The Jewish Understanding of Sexuality and the Nature of Marriage
“Your belly is a heap of wheat, surrounded by lilies” Song of Songs 7:3 “Rabbi Levi said: As is customary in the world, a man marries… When she tells him: I saw something resembling a red lily,” he immediately withdraws from her. Why does he not approach her? What serpent has bitten him, what scorpion has stung him? It is the words of the Torah (that restrain him), which are as delicate as a lily. For it is written there: “And do not approach a woman (when she is) set apart in her impurity…” (Leviticus 18:19)” Midrash Rabbah on Song of Songs
Introduction
The author has attempted to describe the institution of Jewish marriage in language understandable to the modern Jew. This institution is both sacred and ancient, priceless yet little known, essential yet sometimes misunderstood.
I hope that this booklet will, to some extent, help promote both the observance of one of Judaism's most important commandments and the stability and well-being of the Jewish family.
Most marriages fail. This simple and shocking fact should be firmly impressed upon the minds of every couple preparing to marry. Whether or not an unsuccessful marriage ends in divorce, family life becomes a routine, filled with tension that is only occasionally interrupted by joyful periods of relative happiness. To ignore this and take on the responsibilities of married life on the basis of the dangerous romantic illusion of “inevitable” happiness—“after all, we love each other”—is nothing other than to invite disappointment and shattered hopes.
The decision to marry is one of the most consequential decisions a person makes in a lifetime. Its consequences are so difficult to foresee and so serious that there is no room here for whim or frivolity. The conditions of our tense, changing society are not conducive to a successful marriage, let alone a happy one. Yet so many young people give no more thought to choosing a life partner than they do to choosing a school or buying new dresses. Even when their choice is the result of serious, mature reflection, it rests on the unconscious assumption that everything will work itself out, because, in the end, “love conquers all.”
This dangerous misconception causes all a young couple's creative energies and concerns to focus on insignificant details of the forthcoming wedding, while the most essential questions concerning the marriage itself are completely ignored.
Such an attitude toward life together is a harbinger of disaster. With all our respect for romantic love, it is clear that it cannot solve every problem, or even every family problem. At best, a marriage between two people, most often young, with limited life experience and only a superficial knowledge of one another, is a risky venture. The destructive forces of our time and the drastic changes that have transformed the face of society have undermined its foundations, made uncertainty and instability characteristic of our lives, and shaken the institution of marriage, which by its very nature rests on mutual trust and constancy, certainty and continuity. A young couple's chances of true happiness are negligible unless, on the threshold of married life, they make a conscious effort to discover in advance how to make the home they are about to build strong.
The field of knowledge known as “family purity,” to which these pages are devoted, may bewilder those who have never heard of it. The restrictions imposed by the requirements of family purity are initially difficult even for young spouses who grew up in a traditional Jewish family. Yet although there can be no absolute guarantees, nothing compares with this institution in its effectiveness in strengthening the foundations of family life. Every young person endowed with intelligence and sensitivity, and deeply invested in making a personal contribution to building a strong family, will discover through experience that the institution of family purity truly deserves admiration and is, ultimately, indispensable.
Perhaps not every Jewish family outwardly expresses the bonds of love that unite it, but love is always present in a Jewish home, serving as its foundation—a foundation that is strong and reliable, ancient and sanctified by the tradition that has shaped the character of our people.
The sexual element in the love between spouses was never suppressed here, but modesty rejected everything base and vulgar. And the hedge of “red lilies,” the periodic self-restraint that safeguards family purity, ennobled, illuminated, and elevated it.
These pages offer the reader no exhaustive explanations or instructions, but only an introduction to the subject that does not address the actual practice of observing family purity. To learn about that practice, one should consult the relevant sources.
The author lays no claim to having originated the concepts and ideas described here. Some of them he has drawn, directly or indirectly, from a number of teachers and colleagues in the rabbinic community and in various departments of Yeshiva University. The author alone is responsible for all the shortcomings of this work.
Much of the material in this booklet was used in a lecture delivered to the Newlyweds' Club of the Jewish Center.