4.0 out of 5 stars
Jewish Ethics and Sexuality, December 2, 2009
This review is from: The Passionate Torah: Sex and Judaism (Paperback)
This book was approached by person who wanted to think about ethics and sexuality from a Jewish point of view. I am 58 and these are still questions I wonder about. By choosing to include a large series of essays, many issues are discussed from ritual purity, desire for children, status of women, homosexuality, androgyny, and birth control. The most important discovery of this book is that the many of the issues are discussed in an understanding way by such books of Jewish learnings as the Bablyonian Talmud. Judaism has been struggling with these type of issues for its length of days. Most essays start with the tradition, but say with more knowledge we need to modify our understanding of the tradition and its values. There are, of course, the political tract pieces you are bound to find in this a series of essays that unsatifyingly since they see things in with only one lense. But even here, there are things to learn and think about. This is good book to clearly bring up the issues and help us progress to an even better Jewish ethic on these issues, which help individuals cope in a good and holy way with the passions of life.
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4.0 out of 5 stars
Valuable addition to the religious consideration of sex, February 12, 2011
This review is from: The Passionate Torah: Sex and Judaism (Paperback)
This is a collection of eighteen essays on a very diverse range of issues of human sexuality from a Jewish point of view. I expect that the book is primarily aimed at a Jewish audience but can be profitably read by people of the Christian faith who are concerned with, or are struggling with, present day sexual practices and how this relates to the ancient writings which guide their faith.
The book is split into three sections of six essays each. The sections are I-It Challenges, I-Thou Relationsips and We-Thou Visions. These
divisions are explained in the introduction and give the book a structure it would otherwise not have had if it was just a collection of 18 essays.
What the non-Jewish reader might find unexpected is the lack of respect expressed by the authors for the writings which an outsider might
think guides their faith. In fact, the book would be better titled ``The Passionate Rabbinical Writings''. An outsider might expect to find a deep reverence for the Torah (after all, its in the title) and that God would figure prominently in the discussions. But this is not the case. It seems that the types of Jewish authors who contributed to the collection treat Judaism as a culture rather than a religion guided by revelation from God. In fact, one author goes so far as to spell God with a lower-case g.
One which I'll comment on specifically is the one which dealt with the immersion in water following menstrual bleeding. In the Torah texts there are two quite distinct conditions under which immersion is required to return to a state of purity, one for normal menstrual flow and the other for abnormal. In the rabbinical writings these two distinct cases were collapsed, quite intentionally, into one. In the discussion of this practice one might have expected the author to advocate a return to the Torah practices. Instead she argues that the laws of immersion should be extended to men. The justification for this seems to rest on nothing more than the author's feelings. Those who hold that these writings reveal God's intentions for the Jewish people are not going find such an argument compelling. Outsiders who do not practice immersion might find the whole essay rather pointless.
One essay which I thought was on to something quite promising was the one which dealt with sex outside of monogamous marriages. As any
reader of the Torah, and later texts, knows polygamous marriages were a normal part of Israelite life. They had two categories of marriage, the full marriage in which the woman becomes a wife and a marriage of lower status in which the woman become a concubine. The author explores briefly the possible revival of the category of a concubine but makes very little of it. Given the long delay between sexual maturity and marriage in our culture even in very conservative religious circles one finds many who have engaged in pre-marital sex. Perhaps, as the author seemed to be heading in this direction, the revival of the position of the concubine might provide some Torah-sanctioned way for people to express their sexuality without being married. But we are left without any clear conclusions on this line of thought.
The essays themselves are expressed in quite a variety of forms. There is the wild, strident overstatement of the ardent feminist, the dense, nearly impenetrable writing of academic prose, some adopt a folksy tone with touches of humour, and there was one which was a model of English clarity and a joy to read.
There is a problem with almost all of the essays. These old, sometimes ancient, writings are what they are. No amount of destabilizing, feminist theorising, liberating, queer theorizing, reclaiming or subverting is going to change what they are. The authors seem very quick to declare victory over an enemy which has not been defeated. The word misogynist is its various forms gets thrown around a lot, but mostly it just signals to the reader the failure of the author to respect the writings they are dealing with. I do not recall it actually being used correctly. To be fair, I think this is a word which has largely been emptied of any meaning through long overuse and deliberate misuse by feminists and the present authors may not be aware that they are misusing the word.
Nevertheless, the collection is a remarkable effort and the editor is to be commended for taking the time to bring all these essays
together in one place. They are interesting and should be read by anyone interested in religious teaching on sexuality in a changing
world precisely because they are interesting and thought-provoking. But if the reader is looking for ``answers'' they will not find them here.
I've given it four stars because I think its a valuable collection of essays but there are too many problems with them to give them all five stars.
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