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Speech

August 1969

Sexuality and Sex: Philosophical Background and Some Practical Guidelines for Orthodox Jewish Teenagers (1969)

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A Hedge of Roses: Jewish Insights Into Sex and Marriage, Part 2 (1969)

In order to appreciate the implications of Family Purity, it is important to understand, as well, what it is not.For one thing, it is not the kind of superstition that, in other cultures, has stigmatized the menstruant as repulsive, placed upon her mysterious and stringent taboos, and banished her from the community for the duration of her menses. Maimonides, the eminent twelfth-century Talmudist, philosopher, and physician, forcefully rejected the superstitious beliefs and practices of the Sabeans, Magi, and other Eastern peoples concerning menstruation, and emphasized the spiritual content of Judaism’s teachings.״ The Torah’s legislation is simply not of one piece with, for instance, the primitive customs recorded in Sir James Frazer’s The Golden Bough. Unfortunately, such identification of the Torah’s laws with primitive pagan and mythological cultures often does take place in the mind of the contemporary Jew or Jewess who is uninitiated into the world of Torah and the Jewish Tradition and who cannot, therefore, view Jewish Family Purity from a broader perspective and greater knowledgeability. A terminological confusion is largely responsible for this unhappy distortion of the Torah’s larger purposes and the intrinsic meaning of its commandments. Tuharah and tum’ah (and the corresponding adjectives tahor and tamei) are usually translated as “pure” and “impure.” It is this deceptive semantic delinquency that leads to the interpretation of these categories as denoting some kind of intrinsic mysterious abhorrence that possesses the person of the menstruant and that must be purged by some magical incantation.But this is clearly not so. According to Jewish teaching, nothing whatever happens to or changes in the person or character or value of the individual, man or woman, designated as “impure.” No special quality makes such an individual inferior in any way to any other person re-fen־ed to as “pure.” The terms ta-harah and tum’ah signify halakhic or legal categories…
Marriage & Sexuality

Speech

A Jewish Response to the New Morality (1968)

I. Israel: am, goy. But at beginning: mishpahah. Stability Jewish family (despite silly jokes). Now: divorce, alcoholism, delinquency, and inter-marriage. Story: Who needs a home? Now have to add: New morality. Two versions or components: a) Hugh Heffner – Playboy – “bunnies”; b) Sex community – personalistic and anti-tradition. II. Heffner: bachelor morality – “cool,” impersonal, woman inferior: depersonalized to “thing.”III. Morality: based on home, family, marriage. Talmud: every successful marriage a triangle – Shechinah ish and ishah – esh and Name of God. Kiddushin – holy and Nisuin – elevated.Purposes Marriage: 2 accounts of creation: perpetuation, companionship. a) Peru u’revu – Hillel & Shammai. Need for J. pop. explosion. b) Lo tov heyot ha-adam levado. Raavad: Sex and sexuality. Y. Z. Mecklenburg tov. Also: animals created with mates, man must yearn for one, earn her love. (Talmud – always realistic and unprudish – yet delicate, sensitive. HAKOL YODIN KALLAH LAMAH NIKHNESAM LE’CHUPPAH)IV. Approach to Sex as such: Two extreme views sex – both based on common source. Gnosticism – duality worlds, contempt this world. Hence against strongest involvement, which is sexual love. So: anti-sexual.This antagonism expressed 2 opposite ways: abuse or non-use, libertinism or asceticism, pagan-orgiastic or Christian-monastic.Modern variants: pagan–Hafner; ascetic–celibacy. Judaism: opposed paganism. Giluy arayot. Yehareg v’al yaavor. Reading on Yom Kippur: Perishah me’arayot.Also opposed: Christian – “Better marry than burn.” Jesus and Paul bachelors. We: Kiddushin – Humans sanctify, can desecrate. Judaism’s Sex Theory: no contradiction betw. morality and sexuality.V. Hence: Judaism unequivocally opposed to Heffner’s “New Morality.” Remarkably, J. opposition to Playboy not only because latter exploitative – but: latter too anti-sexual!Second version: sex community. Ag[ain]st Heffner: discard trad. moral restraints. But diametrically opposed on depersonalization. E…
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Synagogue Sermon

The New Morality and the Crisis in the Jewish Family (1973)

Norman Lamm, Rabbi of the Jewish Center in New York City and Professor of Jewish Philosophy at Yeshiva University, will be exploring an area of immediate concern, the Jewish family and how it is being affected by movements now referred to in the terms of Youth, the New Morality, and Alternate Life Styles. Dr. Lamm is the author of several works including "A Hedge of Roses", "Jewish Insights Into Marriage and Married Life", "Faith and Doubt" and "The Royal Reach." He has traveled widely, lecturing
Marriage & Sexuality