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
I’m into Jewrotica. I went in for my second circumcision.
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 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.
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!
Bedside Reading with Jewrotica was funny, sexy, and hot all at once. The readings were honest about all kinds of sexuality, but the highlight of the evening was definitely the confessions, written by audience participants. Nobody knew who wrote them, and most were tell-alls that would make your bubbe blush. Unless your bubbe was very, very cool. Then maybe she’d make YOU blush!
The people behind Jewrotica are quite quality! I have confidence that any project these folks take on will be equally quality.
I love the inclusiveness – there is something for everyone, in and out of the Jewish community.
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!
At Jewrotica’s Evening of Bedside Readings, students declaimed monologues on sexual encounters that had a Jewish twist. At Columbia/Barnard Hillel, the speakers pushed their own boundaries by performing a range of explicit narratives that challenged how the audience thought of the relationship to Judaism and sex. During the speakers’ preparation, the arguments about which narratives would be appropriate forced students to take a stand and voice their opinion on their own beliefs about Judaism an… 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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