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Synagogue Sermon

April 5, 1973

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

Marriage & Sexuality
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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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Judaism and the Moral Revolution (1970)

In discussing the setback in personal relationships in contemporary life, mention the scene in ״The Bald Soprano,” by Eugene Ionescu: A man meets a woman, engages her in polite conversation, and they discover to their surprise that they came into New York on the same train from New Haven that morning. Further conversation reveals that they live at the same address on Fifth Avenue. As time goes on, they leam further that they share the same apartment and have the same seven year old daughter. Husband and wife meet, never having known each other beforre. Thus: Lo tov heyot ha-adam levado . Marriage has as one of its two goals affectionate companionship, the banishment of anomie and alienation, not levado. In further discussion of code morality add, that without code morality we have nothing. But does that mean that once we do ob-serve the rules, that Paradise will materialize, that automatically there will become love and "meaningful personal relationships?"No, obviously not. The case for code morality can not be based on illusion or propaganda. First, love and relationship are certainly cherished in Judaism, but not as the highest goal. People who for psychological or cultural reasons can not be "turned on" are no less valuable, nor is their life any less meaningful. Human beings who have made the greatest contribution to history have not necessarily been those who have developed deep relationships. One of the secular saints of our time was Albert Schweitzer. Yet a woman who worked as a nurse with him, volunteering to bexvk סיץ \,Av*\q told me a couple of years ago that she never saw a more dedicated man -- and a colder, more tyrannical and impersonal human being. He gave his life for others, and treated those others in a patron-izing and condescending fashion. Is Schweitzer to be condemned to the limbo of those who could not live up to the misunderstanding of Buber’s I-Thou? (Mention Ramban on ve-ahavta le-relakha kamo-kha -- that it is haflaeah to expect it in the…
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New Morality (1969)

In "The Lessons of History," Will and Arial Durant, two somewhat older students of morality, past and present, declare: "Out of every 100 new ideas 99 or more will probably be inferior to the traditional responses which they propose to replace. "No man, however brilliant or well informed, can come in one life­time to such fullness or understanding as to safely judge and dismiss the customs or institutions of his society, for these are the wisdom of generations after centuries of experiment in the laboratory of history."A youth boiling with hormones will wonder why he should not give full freedom to his sexual desires; and if he is unchecked by custom, morals or laws, he may ruin his life before he matures sufficiently to understand that sex is a river of fire that must be banked and cooled by a hundred restraints if it is not to con- surae in chaos both the individual and the group.”Dr. Ralph R. Greenson, a clinical professor of psychiatry at UCLA's school of medicine, speaks of that same river of fire:"The 'cool' set is accustomed to quick and easy gratifications. Instant warmth and instant sex makes for puny love, cool sex and a turning to pot and LSD. The emphasis on security as the goal of life makes for peace of mindlessness and emotional uninvolvement."Love is risk-taking. It implies daring to be vulnerable and hurt. The search for security is the enemy of loving."
Marriage & Sexuality