Online Erotica & The Space to Move Forward: A Modern Jewish Sexual Ethic

Warner explains that ecstatic embodied experiences of religiosity are sites of enchantment to which secularism can very rarely lay claim. The space that religion creates for a spiritual and intellectual becoming shines light on the possibility of the creation of a similar space for sexual gratification, sacrity, and control. We can use the imaginative capacity of religion and the soul-altering capacities of sex to build spaces of inclusion, worlds of future possibility.

What if beyond these spaces of inclusion and possibility, there was also added value? What if religion was good for sex and sex was good for religion? What if we took seriously the status of fantasies – of religious myth and sexual desire – because of what they enable or disable and used the two in conjunction to make a better world?

Could we learn to retell a new story, of how Adam and Eve unearthed the capacity to know themselves, to fully grasp the potential of their sexuality into the world? They were made in the image of God, which Judaism says means that they were capable of cognitive thought.

But thought without imagination is only half the story. The tree of knowledge that they bit into was one of sexual knowledge. Realizing it afterward, they covered their genitals, for now they recognized the power that they held. Their actions brought death and sexuality into the world, but death and the creative potential of sex are what push history forward. Judaism too, is constantly moving forward, using the Torah, a “living,” embodied text as its guide. I will explore the theory of a cumulative revelation, and how that might give credence to an idea of an evolving sexual ethic.

With Jewrotica as my cultural launch point and central text, I aim to explore the ways in which the sex-positivity inherent in the core texts of Judaism can find space and add value to the shifting world of observant Judaism. I will build an idea of a modern Jewish sexual ethic that is both morally compelling to a postmodern autonomy as well as embedded in rabbinic text, the lifeblood of a sustainable Judaism. While I cannot address the textual constraints that surround the issue of homosexuality in Judaism, I can still offer my ethic as one for all people, regardless of orientation. I cannot overcome Leviticus in this paper (though I believe it is imperative that our religious community finds a way), but an idea of healthy sexuality and intimacy is one in which all can take part.

In the pages that follow, I will survey seminal scholarship on power and eroticism, epistemology and human interrelatedness, and the “liveness” of textual and digital media. I will weave the ideas embodied in the following core texts with Judaic texts both ancient and modern, and with selected posts from Jewrotica as my theoretical backdrop.

Using the works of each of these scholars, I will explain the role of sex-positivity in Judaism, and discuss the nature of the “Living” Torah and the idea of a living media transmitting a continued of-the-present consciousness. The Torah is the Bible, God-given and considered to be a wholly “living” document. Torah in English means “the Teaching,” and I explore what it means for Judaism that this living knowledge is the producer of biopower, a living technology, that which makes space and time sacred and creates community.

I will look into the history of Christian sexual ethics and of confession as Michel Foucault describes them, of sexual taboo as Gershon Winkler posits, and of repression as Gayle Rubin describes. I will move next to pornography and the “yetzer,” the driving force that Judaism attributes to every human being that contains in it the power for good actions and the power for evil. This is what in another time Audre Lorde might call the erotic, that which drives us to lead lives of passion and fulfillment and to throw off oppression, and Foucault might call power- that which is neutral, but affects all relational aspects of humanity.

Lastly, I will look to Martin Buber as he explains the value of loving human interactions – Encounter as the path to God, and as the path to a shared society of productive power in which human beings relate to one another in a community not of objects, but of subjects, and what this means for the kind of living/virtual community that Jewrotica strives to create.

Regarding the usage of Jewish texts, it is important to note that whenever texts are selected from such a multi-layered tradition, convenient pieces are chosen to make a point; the rabbis of the Talmud did it, modern day rabbinic authorities do it, and this study does as well. In order to develop a sexual ethic from within a tradition, it is necessary to find more meaning in some texts than in others.

Sex. One syllable. Pleasure and pain, life and death. It’s complicated, it’s messy, it’s ecstasy and awe, heartbreak and despair.

Screw, bang, fuck, make love, procreate, sleep with, go to bed with, consummate. The words we use for sex display how we feel about the act in that moment – angry, horny, embarrassed, excited, in love. But more often than not our words carry an inflection of shame, of guilt, of the taboo. Nice girls don’t talk about sex. Sex isn’t appropriate conversation for polite company. Martin Buber describes life as the space in between speech and reply (9); it is also the space in between post and comment, revelation and interpretation. I am reclaiming the discursive space of sex armed with the texts of my tradition in the hopes that you too may reclaim the space for yourself and continue the ever-present conversation of humanity. I am speaking about it as an observant Jewish woman, an American, a college student, and a feminist. As it says in the Talmud, Ta Shma, come and learn.

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