Written by Liora. Liora is a first-time Jewrotica writer.
Here is a partial list of my husband’s qualities:
Tall.
A DDR expert.
Possessed of formidable cooking skills and the sharpest cheekbones I’ve ever seen.
Addicted to bacon.
Half-Mexican, half-Chinese, one hundred percent goy. Raised Catholic, now floating in the warm abeyance between atheism and lazy acknowledgment of a formless higher power.
Alex is what the kids today might call a gamechanger. Meeting him destroyed every single one of my assumptions about what I wanted or how I would end up. If God is the ultimate matchmaker, as my parents contend, then this marriage is half-perfect, half cosmic joke.
Three months in, I’ve mostly shrugged off the feeling that our marriage signals the dissolution of My Immortal Soul—marrying the love of your life will do wonders for your general happiness, your belief in a loving god—but a gauzy sadness lingers around the Jewish holidays. Final proof that Amor doesn’t Vincit Omnia: not my parents’ disapproval or my stifled, occasional desire to turn Alex Jewish, just for the eight nights of Chanukah, the twenty five hours of Yom Kippur. Just long enough to have him participate, not as an outside observer, but a member of the club.
“Liora,” he calls now, sticking his head into our living room, where I am rifling through an Artscroll battered relic from a traumatic summer at Camp Shevet Achim.
“Sup,” I call back.
“When are we lighting— Oh. I thought you were waiting for me.”
“I was just getting ready,” I reply lamely. “I was gonna call you when I was done setting up the candles.”
“Looks like you’re ready now.” He takes the Artscroll from my hands and peers at the English translations of the blessings. “We’re just doing the first two tonight, right?” Classic Alex—he can defuse any situation, a necessary skill for living with me.
“Yep. Do you remember what the third one is called?” I’m using my teacher-voice—the high-pitched, condescending tone I fall into whenever I see a Teachable Jewish Moment. If I am a good enough teacher, if I gentle him into understanding, these moments will accumulate into a legitimate body of Jewish knowledge one day. One day we will be partners—roughly matched, but on similar planes. I will unclasp this vague resentment from around my neck and hang it somewhere else instead.
I hate myself for thinking like this.
“No idea,” he says cheerfully.
“Sheh-heh-chee-yanu,” I enunciate.
Learning about sex and what’s right and wrong when it comes to sex from a Biblical standpoint was an eye opening experience. I completely enjoyed it and think something like this could be a very cool thing to bring to even high school aged Jewish youth groups.
Jewrotica rocks. It’s funny, it’s informative, it’s sexy, it’s interesting. Check it out!
I’m Heshy Fried from Frum Satire and I am very, very frum. And I completely support Jewrotica – it’s doing a service to the frum community. We need some sort of kosher sexual education. Jewrotica even has a system that allows frum filters to filter out certain things to make it PG for us. It’s mamish Torah. It’s like The Little Midrash Says for sex.
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!
While many people fear the “sex talk,” Jewrotica offers an opportunity for writers and audiences to speak about sexuality in a open and safe space. When I attended a Jewrotica reading, I heard stories that reminded me that love takes many forms, and that expressing it is a vital part of who we are as a people.
What an incredible night Jewrotica was!!!! There was this fantastic moment, in a sea of Jews of all sexualities, ages, backgrounds and denominations, that I realized we were all in this together! I hope that there are many more events coming to Austin soon!
Jewrotica is inspiring Jews and erotica with holiness and coolness, and is the pride of progressive Judaism. Jewrotica – awesome!
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…
I had a great time deejaying at the Jewrotica event at Columbia University. The live readings were hilarious, informative, and in some cases, deeply moving. I know that I, along with many of my AEPi fraternity brothers, loved being able to connect our Judaism and our sexuality in a way that made all of us feel comfortable and welcome. I look forward to being a part of this again in the future!
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!
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