Sex in Vayeishev; a Drash for Friday, 22 November 2013

Arent de Gelder, Judah and Tamar

You have heard me talk about sex without embarrassment.  Or at least, you’ve heard me try to talk about it that way, and hopefully succeed at times.  The attraction of two human beings for one another, for the purpose of, as the Torah euphemistically calls, ‘knowledge’ of one another, is a natural and important part of life.  The whole subject of sexual attraction, and the behaviors that it leads us to engage in, should not in and of itself be a cause for embarrassment.

The Torah has much to say about sex, as one would expect of a book that is at its heart a book about life and successful living.  But to some contemporary readers, the Torah’s concern about sex is jarring.  Because the Torah is part of ‘the Bible,’ and ‘the Bible’ is often seen as a book primarily and perhaps, exclusively about religion.  And in the contemporary mindset, sex is not the business of religion.  When religion talks about sex, according to popular thought in the wake of the Sexual Revolution, it is treading on ground where it does not belong.  This is surely because many believe that religion’s role in moderating and directing sexual behavior over the centuries had resulted, more than anything else, in sexual oppression.  And the sexual revolution was at its heart about removing any oppressiveness from our attitudes concerning sex.

So, the idea that religious tradition should have any influence over our sexual behavior, is today reflexively rejected by much of the population.  Even by many religious people.  The sexual ‘rules’ that one might collect from the Torah, or from the entirety of the Bible – either the Jewish or the Christian version – are seen as being made outdated and extraneous by The Pill.  By the easy availability of effective birth control.  If sex is no longer necessarily about making babies, then it is simply a matter of choice and religion shouldn’t really be telling us what we can or cannot do, correct?

But the Torah can be a voice in the creation of a sexual ethic, if we understand what the Torah is really saying at various key points where it addresses sexual behavior.  And therein lies a problem.  Religious traditions have, over the centuries, made a repeated mistake of misunderstanding the Torah’s message.  This has been done inadvertently, by taking verses and passages out of context.  And it has been done deliberately…by taking verses and passages out of context!

For example, in this week’s Torah portion, Vayeishev, there are several narratives that point to a need for rules and restraint in sexual behavior.  Tomorrow, when we read from the 39^th chapter of Genesis, I’ll talk a bit about the encounter between Joseph and Potiphar’s wife.  But first there is the 38^th chapter of Genesis, which tells of the hapless life of Tamar, the daughter-in-law of Judah.

Judah is the fourth of Jacob’s sons, the fourth son to be born of his marriage with his first wife, Leah.  Judah married a woman named Shu’a.  Their first child was a son, whom they named Er.  Er married a woman named Tamar.  After a marriage of a number of years, Er died, leaving Tamar a childless widow.  Onan was the next of Judah’s sons; Judah instructed Onan to marry Tamar in order to give her a child, who would then carry the name of his older brother, Er.  This practice, of marrying one’s brother’s childless widow to give her and the dead brother a child, is known as yibum, or levirate marriage.  But Onan wasn’t interested in fulfilling this obligation.  That being the case, there was an ‘out’ available to him.  Through the act and ritual of halitza, or release, he could have publicly refused to marry Tamar and freed her to make a child with someone else.  But instead, Onan marries Tamar and then, as the Torah tells us, spills his seed on the ground whilst having relations with her, so that their coupling would not produce a child. 

In other words, Onan practices coitus interruptus, which is a commonly-used method of birth control even today.  An unreliable method, I might add.  Unreliable because it requires a great deal of restraint to pull out right at the moment of ejaculation.  And unreliable because there is a small amount of semen present in the vas deferens long before the moment of ejaculation, and if this semen enters the vagina it could easily be sufficient for fertilization.  But it is a common conception that coitus interruptus is a safe and effective method of birth control, and surely it does work at times.

What Onan did, is represented as being evil in God’s sight.  It led to Onan’s death sentence.

Some traditions have taken these events as a Divine condemnation of the practice of masturbation.  This, even though masturbation is clearly not what is happening here.  But the connection has been made between coitus interruptus and masturbation, because both lead to the spilling of seed outside a woman’s vagina.  In fact, the term Onanism historically became a euphemism for the practice of masturbation.  Some religious traditions have thus seen masturbation as an offence worthy of a Divine death sentence.  Not to mention coitus interruptus.

But another possible understanding of this passage was suggested by my colleague, Rabbi Jeffrey Kamins of Congregation Emmanuel.  He suggested that the condemned act was not the spilling of seed in and of itself.  It was, rather, the sexual exploitation of a woman.  And I think he’s on solid ground.

Had Onan refused to marry Tamar and performed the ritual of halitza, that might have brought him some embarrassment or private condemnation.  But instead of thus releasing his sister-in-law publicly, he outwardly goes through with the marriage and then, in private, does not fulfill his obligation.  Whilst using subterfuge to avoid discharging his duty to Tamar and Er, Onan uses Tamar as a sexual plaything.  By outwardly taking on an obligation whilst clearly having no intention of fulfilling this obligation at all, he deceives all and has what amounts to a fling with Tamar.

 In this context, the sin of Onan is the deception that brought him to use his sister-in-law for a gratuitous fling.  This, rather than fulfilling a serious social obligation to her, to his dead brother, and to his entire family by extension.  The sin is not masturbation.  Nor is it, in and of itself, the practice of coitus interruptus.  It is the way that he deceives, uses, and exploits a situation.

Part of the reason why this is so difficult for us to see, is because the idea of yibum, levirate marriage being a family obligation, doesn’t resonate with us.  It seems at best archaic, and at worst repugnant.  It isn’t practiced by Jews today.  But some traditionalist Jews do practice the related ritual of halitza.  In our circles, both yibum and halitza are both seen as exploitive rather than as ameliorations of childless widowhood.  It’s an example imposing a contemporary sensibility upon the Torah, which was written and promulgated for an entirely different audience than us.  It’s why we have a tendency to reject outright any and all of the Torah’s attempts to create an operative sexual ethic.

But if we would take the time and effort to understand the Torah’s context, then we would see the Torah’s incredible wisdom.  And we would be able to avail ourselves of its wisdom, and apply it to the realities of our own age.  And that’s the tragedy resulting from our unwillingness to look beyond the text, into the context, and understand what the Torah is trying to tell us.  We close ourselves off to an incredible source of wisdom.

From me, you’ll not often hear a condemnation when we do not behave in specific ways prescribed in the Torah.  But when, in rejecting the specific behavioral prescriptions and proscriptions, we fail to try to grasp the Torah’s intent.  Then we in effect, throw out the baby with the bathwater.  Because there is sublime wisdom to draw out of these narratives.  Wisdom that can bring us much happiness as we struggle with life’s challenges.  May we have the wisdom to consult it.  Shabbat shalom.