Jewish Swingers

Ideas evolve over 4,000 years. It’s no surprise that as we Jews, as of of the few ancient peoples left in the world, have traveled through the river of time for four millennia and interacted with dominant cultures as they rose and fell would have some of those host cultures rub off on our practices. This is necessarily neither a good nor a bad thing. We’ve had the wisdom to learn from others and the self appreciation to not give up core beliefs under sometimes unimaginable pressure. Through that, we’ve evolved and survived as almost no other society originating in the bronze-age has.

Evolving as Survival

When the Roman Emperors Vespasian and Titus destroyed the state of Judea in 70 they did more than just put down a rebellious colony and loot enough wealth to build the first giant, 50,000 seat sports arena – the Flavian Amphitheater – better known as The Coliseum. They set in motion the evolution of Judaism. They did this by exiling most of the Jews from Judea and forcing an exile where most Jews lived their lives as guests in countries ruled by other cultures. As guests, the Jews learned that survival meant accepting the culture of the host nation where it did not conflict with core Jewish law. Thus a Jew in Alexandria was, for most parts, an Egyptian in culture and day to day life and a Jew in Constantinople was a Byzantine in most ways that mattered. True, there were religious beliefs that differed along with resulting holidays and Jews kept dietary restrictions but that didn’t really mean that much in ordinary life.

This acculturation was enforced throughout the centuries. When a particularly oppressive host emerged then the Jews either hid those remaining differences and tried to wait out the new regime or moved elsewhere. Often there was an edict of expulsion that made that choice for them.

The key takeaway, though, is not to focus on the oppression of a minority culture but to realize that when a belief was not key, it was superseded by the beliefs of the host. For example, when Christianity took over Europe it spread, as one of its philosophies, the ideas that marriage was purely between one man and one woman and was the exclusive place for acceptable sexuality. Now this was clearly not the norm for Judaism which had a much less restrictive view but while Judaism freely allowed polygamy, there was nothing in Judaism that required polygamy so accepting a tighter restriction on marriage did not violate any core belief and accepting it meant staying out of jail and possibly meant being allowed to stay in the host nation. Thus, the norm in Judaism became Christian-style monogamy. Not because there was anything Jewish about it. Not because Judaism changed its laws or moral views. Just because the cost was small and the benefit of not being jailed, expelled or killed was, by far, worth that cost.

Thus, Jewish day to day life evolved into a variation of the prevailing culture and, in this case, Jews became monogamous.

Acceptance Isn’t Belief

One side effect of this acculturation and acceptance of host norms was that many Jews never learned what was Jewish and what wasn’t. If you did a “Jew on the Street” interview, I’d be surprised if more than a few percentage would say that Judaism actually has no issue with polygamy. Likewise in the anti-sexuality Christian host culture we live in today, it’d be surprising if many Jews realized that where Jewish law does speak of sex it’s extraordinarily pro-sexual.

I doubt many Jewish husbands realize the following about sex under Jewish Law:

• There are only three things a husband must provide to his wife. These are food, clothing and sex.
• The primary function of sex is pleasure – procreation is secondary and sex is required even when pregnancy cannot occur from it such as when the wife is already pregnant.
• The husband must provide not just sexual intercourse but is required to provide his wife with orgasms. This is clearly not the procreative-only view of “dirty, evil sex” we see in much of Christian sexual teaching.
• The frequency of sex – called onah – is tied to the work the husband does. If work doesn’t take him on the road as part of a caravan or a merchant fleet, the requirement is for sex to be daily and that includes the requirement for his wife to have an orgasm daily.

Now, why would educated and often quite pious men and women not know this? It is another case of the acceptance of host culture. Christianity tends to condemn sexuality for pleasure’s sake while Judaism revels in it. And this sexuality is one of those areas where conforming to the host society has had less cost than the pogroms and murders and expulsions that being considered a perverted and immoral people would have surely meant.

And The Point Is?

The point of this introduction is simple. Jews are not Christians without Jesus and Jewish Law is not Christianity with some funny rules against eating cheeseburgers with milkshakes. We are a people with significantly different laws, regulations and goals. We, as Jews, have adopted strangers’ beliefs over the years as a way to survive but it is time, in this era of cultural tolerance, to examine how to be sexually Jewish and not just circumcised Christians.

It dawned on us that there really wasn’t a place for Jews in the Lifestyle to discuss the issues relating to being on the outside of society in two distinct areas. This blog will, hopefully, provide that place.