. However, although asceticism was present in some kabbalistic movements, the dominant trend is that sexuality is holy; that sexual union embodies, actualizes, and reflects the fundamental dynamics of cosmic and even theological processes; and that union must be actualized to maintain the flow of the shefa, the Divine effluence. For the Zohar, God, creation, the balance of energies in the world—all are understood through the prism of the union of opposites, a union reflective of and expressed in sexuality. (viii) This is no mere metaphor: the world of the Zohar is a dynamic universe in which energies are always combining, breaking apart, and then combining anew. Human agency, including sexuality, is an essential part of this process: the process of God itself. We are not meant to return to God, by leaving the body behind—celibacy was condemned by the Zohar, as a practice of the “Edomite kings” who ruled in the Land of Israel but died without leaving heirs. Rather, the Zohar says that we are meant to imitate God—who creates, manifests into separation, and unites the separate back into One. For the Zohar and other texts, sexual union re-enacts the union of the high priest into the holy of holies; the union of heaven and earth; holiness and presence. Exactly how those energies are united will vary from individual to individual, since all of us contain both masculine and feminine aspects. (ix) But in general, manifestation, separation, and union is not just the way of the birds and bees: it is the imitation of God.

Although we are still only speaking theoretically, theory is important here, because if we can really intend that our sexual expression be holy, then we have already done a large share of the work. Over my years of teaching, I’ve met so many people who assume they have to repress their sexual selves in order to be “spiritual.” I’ve also met people who lead very liberated sexual lives, but who assume that what they’re doing isn’t religiously or spiritually okay, and partition the two halves of themselves apart. To be honest, I have done all of these myself. But the facts are the facts. We may live in a sex-crazed, sex-condemning society, but the Jewish religious tradition honors sexuality as healthy, powerful, and embodying the action of God in the world. Pleasure is not sinful; the body is not a tomb. Sex is capable of holiness.

So, the first step toward building a healthy ethic of sacred sexuality is separating the religious fact from the fantasy. This is especially true for modes of sexual expression which, over the centuries, have been condemned by religious authorities. Take the example of masturbation, regarded in many yeshivas as the worst possible sin, but which is known to be biologically harmless, and indeed part of sexual health for those without regular partners. Apart from the frustrations of repression, storing seminal fluids for prolonged periods can cause non-specific prostatitis, a disorder once called “priest’s disease.” And where does this “great sin” come from? The Kabbalah, to be sure, despises it, because it undermines the creative process which we have just described. But the Bible never mentions it at all. (x) The infamous story of Onan, son of Judah, who “spilled his seed” rather than fulfill the mitzvah of levirate marriage after the death of his brother, is about familial obligations, not masturbation; indeed, as his “spilling of seed” was in the context of interrupted intercourse, he didn’t even masturbate. Likewise in the Talmud and Kabbalah, the concern is not masturbation, per se, but hashcha’tat zerah, the wasting of (male) seed, a prohibition which applies equally to sex with birth control, oral sex, and a variety of other activities which carry none of the shame of masturbation. (xi)

But how many people know these sources? How many know that the kabbalistic obsession with wasted seed stems from ideas about the proper flow of shefa, Divine effluence, and not diverting any of it to places of shadow, and that it applies equally to any form of non-procreative sexual activity? How many know that these laws and myths originated in a time when marriage came immediately after puberty? The talmudic rabbis believed any man left unmarried over the age of eighteen to be liable to constant sin; one Rabbinic legend tells of a beit midrash being infested with demons because the young pupils were not married off, and thus had no outlet for their sexual energy. Wasted seed is, first and foremost, misdirected seed, and comes at the expense of consummating a man’s marriage.

Such subtleties, like those surrounding the Levitical priestly code and its prohibitions on cultic sexuality, are scarcely noticed amid the crude distortions of contemporary religious-sexual discourse. The results can be disastrous. Masturbation is an obsession in many yeshivot—who’s doing it, who isn’t doing it, how much penance you have to do for it, and so on. For some, atonement means simply reciting Rabbi Nachman of Bratzlav’s Tikkun Klali, a collection of ten psalms meant to rectify sexual sin, and immersing in the mikva. But for others, this shame is nothing less than a plague. By not including healthy sexuality within the realm of kedushah, it is consigned to the zones of shadow, impurity, and guilt, blocking the experience of God in the body, and tormenting the soul. Even “kosher sex” can be filled with shame in this way. Rabbi David Ingber, a brilliant young teacher of integral Judaism, tells the story of a man who had been celibate until his marriage at the age of twenty-eight, in keeping with his interpretation of halacha. So strong was the association of sex with sin that the morning after his wedding night, he awoke paralyzed with guilt and shame—even though he had just entered the kiddushin, the holy of holies.

This is why we begin with a mental process of birur, separating out what comes from the tradition, and what comes from other sources. The second step is on the level of the heart: working with shame.

Shame distorts not just sexuality but the entire personality—even repentance itself. For many years in my own life, as I struggled with my own sexuality, Yom Kippur was only about one sin, and one sin only. Everything else—ethics, honesty, prayer—seemed to pale in comparison. And I know, from having spoken with people from all walks of life—Jews and Christians, rabbis and heretics, gays and straights—that I am not alone. The demon varies; it may be a past incidence of abuse, or one’s own sexuality, or something as trivial (to some) as masturbation. But the results are strikingly similar: rather than enhance our connection with the Divine, sexual shame shuts it down. And the societal mirrors the individual: our pathologically sex-obsessed popular culture goes hand in hand with our puritanically terrified religious one. Afraid to be adult about our sexual selves, we use the word “adult” as a label for the most puerile.

The problem is not with guilt itself, but how it is understood. That the feeling arises now and then is only natural—even, at times, healthy. The problem is how much weight it’s given, due to the conventional geology of the self in which some things are “deep down,” and others are just “on the surface,” and when you feel something deep down, you’re meant to believe that it’s real. Actually, this entire geology is flawed—deep down inside what? “Reallyâ€? know how? All that’s present, in pangs of guilt or shame, are beliefs with different emotional tones, and the feeling of “deeper” does not mean truer. It just means longer held. This may seem like a simple point, but for me it has been revolutionary. Yes, shame arises—because I was told for twenty years that my desires were hated by God. Now, I neither deny nor obey the voice of shame. I neither subscribe to ignorance-based sexual taboos nor abandon the notion of sexual ethics as an ideal. Rather, I try to look closely, carefully, and honestly at the values, and consequences, in play.

For example, in the context of partnership, masturbation, which may diminish desire for one’s partner, may well be harmful; it is certainly a poor substitute for intimacy. But condemning it in all contexts, simply because of its harmful effects in one, would be like condemning every candy bar because you shouldn’t snack before dinner. Constructing a healthy sexual ethic requires knowledge on the level of the mind, honesty on the level of the heart, and close spiritual attention to the way such ethics develop, and how they function in your life. With such attention, and celebration, sexual ethics can enliven sensual expression, not deaden it.

Of course, while theory is useful, it can sometimes objectify that which it seeks to explain. So in working with the heart, it’s always best to remember some lines from the Bible’s Song of Songs, one of the most sensual love poems in world literature.

(((Begin Extract)))
Like threads of scarlet are your lips;
Your mouth is lovely.
Like a segment of pomegranate
Are your cheeks amid your hair. (xii)

Let my beloved enter his garden,
and eat its choicest fruits.
I have come to my garden, my dear one, my bridge,
I have gathered my myrrh with my spices,
I hav eaten my honeycomb with honey,
And drunk my wine with milk. (xiii)

My beloved is fair, and flushed,
Distinguished among the multitudes.
His head is the finest gold,
His hair is curled, raven-black.
His eyes are like doves by the water-courses,
Washed with milk, set in fulness.
His cheeks are like a perfumed bed,
Like banks of fragrant flowers.
His lips are like lilies,
Dripping with flowing myrrh.
His hands are rods of gold, filled with emeralds,
His belly is polished ivory, inlaid with sapphire. (xiv)
(((End Extract)))

There is no shame here, no denial of the body in these sensual celebrations of the human form. Even if read allegorically (as some insist on doing), the Song of Songs knows all vicissitudes of love and loss, and all the eroticism of the real. Indeed, perhaps we can hold both the literal and the allegorical together. Mystical love is not a matter of substitution or sublimation; when I am present with the body of someone I love, the arms and legs I caress are the arms and legs of God, if I am present enough to perceive them as they are. They are not other than those of my lover, and yet they are not other than Divine. As the great Kabbalist Rabbi Isaac of Acco is said to have taught, “one who does not have sexual desire is like a donkey, and less. Because it is from what is felt that one discerns the divine service.” (xv)

So, in practice, what does all that mean?

Unfortunately, there is no Jewish kama sutra. There are books like the Iggeret Hakodesh, the 13th century “holy epistle” which celebrates the different intentions people may have in sex, and giving men advice such as “Do not hasten to arouse passion until her mood is ready; enter with love and willingness so that she ’seminates’ first.” But it’s more common to find statements of values, rather than techniques. The Shulchan Aruch, for example, holds that “the enjoyment of sex is one of the pleasures of Shabbat.” (xvi) It does not provide tips. Still, from such statements, we can derive several principles of sacred sexuality.

First, sacred sexuality is attentive sexuality. Being present and focusing the mind are as important in bed as on the meditation cushion. Rabbi Baruch of Sassov, for example, teaches that at the moment of sexual union, one must not think of anything else. Of course, the rabbi’s injunction notwithstanding, we all know that even the most mundane, inappropriate thoughts can come up during sex, as well as thoughts involving other people, thus threatening the bond of intimacy. In either case, these “foreign thoughts” (to use the Jewish term) take one out of the real (What Is—YHVH) and into somewhere else. Don’t be afraid to use the same mindfulness techniques as we reviewed in earlier chapters, here in a different context: notice the thoughts, let them drop, don’t judge, and come back to the physical sensations of the body. Over time, focused concentration can lead to intense experiences of sexual release, and mindful awareness can tune us into the needs and desires of our partners.

Second, sacred sexuality is not about the ego. Because of its effect on consciousness, sex is an opportunity to transcend the self—but you have to do the work by letting go. If sex is about mechanically satisfying egoistic needs, the needs will only multiply. As Rabbi Yochanan says in Sukkah 52b, “a man has a small organ; if he leaves it hungry, it is satisfied, and if he satisfies it, it remains hungry.” But when sex stops being about feeding a hungry organ, when it is about energy, love, and present experience, then what I need, what I want, what I’m accustomed to and what I am owed all melt into a play of energies. For many men especially, sex is like an express train to one destination, with one desirable result. But sexual energy is not a train, and intimacy has no tracks. What would it be like if each moment could be enjoyed as its own, fleeting delight? What if there were no beginning, middle, and end to intimacy—only different tones of love? Truly giving and truly receiving entail a certain kind of surrender (within the bounds of safety and consent, of course) which mirrors the surrender of the self in prayer. For example, the small mind might say, “I’m not the sort of person to shout/moan/sigh during sex.” But that small mind can be discarded, and just as we can daven with an open heart, crying and laughing and singing beyond tears, so to is it possible to access parts of our sexual being that our personalities might otherwise put out of reach. Don’t check your theology at the bedroom door. Leave the ego on the floor with your clothes, and see Who emerges.

Third, sacred sexuality is magical, and deeply erotic. Religion is not merely about the polite and the refined; it is also, centrally, about the deep, difficult, visceral realities of life. It’s sometimes remarked that there are no atheists in foxholes, because when death is so present, rationality is abandoned in favor of a deeper, primal cry. That cry should be present in ecstasy as well. We’ve learned that the Kabbalah sees the act of sexual union as embodying the unification of masculine and feminine potencies within the Divine. Very well, but what would it be like to feel that in lovemaking – to know that one’s sexual expression, in whatever form it takes, is a sacrament, a magical act with theurgical possibility? Kabbalah is not Tantra, and it is not particularly egalitarian either. But the impulse of sacred eros, like other kabbalistic ideas, can be captured, and experienced. Setting intentions, creating depth with one’s partner, eye contact, play and receptivity, sacred yichudim (kabbalistic union intentions) and joining sexuality with contemplation of the Divine can all help to realize the Union of which the Kabbalists speak. What would it mean for you?

Fourth, sacred sexuality is holy. To designate sacred space and time, traditional Jewish sources advise everything from washing the hands before and afterwards, as with any sacred act, to stating intentions aloud, giving tzedakah (charity), even studying Torah or meditating. One way to sanctify sexuality is to recite a blessing, out loud with your partner, or quietly to yourself, prior to sex. Admittedly, it is unusual foreplay, but it is recorded that Rabbi Tzvi Hirsh of Ziditchov taught his disciples that “before sexual intercourse, they should give thanks to God, in their spoken language, for the pleasure that He created.” (xvii)

Fifth, sacred sexuality is about how, not what; quality, not quantity; emotional positions as much as physical ones. Whether you are circulating energy throughout your body with massage and holotroptic breathwork, or just kissing your beloved goodnight, the closeness of love arouses the closeness of the holy, if you choose it. As the saying goes, it’s not what you’ve got, it’s what you do with it. It doesn’t matter what positions you’ve learned from videotapes if the mind is absent or trying to avoid guilt. There is no place devoid of God, say the Hasidim; put that into practice.

Finally, sacred sexuality is connected to values. The content may vary, from the traditional admonition that sex must always be in committed relationship, to ethics having to do with quality of connection, honest exchange of energy, and the play of human energies. As the Ishbitzer Rebbe says, one can never know the individual contours of another’s path to kedushah (holiness). But sex disconnected from ethics will increase the disconnection. If this seems too indeterminate, rely on the ten commandments. If sex involves jealousy, theft, dishonesty, or the use of another person, then the alienation inherent in those acts will be strengthened by its association with the power of sex. On the other hand, if sex involves love, celebration, joy, and play, then the freedom and connection those activities contain will likewise be strengthened. Is it honest? Is it honoring, not degrading, the body? Is it playful? Joyous? Does it unite the energies of the body with the heart and the mind?

These are just some general principles—the particulars will depend upon you. Remember, this doesn’t have to be so serious. Maybe you’ve heard that sex is a “double mitzvah” on shabbat. It really is—once for the sex itself, and a second time for enjoying the sabbath. Thus we learn that enjoyment is part of healthy sexuality. So: enjoy!

______________________________

i Rabbi Baruch of Kosov, Amud Haavoda, p. 29b
ii Bava Metzia 84a
iii Eruvin 28a and Kiddushin 2b
iv Mishnah Ketubot 5:6
v Ketubot 8a
vi Yoma 54a
vii Bereshit Rabba 19:3, 6
viii See, e.g., Zohar I:15b (describing how male and female reflect cosmic creation); I:49a (”The breath of life was enclosed in the earth, which became pregnant with it.”); I:49b-50b (describing how sexual love arouses Divine love and protection).
ix See Zohar III:283b
x See the Takanat Hashavin by Rabbi Zadok haCohen of Lublin for a fascinating attempt to reconcile the Zohar’s attitude with the Torah’s silence.
xi See Niddah 13a-b. For their part, while the Kabbalists are quite aware of female orgasm, and regard the “female waters” as embodiments of the Divine flow, they do not, to my knowledge, speak of female masturbation.
xii Song of Songs 4:3
xiii Ibid. 4:16
xiv Ibid. 5:10-15
xv Quoted in R. Elijah de Vidas, Reishit Hochmah, Shaar Ha-Ahava, Chapter 4, #32.
xvi Shulchan Aruch, § 280.
xvii R. Naphtali Hertz, Yifrach biYamav Tzaddik, p. 48b, translated by Yitzhak Buxbaum in Jewish Spiritual Practices, p. 598.