Moishe tells me that he shared his new accomplishment with his best friend, who listened detail for detail, giggled, then called him "a fucking liar." "I told him: 'I swear, go down on [your wife] and she will have pleasure.' Two weeks later the nebbish thanked me."

But the question arises: Can going down on a woman be kosher? According to Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, the 31-year-old Hasidic author of "Kosher Sex: A Recipe for Passion and Intimacy," the answer is yes. "One of the great rabbis said that the matriarchs had sex for the sake of pleasure," he points out, "and the laws themselves state that a man is obligated to 'give a woman sexual pleasure' -- not necessarily have sex with her."

The greatest Talmudic commentator of all time, says Boteach, said that the "true connection between husband and wife cannot be obtained without sexual pleasure." Boteach argues not only that sexual pleasure is acceptable according to Jewish law but that the traditional system has created an ultraerotic dynamic between men and women.

"I would make a money bet that Hasidic couples, especially the young ones, are having better sex than those in the secular world," he declares. "There's nothing more exciting than depriving yourself of pleasure, waiting for marriage to even touch a member of the opposite sex and then discovering sexuality with that innocent partner, who's on your exact same level." Also, he adds, according to Jewish law a husband and wife must refrain from sexual activity for two weeks every month. "Refraining keeps the passion alive."

As an 18-year-old boy preparing for his wedding, Moishe had never seen breasts or a naked pair of women's legs. He didn't know women felt sexual things. He only knew that he was supposed to be nice to his 17-year-old wife-to-be, and impregnate her.

Moishe met Rachel for the first time on the day of their engagement. She was sitting across from him, flanked by her parents and grandparents, her small, frumpy frame sunk into a green sofa. After some schmoozing, the family left the two virgins alone so they could decide for themselves if their life partners sat before them. The room was bright and breezy, with only an unframed poster of a rebbe and a particleboard bookcase weighed down by a 1932 Talmud collection. With little else to do, Moishe and Rachel cocked their heads to the side and stared at the floor. Later that evening, the families asked each of them in private if they would agree to marry. Why not? they said.

"On our wedding night, we were terrified," Moishe tells me. "I had never in my life even talked to a woman besides my family members." As is typically done, the week before the ceremony, a rabbi taught Moishe what to do: "Kiss her, be nice, open her legs and put it in." The rabbi gave his number to Moishe in case they ran into a problem.

"But we didn't call. It all worked out that night," Moishe says with a grin. Today they are 28 and 27, with five children, 48 uncles and aunts and 128 cousins, all living, laughing, dancing, arguing, falling in love and discovering the art of screwing in Borough Park. Bracha Levertov, the lady who runs the main mikvah (ritual bath) in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, points to the law that requires couples to have sex on the Sabbath. "No matter what you're fighting about," she says, "you know that you have to make up by Friday. This keeps things very alive in Orthodox communities."

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