“‘I keep thinking about our kiss, about your lips, about your taste.’ God help me. I can’t breathe. I’m thinking, too, about the touch of his soft lips, the roughness of his stubble against my cheek, his hands on the curve of my waist. I should pull back, but something inside me – like a deep magnet – draws me toward him, defying reason.”
At first glance, this could be any scene from a contemporary romance novel: A woman is caught between restraint and desire, on a slow slide toward a tantalizingly forbidden tryst.
Yet, just as the language seems to settle into the familiar rhythm of commercial erotica, the book’s protagonist does something literary heroines in the throes of passion rarely do: She quotes the Talmud.
“I should go,” Tzofia says. “You weren’t alone in this. I wanted it, too. That’s why they say ein apotropos la’arayot – no one is immune to desire. We can’t sleep in the same bed.”
“Apo… what?”
“Never mind. I have to go.”
The ancient phrase, drawn from tractate “Kiddushin” of the Babylonian Talmud, translates roughly to “There is no guardian against sexual temptation,” a halachic acknowledgment that even the devout are vulnerable to passion. Moments later, Tzofia’s thoughts turn heavenward, in a moment of raw theological wrestling:
“Why can’t I experience these things like any other woman? Why can’t I explore what he makes me feel? Anger spreads through me – at Erez, who opened this Pandora’s box and brought these sensations into my life… at myself, for lowering my defenses… at God, for creating me so flawed.”
Dovrat Ohev Ami’s debut novel Through the Pain, published in 2022, is unabashedly sexual, explicitly female-centered, and written, if not entirely within the religious world the author herself inhabits, certainly adjacent to it.
Religious erotica
Though she began writing erotica later in life, Ohev Ami has been a devoted reader of the genre since she was 12 years old, when her older sister began passing on the dog-eared paperbacks she had finished reading.
Ohev Ami is now a married mother of four and an acclaimed author. Her novel is by no means limited to a religious audience, but the book’s sensuality is inseparable from her own experience of intimacy within an observant Jewish framework.
Through the Pain grew out of her long struggle with vestibulodynia, a condition that made intercourse excruciating for years and that, she realized, almost no women in her community discussed – at least not with one another.
Writing became a way of reclaiming her body while confronting the silence around it.
“For years, I thought something was wrong with me,” she told The Jerusalem Report. “After the book came out, women started writing to me to saying they didn’t even know the condition existed.”
Ohev Ami has since written a second novel, The Heart’s Stronghold, and now teaches creative writing workshops for women, many of them religious, who are eager to tell their own stories of intimacy, longing, and faith.
Reading habits
Romance and erotica, once niche and imported, have exploded across Israel’s publishing scene – spilling from bookstore shelves into Facebook groups, WhatsApp chats, and, increasingly, religious homes.
In some communities, the books are still shared discreetly, borrowed from a neighbor who “just happens to have a copy.” In others, they’ve carved out a quiet corner in the back of local libraries, sometimes on shelves with labels like “shalom bayit” (“peace in the home”) – nestled between parenting guides and marriage manuals. That’s how secretive it is.
“Women sewing a book cover to hide what their Shabbat reading material is has become a thing of the past,” Ohev Ami said, describing how the situation is changing. “At least in my [National Religious] community, we’re more likely to talk openly about our reading habits.”
That shift was clear in a recent Facebook post in one of the genre’s popular reading groups: “Is there a problem with reading this genre for religious women? Asking for a friend.”
Within hours, dozens of replies poured in – many from women identifying as Orthodox.
“I’m a huge fan!” wrote one, her profile picture framed by a headscarf. “I’m in the ultra-Orthodox community, and I read at least a book a week.”
Another chimed in: “There’s a big difference between these books and porn. There’s nothing visual here. What’s next, prohibiting imagination?”
And one woman summed it up with a wink: “Just don’t forget to go straight to your husband when you finish the book.”
Return to romance
For Galit Godely, the turn toward romance fiction wasn’t an act of rebellion but of return to a part of herself she’d set aside more than two decades earlier, when she became strictly observant. Once an avid fiction reader, she gave up almost all secular content after her religious transformation. “For a long time, I read almost nothing that wasn’t Torah-related,” she said.
That changed during a difficult period at home, when she began craving a private emotional refuge. “I started reading again, and it was like breathing fresh air,” she recalled.
What began with thrillers soon led to romance and, eventually, erotica. Today, Godely runs multiple Facebook and WhatsApp groups devoted to Israeli romance literature, while also managing the social media accounts for several small publishers. “I love reading because it brings me joy and gives my soul rest,” she explained. “It’s an escape from a reality that isn’t always easy.
“Mostly, it’s just fun to read about love.”
For her, enjoying the genre and remaining devout are not contradictions. “I have complete trust in myself,” she said, “that I can enjoy what I read while knowing where my boundaries are.”
Shalom bayit
Godely and Ohev Ami are well aware that some rabbis, particularly in more conservative circles, reject this kind of reading entirely, along with most secular literature.
Others, however, are more lenient. Some even recommend it as a tool for shalom bayit, the religious value of cultivating harmony between spouses, including emotional and sexual intimacy.
In the end, both women believe in setting their own limits.
For Ohev Ami, those boundaries shape what she chooses to write – or, more importantly, what she chooses not to write. Her books are intimate, even explicit, but she avoids writing about sexual violence, multiple partners, or anything that glorifies humiliation.
Throughout the writing process, she consulted a trusted rabbi, whom she went to with her questions. “He told me this work was important,” she said, “because it helps couples talk about things they’ve been afraid to talk about.”
Godley agrees that each woman must define her own comfort zone. As a moderator of large reading groups, she sees it as part of her role to guide readers toward stories that feel empowering rather than degrading.
“There’s a huge range in this world,” she said. “I can help women find the kind of book they’re looking for, within the limits they’ve set for themselves.”
That discernment, they both said, becomes even more important when it comes to younger readers. Many conversations in Godley’s groups focus on how to guide teenage daughters – especially those encountering steamy content through BookTok and other digital platforms – toward literature that treats love and desire with responsibility and respect.
Sexual reformation
The questions raised in those conversations – about boundaries, values, and intimacy – are ones that clinical psychologist Peryl Agishtein, who specializes in couples therapy, hears every day from clients from across the Jewish spectrum, as well as non-Jews.
She describes her own affiliation as “yeshivish,” aligned with the traditional, yeshiva-centered branch of Orthodoxy. She’s careful not to generalize. “You’ll get a different answer from every expert and every couple,” she said, but certain themes recur among nearly all of her patients. One of them is a general discomfort in discussing sex.
“I see totally secular couples, National Religious, and hassidic. Across the board, they’re not rushing to open up about their sex lives,” Agishtein said. “But I always bring it up in the first session as part of the intake process, and then again when I see it’s necessary.
“And it always comes up again at some point in the treatment,” she added.
She described a unique sexual reformation unfolding within religious communities over the past decade or two – one that seeks to reclaim traditional Jewish attitudes toward sexuality.
“Judaism has always had a fundamentally positive view of sex,” she explained. “It’s right there in our sources. Within the confines of marriage, sex is seen as something sacred, beautiful, and essential to a couple’s bond. In the ketubah [Jewish marriage contract], it is discussed as a right guaranteed to the wife.”
According to Agishtein, that vision has often gotten lost. “For generations, what trickled down was puritanism; essentially, the very Christian idea that sex is only for reproductive purposes. That’s the opposite of Judaism’s original view.”
Within religious communities, she has observed what she calls “several seismic shifts.”
“In the professional world, there is now an emphasis on very high standards of care – training therapists and psychologists to properly treat everything from marital issues to sexual trauma and dysfunction,” she said.
But the change, she noted, goes beyond the clinic.
“In the spiritual realm, rabbis and bride and groom marital education instructors are revolutionizing the way they teach,” Agishtein said, adding, “They’re more explicit, more positive, more focused on pleasure, on the importance of female orgasm.”
New generation
Even at home, the conversation looks different.
“A generation or two ago, people entered marriage with no real knowledge. Now parents are talking to their kids sooner, not just to prevent trauma but to normalize healthy development,” she said.
There is also one other aspect that may be specific to the Orthodox world.
“Many of us are curious about if what we are experiencing is ‘normal,’ but women in these communities do not typically share intimate details of their sex lives with girlfriends,” she said. “And the more Right you move along the religious spectrum, the less likely it becomes. There’s an emphasis on privacy, on sacred space.
“In this world, sex is seen as something that happens between husband and wife and should be kept between them,” she continued. “I think that can be beautiful and healthy.”
This does not mean that she believes in staying silent when issues or questions arise. On the contrary, Agishtein advocates for open, guided discussion – with the right people.
“It’s so important to have healthy communication when it comes to sex, certainly between a husband and wife,” she said. “But it’s also crucial to talk to a professional if there is an issue, whether it’s a therapist or someone from the religious world.
“Because your sex life should be amazing,” Agishtein asserted, before adding one final note of caution regarding erotic literature.
“This kind of material can impact real-life satisfaction, especially if it becomes a substitute for emotional intimacy or sets unrealistic expectations.”
It’s a concern echoed, from a very different angle, by Rabbi Rafi Ostroff, an educator and counselor specializing in positive sexuality, who is also head of the Gush Etzion Religious Council.
Asked if it is permissible for observant couples to read romance or erotic literature, Ostroff cautioned that the line between help and harm can be delicate.
“A man or a woman who has never read such literature may, upon reading it, start to think something is wrong in their own marriage – and they may want to seek the excitement described in the book elsewhere,” he wrote on the popular website ve-ahavtem.com.
His advice, ultimately, is one of balance and awareness.
“Many books are fantasy; real life is quite different,” Ostroff said. “Our happiness should be sought inside the marriage, not outside it.”
It’s that gap between fantasy and reality that Ohev Ami felt particularly compelled to explore in Through the Pain.
“I really wanted to write about the difference between the way sex is portrayed in books as this effortless, explosive thing, and how it actually feels for so many women, especially those who enter marriage with very little knowledge or experience,” she said. “I wanted to put that on the table.”■