Halachic Positions: What Judaism Really Says about Passion in the Marital Bed (Sexuality and Jewish Law: In Search of a Balanced Approach in Torah Book 1) by Yaakov Shapiro

Author:Yaakov Shapiro [Shapiro, Yaakov]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2018-04-16T21:00:00+00:00

158 While Rava is quoted here attempting to explain how these four sexual behaviors are similar in form to the illnesses the “ministering angels” reportedly said they cause, he never actually justifies how such horrific life-long manners of suffering are proportionate to such innocent, natural, widespread human sexual curiosity within the covenant of marriage.

And see below, endnote 161.

159 Rava, here, does not define the term “overturning the table,” although some versions of Tractate Callah describe it as rear-entry vaginal intercourse specifically. But it is none other than Rava himself who permits anal intercourse on Sanhedrin 58b (see below, pp. 84-87).

Anal intercourse is the most extreme – but also the most popular – definition of “overturning the table” among the medieval commentaries. And any permission of anal intercourse would logically imply permission of rear-entry vaginal intercourse as well. So why would Rava, here, be speaking so harshly against “overturning the table” of any kind, if he unreservedly permits anal intercourse on Sanhedrin 58b?

But perhaps Rava in Sanhedrin also meant to permit anal intercourse legally even while he considered it dangerous medically if performed during the same sexual encounter in which conception subsequently occurs. In any case, anal intercourse to the point of intra-anal ejaculation – which many commentaries understand Rava on Sanhedrin 58b to be permitting – would generally preclude any issue of conception (unless the husband goes on to ejaculate a second time, intra-vaginally, during the same intimate encounter). And see below, page 156 point 3.

160 But again, why should the wife or child be made to suffer for all these four actions, which, it is implied by Rava’s wording, were performed by the father and apparently against the mother’s will?

And more research into the matter is required.

161 Note that in none of these four explanations of “measure for measure justice” does Rava actually tell us what is fundamentally wrong with these four behaviors. He only tells us how the act and the resulting illness resemble each other in form.

Even when Rava tells us that the husband “abandoned the mouth to which kiss was given,” or that he “gazed at that which is hidden from all,” he does not tell us why abandoning the mouth or gazing at that which is hidden are so objectionable in the first place – and to such a degree that lifelong muteness or blindess, and in one’s children no less, are proportionate to them.

[It is noteworthy that Callah Rabti does not fault the husband for his “sexual indulgence” or “objectification of his wife” by gazing at his wife’s vagina, but rather faults him for the seemingly arbitrary fact that the place he gazes at is “hidden from all.” If his fault were in the fact that his gazing is purely sexually motivated or is an insensitive act of objectifying his wife, then he should be faulted as well for gazing at her breasts – which many, if not most, husbands do also mainly out of sexual desire (and see below, pp. 54-56). Nevertheless, Rabbi

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.