|
|
September 27, 2002/Tishri 21 5763, Vol. 55, No. 5
Ancient wisdom, modern problems
Books present kosher sex redux
VICKI CABOT
Contributing Editor
Rabbi Shmuley Boteach pumps up the volume on "Kosher Sex" with his latest book, "Kosher Adultery, Seduce and Sin with Your Spouse," (Adams Media Corporation, $23.95 hardcover).
As provocative as its title, the book has inspired heated reactions from readers and critics in the four weeks since it hit the market. "There are those who are praising it as most revolutionary," says the rabbi, who has been called Dr. Ruth with a yarmulke, "to those calling it dangerous and ridiculous."
Response may be fueled more by its source than its subject matter, says the outspoken Boteach, an Orthodox rabbi with 14 books to his credit, a radio talk show and a following among both Jews and non-Jews. Boteach, raised in a Modern Orthodox family, identifies as a Lubavitch. He was ordained at the Lubavitcher center in New York after studying in Israel and Australia, where he met his wife, Debbie. "Jews have a prejudice against rabbis," says Boteach, identifying them with negative stereotypes from Hebrew school days. Non-Jews, he says, are more open to seeing how "ancient wisdom can be brought to bear on contemporary problems."
And bringing that wisdom to bear on married life is what Boteach is all about, he says, albeit pandering to the public's penchant for sensation and titillation.
Just the title is enough to turn off - or turn on - any reader.
Boteach's tome is neither a paean to adultery nor a sex manual, as its title may imply, but a how-to for injecting new romance into an old relationship. Old, says Boteach, not in years, but in lack of excitement and surprise.
"The physical is the defining component in a marriage," says the rabbi, married for 15 years and the father of seven children, ages 13 to one. His provocative title suggests that husbands and wives should relate to each other as lovers rather than friends. "For 50 years we've been preaching a lie...that marriage is about friendship," says the outspoken social critic in a recent telephone interview from his New Jersey home. "It's about desire."
He exalts the marital relationship as the ultimate intimate experience. "Sex is about a man or woman having an intense experience that makes them feel intensely close," he says. And he suggests that it is society that has given sex - even sex within marriage - a dirty name. "We have degraded sex and made it into a disgusting pastime."
Restoring its primacy in the marital relationship may be the salvation of marriage.
What some readers may find hard to swallow is Boteach's assumption that men - and women - have a tendency to stray and that playing on that very possibility can ignite a relationship. Attraction to strangers is natural, he writes, and jealousy is healthy.
Marriage based on trust and communication - forget it, says the rabbi. It's all about sex.
Boteach admits that his preoccupation with marriage comes by way of painful personal experience. He still identifies as a "child of divorce." "I'm 35 and still waiting for my parents to get back together," he says sheepishly.
It also comes from keen observation of today's social landscape where pornography has become a $10 billion a year business, the divorce rate exceeds 65 percent, 59 percent of married women are having affairs and television's "Sex and the City" defines life for many young, single women.
"Women have given up on men," he observes. "Their real partners in life are their girlfriends. You can't get more cynical than that."
So learning how to make wives into mistresses and marriages into illicit affairs may be the answer. He is not, insists the rabbi, condoning adultery.
"Sex is something bad if you don't do it with your wife."
For another take on marriage, consider Karen Propp's "In Sickness and in Health: A Love Story," (Rodale Books, $23.95 hardcover). An autobiographical novel, it weaves together Propp's courtship and marriage to her husband, Sam, his battle with prostate cancer and the birth of their son, Isaac. Tension increases with Sam's rising PSA, casting a shadow on their happiness as new parents and foreshadowing the inevitability of surgery. Propp, a poet, minces no words with her description of the disease's devastating consequences for the man she loves and their relationship, but she deftly takes the reader through their rough emotional passage with honesty and grace. A tough read, it is a compelling page-turner. What does it mean to be married when the rules change and you are asked to venture into uncharted territory?
Also this month, the flip side of marriage - divorce - gets sensitive treatment from a rabbi. Rabbi Perry Netter's "Divorce is a Mitzvah: A Practical Guide to Finding Wholeness and Holiness When Your Marriage Dies" (Jewish Lights, $16.95 paperback) addresses important questions asked by those divorcing or those considering divorce. Among them: how to tell the kids, what to tell others and what to do with anger. Netter, himself a divorced father of three and spiritual leader of Temple Beth Am in Los Angeles, suggests that drawing on the Jewish tradition can help individuals find a path through the painful terrain of divorce. He combines Jewish wisdom with contemporary psychological research to provide a guide for successfully transitioning from marriage to separation to divorce.
|
