Friends,
I’m excited to let you in on the making of Jewrotica, a project that’s been percolating since high school. This will be the first installment in a two-part series, so stay tuned for Part 2, coming next week!
As a teenager, I wasn’t a huge fan of television. Occasionally, I would flip on Beverly Hills 90210 (cringe) or Seventh Heaven (double cringe) or Popular (oy…) and promptly turn the TV back off. True, the plotlines and dialogue were laughable, but they were also alienating: I felt little connection to the culture and realities portrayed on those shows. Watching teen girls ponder losing their virginity on prom night was entertaining, but it was also totally foreign to me. I was Orthodox. Our school didn’t have a prom, and just about everyone I knew lost their virginity on their wedding night. This was an era before Srugim, and I sorely felt the lack of media that was even remotely relatable.
Though my Modern Orthodox high school was wildly permissive with me, even allowing me to (sort of) join the boys’ wrestling team, I hesitated to push boundaries that I instinctively knew were taboo. During my senior year, I wrote a poem about an imaginary romantic encounter for the literary magazine I edited, but shredded it out of embarrassment. Its racy PG rating would never have passed our faculty censors, and I was too shy to even share it with my co-editors. Acknowledging thoughts about sex and sexuality felt awkward and embarrassing; more than that, it felt wrong.
After high school, I spent a glorious year of religious study at a single-sex midrasha in Israel, directly followed by freshman year at a secular college. Two words: culture shock.
Our first orientation event was condom bingo, which I did not attend; unmarried Orthodox Jews have no need for prophylactics. Worse, unlike some other forms of birth control, condoms are not halachically permissible, as they “waste seed.” Even if I were married, the condoms wouldn’t have made it to my bedside drawer.
Fast-forward to the end of freshman year: I met a wonderful guy at 19, married at 21, and realized that my lack of practical sex ed had left me woefully unprepared for married life, with a hella long list of taboos to get over.
Celebrating 10 Years & Marking the End of An Amazing Project
Celebrating 10 Years & Marking the End of An Amazing Project
Jewrotica is awesome. It expands the mind and for people who were raised with narrow views on sexuality. Whether you are Jewish or not, or in different sects of Judaism like Orthodox, Conservative or Reform, no matter what your background or where you’re from, Jewrotica gets you to see Judaism and how it relates to sexuality in new ways. I really appreciate Ayo being here and helping us learn different ways to connect with our sexuality.
Jewrotica was everything I had dreamed of and more: sexy attendees, tantalizing confessions, and well-written literature to boot! More importantly, it empowers us Jews to reach inside and own our sexy selves and heritage!
I’m so glad that Jewrotica is represented here at Jewlicious! It’s bringing voices that need to be heard in the Jewish discussion and Jewish climate environment.
You may not tell your mom that you’re going to a live Jewrotica reading (or whatever clever name you will dub these events) but you will tell your friends. However, both would be jealous if they find out that they missed it. I think it will only be a matter of time before Jewrotica helps us reclaim the term “Dirty Jew” the way rap music has done for “The ‘N’ Word.” I know I am now proud to be a Dirty Jew!
I attended and participated in last month’s Jewrotica event. The engaging performers and Ayo, our inviting host, inspired the audience to feel like one big community. What a great way to inspire our community to embrace sex as a beautiful thing that can be fun, exciting, sacred, sensual, ridiculous, scary and everything in between!
Jewrotica is something that the community has needed for a long time so that people can actually learn, express and share and have good relationships without having to stumble through life. Check out the site and learn something. Have fun!
I stepped out of my comfort zone to be a part of this. I was glad to open up the topic of sexuality in my community. We are trying to build a safe space to talk about sex. The result I am most happy about coming from this event is that hopefully now my friends know they can come and talk to me, that I can be their ‘safe space’.
Jewrotica rocks. It’s funny, it’s informative, it’s sexy, it’s interesting. Check it out!
Such an amazing experience! The Sarah Lawrence Jewrotica workshop was more than I could have ever expected – a comfortable, safe, sultry environment where participants clearly felt good about sharing or listening to each other’s intimate experiences and relating them to sexy stories from the Torah. From the moment the workshop began, Ayo had a sweet presence that was kinetic and spread around the room; her storytelling abilities had everyone enraptured and made the conversation topics relata… Read more
The Jewrotica event “Evening of Jewrotica: Bedside Reading” was awesome. As Master of Confessions, I got to read the deepest, darkest secrets of people in the room out loud… It was scintillating, titillating, and – yes – even educational!
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