Part 6 in Jewish Wisdom for the Everyday Man: a “guide for the perplexed” through the modern maze of morality from ancient Jewish Sages.
Society is obsessed with sex. Attitudes, morals and even definitions of sex are changing daily. Jewish values, by contrast, have hardly changed at all, and for good reason.
Holy sex
Like everything in Jewish thinking, sex cannot be bad, moral or immoral by itself. The time, place and purpose of any action determines whether it is ethical or unethical. When the sexual act is performed in the proper, God-given way, it is an act of holiness, called kiddushin (holiness) in Hebrew.
According to the Talmud, God himself is present with husband and wife during sex. At a Jewish wedding ceremony, family and friends all sing out loud in celebration for the joy that the newlyweds are about to experience in the wedding bed. A far cry from the stalwart absence of any mention of sex in most Christian weddings.
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