I went to a conference today about the power of blogging, and realized that its probably not good how lacksadasical I am about updating, not to mention editing. So, I decided to edit, starting by copying/pasting some Facebook notes I wrote recently (within past week) about a book I finished over shabbat, "Carnal Israel", by Daniel Boyarin: http://www.amazon.com/Carnal-Israel-Talmudic-Historicism-Cultural/dp/0520203364
Here is the Note, originally entitled: "Thoughts on "Carnal Israel" (Woohoo! I Am Like Hollywood: I Have Sequels. And Sex.)":
I recently finished reading "Carnal Israel" by Daniel Boyarin.* I think the book is brilliant. It posits a positive sexual ethic to be found in strands of rabbinic Jewish culture in Late Antiquity. I hope to post highlights of the book I found interesting**. Before I do so however, I would like to delineate some of my own attitudes when it comes to the relationship between Judaism and sexuality:
My faith in Judaism is based on a few premises:
1. There is a God who created the universe. I feel this God's presence in my life, and find it in the beauty of this world. This God may have created the universe through the Big Bang and Evolution, however, what matters is not how He (or She - my God is genderless, since She is un-corporeal. Thanks Maimonides.) created the universe, but why. Since I assume a sentient Creator, I assume there was a purpose to creation.
2. If so, there must be a document to communicate to humans what this purpose is and/or how to serve this purpose. I believe that the Torah is such a document. As for why I believe it is the Torah and not another document, that is beyond the scope of this note. I do believe however, that while human beings do have free choice, God also plays a role in major historical/intellectual phenomena, so if there is a Christianity, somehow God wanted there to be a Christianity, same thing for Islam, or feminism, or any other major religious or intellectual movement that played a major role in history.
While these two premises may be (a gross oversimplification of) the intellectual basis for my faith, emotionally, my faith in Judaism is enabled by what I see as two related tenets of Judaism: 1. All people are created in the image of God, and, therefore, holy.*** 2. Sexuality and sex is essentially a positive force, albeit one that can be misused.
I do not think I would be able to believe in a God who did not view all people as equal, or in a faith that saw such an essential part of human nature and such an essential and pleasurable activity as negative. In the modern era, for sociological reasons too complex to fathom in the form of a Facebook note, sexual behavior (or professed sexual behavior - how many of us truly practice what we preach?) has become a marker of belonging, defining one as part of Jewish Orthodox society. I believe that to judge a person by their sexuality, when it is such a deep and basic human need, violates the first tenent of Judaism - that all people are equal, meaning we have no right to judge others - provided that their behavior does not violate the equality of others, i.e. is not harmful to other people.
On this note, I believe that the one moral rule that can be applied to sexuality is: Do not consciously use sex or your sexuality to hurt yourself or others. In doing so, I draw a distinction between halacha and morality. For the basis of this distinction, please read the writings of Yeshayahu Leibowitz.****
Of course, I still struggle with elements of sexual halacha, and I will try to delineate these struggles in a separate note. For now however, I wanted to show how Judaism's (generally) positive attitude towards sexuality is essential to my religious faith.
As an aside, many of the negative sources that do exist come from Europe in the Middle Ages, and were in direct dialogue and influenced by a negative discourse on women's sexuality/sex in general that was occurring in the Catholic hegemony of the era.
* http://www.amazon.com/Carnal-Israel-Talmudic-Historicism-Cultural/dp/0520203364
** Favorite new fact, courtesy of this book: The ideal ancient Greek male had a small penis. Today "people" - I am not really sure who these people are, since none of the people in my life who fuck men have made this claim - say that bigger is desirable. All this just goes to show how size really doesn't matter, and different societies have these very arbitrary definitions of "good" that are no more than projections of fear about male masculinity.
*** See verse 27: http://www.mechon-mamre.org/p/pt/pt0101.htm
**** http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/leibowitz-yeshayahu/#JewFaiJewLaw
