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Thursday, Nov 26, 2009
For today's young Hasidic couples, pleasurable sex just might be kosher after all.
Jul 6, 2000 | Moishe is shy and soft-spoken, and his cheeks turn pink as I try to make out the personal details of his sex life. We're hiding in his cousin Shloimi's apartment. Shloimi's away on business.
If Moishe were seen with me, a woman (especially a non-Hasidic one), it would be the talk of the town. His wife would probably divorce him, and his five children wouldn't be able to find eligible marriage partners when they grew up. But he wants to connect with the greater world because he has big news, but no one he can tell it to within his community. We both feel the weight of the world resting on this conversation, so we carry on through the tension.
Moishe is tripping over broken English and I'm thrown off by Yiddishisms and confusing innuendo. He has never before talked about sex with a woman. He has hardly talked about it with men. But he's dying to let me, a representative of the modern world, know that he is more than just a skinny, 28-year-old Hasidic camera salesman, more than just a baby-making machine.
He wants to tell me that he just experienced something sexually extraordinary.
"People see your side curls and funny hat and jacket and think you're from outer space. And the truth is, you feel like you are," Moishe says. But he wants pleasure. Moishe wants to give pleasure. He yearns for physical, emotional and intellectual completion.
"I gave my wife an orgasm for the first time," he says. He clears his throat and his voice finally projects: "And it was the most emotionally satisfying experience I ever had."
Moishe and his wife are just one of a new generation of young Hasidic couples who privately insist that sexual fulfillment is a central aspect of a healthy, happy and holy Jewish home. Rabbi David Bleich, author of the four-volume series "Contemporary Khalachic Problems," explains that while some of the great influential rabbis condemned sexual relations that did not lead to reproduction, many others encouraged pleasure for the sake of pleasure and marital closeness. Ultimately, he says, the pursuit of sexual satisfaction is not necessarily a deviation from biblical texts. "Rather, there is just endless debate about its appropriate boundaries."
So the younger generation is choosing its rabbis wisely. These days, Moishe says, more and more Hasidim are having sex within marriage for the sake of sex. He cites the high condom sales in Hasidic neighborhoods as proof. "People aren't coming from out of town to buy condoms!" he laughs. "Couples these days are more comfortable with exploring intimacy. They still have certain taboos, like oral sex, but they're becoming more open-minded. For example, I used to be afraid of oral sex."
Binyamin L. Jolkovsky, a Hasidic resident of Borough Park, Brooklyn, and editor in chief of Jewish World Review, says that in most parts of the Hasidic community, oral sex is considered degrading to women. "And from what I understand, women in secular society are also uncomfortable with such activity for the same reason: It's embarrassing for them. Even I'm turning red talking about it."
But after seven years of marriage, Moishe went down on his wife -- and pleased her. "We love each other more now. We feel an indescribable closeness." In the same breath, Moishe mentions that they don't have much to talk about. Hasidic men spend their days studying or working, while Hasidic women spend their lives raising children and maintaining the home. "But all the guys at work are jealous of the lunches she packs me: that every day she leaves a sweet note in the bag. She doesn't have to do that."
