Prurience for a purpose

Is love too tepid an emotion to make a marriage work?

By MATI WAGNER
Bride on her wedding day [illustrative] 370 (photo credit: REUTERS/Ilya Naymushin)
Bride on her wedding day [illustrative] 370
(photo credit: REUTERS/Ilya Naymushin)
To write openly and candidly about sex, one must throw aside certain inhibitions. If someone is an Orthodox rabbi, such sexual openness can be off limits.
Shmuley Boteach has been throwing aside inhibitions with abandon for quite some time now, providing a unique and much-needed Orthodox Jewish voice that paradoxically uses remarkable sexual candor bordering on prurience to promote modesty and monogamy. His latest production, Kosher Lust: Love Is Not the Answer, is no exception.
Boteach’s central argument is that for marriage to succeed, love is not enough.
Love implies thoughtfulness, caring, appreciation and consideration. It might be warm and fuzzy, but love is too tepid an emotion to maintain a strong bond between husband and wife.
In contrast, “the power and pull of lust,” says Boteach, “is an overwhelming force that makes people forget everything in the wake of its magnetic tide.”
After cheating, men or women often tell their spouses that they still love, respect and honor them. In fact, according to Boteach, 56 percent of men who cheat say their marriages are “happy” or “very happy.” Women often say the same thing.
Nevertheless, both men and women are unfaithful because lust is such an irresistible force. There is nothing more flattering than being the object of another’s obsession and uncontrollable desire. “Being lusted after,” notes Boteach, “cuts to the core of what a woman wants: to be desired fully, totally, and completely, in every possible way, especially sexually.”
Boteach therefore recommends harnessing the tremendous power of lust for the sake of improving marital relations. To do this, he provides what he calls “the three principles of lust”: unavailability, mystery and sinfulness. He even argues that all three are to be found in classical Judaism.
Unavailability corresponds, for instance, to the time every month during which the woman is menstruating and is, therefore, forbidden to her husband. Mystery is maintained through codes of modesty, or tzniut. And an element of sinfulness is fostered when the above strictures are suddenly suspended on the night the wife is permitted to have intercourse with her husband after submerging in a mikve.
As Boteach notes: “That’s part of the point of the Jewish system which separates a husband and wife for about 12 days out of every month: It’s about the kind of lovemaking that ensues when you have been separated for 12 days. It’s not tender; on the contrary, it’s deeply passionate.”
Boteach’s subject matter is quite racy and hardly what would be suspected of an Orthodox rabbi. But he is following in a long and well-established tradition. The Talmud is full of stories affirming sexuality: Students hide under rabbis’ beds to learn new tricks; sexual drive is portrayed as a positive life force that enables men to “build a house, or marry a woman or have children”; legal discussions flesh out the husband’s obligation to bring his wife to a climax before he reaches one. Unlike in Christianity, the rabbis have always seen sexual impulses – when directed properly – as a positive force in the world. Daniel Boyarin showed this extensively in his 1993 book, Carnal Israel: Reading Sex in Talmudic Culture.
Like the rabbis of the Talmud, Boteach’s goal is to protect traditional values. He hopes to foster stronger bonds between husband and wife as a bulwark against low marriage rates, high divorce rates, the breakdown of the family and infidelity.
He justifies halachic restrictions governing interactions between the sexes, such as the prohibition against a man and a woman not married to one another being alone together in a room, or the prohibition against being sexually aroused from looking at a woman who is not your wife, as a means of strengthening sexual tension between husband and wife.
Sometimes Boteach borders on the essentialist.
He cites the talmudic saying “Women are lightheaded” (Nashim da’atan kalot aleihen) and Rashi’s explanation that they are sexually uninhibited and receptive.
Then he provides scientific “evidence” for this claim by quoting “new studies in the field of sexology” that show women are “more sexually voracious than Western society has recently acknowledged.”
But nowhere in his book is Boteach chauvinistic. Not once in Kosher Lust does Boteach demand, for instance, that women make themselves more attractive to make it easier for their husbands to lust after them. In Boteach’s world, women might have unique qualities that make them fundamentally different from men.
But never is this essentialist claim used to prevent women from doing something that men do.
Unfortunately, Boteach has been attacked and blackballed over the years by numerous Orthodox communities. In February, as Boteach prepared to speak about Kosher Lust at a large, Chabad-affiliate synagogue in South Africa, Rabbi Ezra Schochet, one of Chabad’s leading authorities, issued a declaration banning Boteach.
“It is totally prohibited and unacceptable for Orthodox Jews to hear someone like S. Boteach speak, since his views on many issues are against Torah and Halacha. For any Orthodox Jew to promote his lecture is a hillul Hashem [a desecration of God’s name] and a hillul of the Torah [a desecration of the Torah],” declared Schochet, also attacking the Chabad rabbi who invited Boteach.
The Jews are a cantankerous people, and they have been for a long time. Indeed, it would not be an exaggeration to say that the character assassination of Boteach follows a long and respected Jewish tradition, no less than talking candidly and openly about sex does. Still, it is a shame that when a rabbi finally comes along and utilizes Jewish sources and Jewish tradition in a new and interesting way for the sake of a wholly sacred goal, he is singled out for attack.
What, after all, can be more commendable than books like Kosher Sex: A Recipe for Passion and Intimacy, Kosher Adultery: Seduce and Sin with Your Spouse and The Kosher Sutra, which all seek to strengthen the ties between husband and wife? Since at least 1999 when he published Kosher Sex, Boteach has been universalizing the lessons of Jewish tradition so that couples, both Jewish and gentile, can improve their sexual experiences with one another and, as a result, their marriages. He does so without requiring a leap of faith. Principles in Jewish law are explained in perfectly rational terms. The prohibition against having sexual relations with one’s wife while she is menstruating, for instance, is a device meant to build sexual tension, not an inscrutable biblical injunction handed down by God.
Some more parochial-minded rabbis might not like the idea that Boteach is expanding Judaism’s reach beyond the members of the tribe, or that he avails himself of some pretty un-Orthodox methods to achieve this. So be it. It’s too bad that Boteach’s eminently important message will be denied some Orthodox communities because of the closed-mindedness of a few rabbis.


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