Sex, Marriage and Family in World Religions (7 page)

Second, the structures, rules, and mores of Jewish communities were greatly influenced by their interactions with the local Muslim or Christian society, be it open, tolerant, or discriminatory. Local Jewish ordinances and customs were largely a product of these idiosyncratic realities. Finally, at times major religious movements, such as the pietistic German Hasidim and the mystical trends introduced by Kabbalists in Spain and then later throughout Jewry, had considerable impact on Jewish views and practices on family issues. All these sources of variety were compounded throughout this period by the Jewish migrations (voluntary or forced) that often brought Jews of differing practice and outlook together.

Actually, the separateness of the Jews in medieval society turned out to be a boon for the development of Jewish law. The relative autonomy granted Jewish communities in matters of personal status through most of the Middle Ages meant Jewish authorities were able to redress serious issues with great effect, even if these contravened Talmudic law. Thus shortly after the Muslim conquest the Babylonian academies issued an ordinance, known as
takanta de-metivta,
allowing a woman to sue for divorce in court by claiming “my husband is detestable to me”
(ma’is alai),
undermining the husband’s exclusive and uni-lateral right to divorce granted him in the Talmud (Doc. 1–37). In northern France and Germany ordinances attributed to the eleventh-century Gershom,
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“the Light of the Exiles,” prohibited bigamy and would not allow a man to divorce his wife against her will (Doc. 1–38). Ultimately, all of Ashkenaz and even some Sefardic communities would accept Gershom’s rulings, but the Babylonian ordinance was no longer normative by the thirteenth century. Other ordinances affecting inheritance, clandestine marriages, and deception were also common during this period. In medieval society common custom could be as effective as the ordinance; although polygyny remained a practice among wealthier Jews in Muslim lands, financial stipulations evolved in near eastern Jewish marriage contracts intended to discourage this practice, and by the eleventh century the clause was standard (Doc. 1–39).

During much of this period Jewish families were relatively stable, with av-erage family size between two and six children (Jews in Arab lands being at the higher end of that range and always preferring sons). First marriages were often arranged by parents, and children usually married in their teens, an option afforded by the concentration of Jews in commercial or financial professions.

Motives for unions, especially in the middle classes, were frequently based on family or business considerations, factors that could also destabilize marriage when relations soured. But other factors undermined Jewish family life, as well, including concern for a family’s reputation, the extended absences of Jewish traders, persecution and its consequences, and conversion of a spouse to the majority’s faith. Furthermore, sexual impropriety, whether with Jews or non-Jews, was not uncommon at different times, especially among the social elite, who also applied their poetic talents to physical pleasures (Docs. 1–40 to 1–42).

All in all, though, the married state was the natural one for adults; widowed or divorced individuals remarried, especially if there were smaller children, but even if they were older. We do not find movements among Jews parallel to the strong ascetic communities found among Christians and Muslims, although some ambivalence over marriage occasionally surfaced in Jewish literature.

Owing to its urban setting, Jewish life in both Muslim and Christian societies was intensely communal. Marriage and divorce assumed a public character: weddings moved to the synagogue, and consent of community leaders was at times required for weddings and divorces. Indeed, most family celebrations (births, circumcisions, deaths) became public events, with many local rituals evolving for each. In medieval Europe the involvement of religious authorities grew (as it did among Christians), leading to increased standardization of both practice and contracts in marriage and divorce to ensure the propriety of all such ceremonies. Codification became its own genre, and handbooks for divorce were common in the fourteenth to sixteenth centuries. (Doc. 1–43). The community saw itself responsible as well for the education of youth (i.e., boys), ensuring the transmission of traditional values to another generation.

Both medieval Islam and Christianity were marked by dualistic views of the human being, pitting body and soul in an ongoing struggle for dominance— and not infrequently linking the soul with maleness and body with the femi-10

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nine. Perhaps as expressions of a common Zeitgeist, from the twelfth century onward ascetic and body-negating trends emerged in Jewish circles in three different contexts. Rationalists, such as Maimonides, associated Judaism’s goals with the intellectual perfection found in classic philosophy, and in his legal and philosophical writings one finds an unrelenting effort to limit indulgence of the body through food and particularly sex, except to fulfill the commandment to procreate or the wife’s conjugal right (Docs. 1–44 to 1–47). In Spain, and later throughout the Jewish world, mysticism was becoming much more structured and systematic through the Kabbalah and similarly looked to dampen the body’s urges as the soul sought communion
(deveikut)
with God—although sexual metaphors were constantly used to describe the desired metaphysical state (Docs. 1–48 to 1–51). Finally, German Jewish pietism, perhaps in mimicry of its Christian surroundings, devalued the sexual appetite as a distraction that saps energy for higher purposes (Docs. 1–52 to 1–55). Nevertheless, one does find texts in this period that attempt to infuse sex with sensitivity and spirituality, considering the carnal capable of sanctification (Doc. 1–56).

s e x , m a r r i a g e , a n d f a m i l y

The relatively segregated character of Jewish society and its traditional mores began to erode over the course of the late Middle Ages. Profound political, economic, and social forces, along with powerful charismatic religious movements such as messianism and Hasidism, contributed to fundamental changes in European Jewish family life. Intellectually, the Enlightenment as well began to seep into Jewish thinking in the form of the Haskalah, leading to a more historical thinking and humanism among the elite. The Jews, therefore, who in the late eighteenth to early nineteenth century were being considered for entry into central and western European society as full and equal citizens, were already reimagining themselves and the look of their own society.

From the perspective of the European nation-state, emancipating the Jews came with the expectation of their “normalization,” that is, the shedding of their unique customs and their adoption of the norms of civil society, including intermarriage (Doc. 1–57). “Be a Frenchman outside and a Jew at home” became the formula for successful integration, granting the family, which had always been central to Jewish life, an even more central role in the preservation of Jewish identity. Thus European and American bourgeois society, which relegated women to the home, also elevated the role of women in helping maintain religious identity, closely linking concern for family with religious ritual.

But the husband’s acculturation to the larger society, the disintegration of extended kinship networks, and the primacy of the nuclear family all worked against the preservation of Jewish identity along old lines. The modernization of the Jewish family, which took place over two centuries in a variety of contexts, affected sexual mores, family size, women’s roles, and parent-child relations everywhere.

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In the West an intellectual elite in the nineteenth century articulated a variety of Jewish responses to the dilemma of integration based on radically differing views on the nature of Judaism, including the degree to which change is possible. These divisions, which evolved into denominations, ranged from a humanistic “religion” on the model of liberal Protestantism (Reform), to the distinctive beliefs and practices of a “people” (Conservative), to a divinely revealed set of laws that could not be altered (Orthodox).

Originally, the debates were centered on ritual, including marriage and divorce. Reform Judaism accepted Western legal forms of entering and dissolving the marital state, relegating rabbis to agents of the state and the marriage contract to a formalistic exchange of vows. For Conservative and Orthodox Judaism, however, who preserved Jewish law in this area, Jews were now living under two jurisdictions—the state and that of Jewish law—and the two did not always match up. Divorce was the greater problem, for the state did not recognize the need for a religious divorce prior to remarriage, but Jewish law viewed this second marriage as adulterous, the children illegitimate. With the acceptance of no-fault divorce in most states starting in the 1960s, this situation left many women who observed Jewish law chained to a dead marriage, and each denomination sought a solution. The Conservative movement composed a
ketubah,
the religious marriage contract, that could demand a husband and wife submit to a Jewish court, and many Orthodox organizations endorsed a prenuptial agreement, which contractually binds a husband to pay his wife’s maintenance until he divorces her religiously (Docs. 1–58 to 1–60).

As important as ritual matters were, ethnic and familial ties among Jews were still strong, especially as the West received a steady flow of more traditional eastern European Jewish immigrants. After the destruction of European Jewry in World War II, the rise of Israel as a Jewish state served to enhance Jewish identification through the late twentieth century. But as the twenty-first century approached, intermarriage with non-Jews moved above the 50 percent mark; many American Jews saw it as a crisis that threatened Jewish continuity, with books and conferences devoted to seeking solutions. The denominations split over the question of intermarriage and the definition of Jewishness, with Reform and Reconstructionism adopting a standard that incorporated both parentage (either parent Jewish) and how the child was raised (Doc. 1–61). The same sort of division can be seen with respect to same-sex unions or marriages, with the liberal denominations seeking to include these couples within the framework of Jewish marriage and the others maintaining the traditional exclusion.

Zionism, which began in the late 1800s, saw itself as a movement that was at once a continuation of the diaspora dream of return and a rejection of the traditional Judaism that had evolved in Europe. Many secular Jews acknowledged the right of Jewish tradition to regulate life-cycle events, allowing the state to establish an Orthodox chief rabbinate, an institution inherited from the Ottoman and British periods of occupation. Nevertheless, a few groups arrayed themselves into agrarian collectives, which in some cases replaced the tradi-12

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tional nuclear or extended family. As Israeli society became less agrarian and more Western, it reverted to the model of the traditional family. But this West-ernization has also opened Israelis to the diversity of American Judaism, and Orthodox hegemony over marriage law and rituals has weakened over the last decade.

Despite heightened assimilation, sociologists and historians observe that American Jews are displaying a simultaneous, albeit inconsistent and paradox-ical, move toward greater tradition. Reaffirmation of ritual among liberal Jews is not uncommon, and more Jewish communities have endorsed separate Jewish schooling for children (usually up to middle or high school) during which a Jewish identity could be imprinted. But, except for the Orthodox, American mores on sex, marriage (including late marriage and high divorce rates), and family (small numbers of children) apply equally to American Jews, and increasingly to Israeli Jews via the spread of American culture through technology and globalization. Currently, one may say that among Jews the drive toward integration and accommodation is almost universally ascendant over the preservation of distinctiveness—a trend with profound implications for Jewish life.

THE HEBREW BIBLE

The Hebrew Bible, known as the
TaNaKh—Torah
(Pentateuch),
Nevi’im
(Prophets), and
Ketuvim
(Writings)—is the first major canonical text of Judaism.

It is a compendium of books that achieved sacred status in the Jewish community over centuries, reaching its current form in the early Persian period (6th–4th centuries bce). About half the books are historical, covering time from the creation of the world until the early Second Temple period. The other texts are primarily prophetic or wisdom literature, often in poetic form.

In addition, the Torah contains significant legal portions that the Jewish tradition, since the Persian period and up to the modern period, deemed binding as God’s revealed word. Still performed regularly in synagogues and taught in Jewish schools, the Torah is a living, relevant text to most Jews, even if not regarded as revealed. Below are selections of multiple genres that deal with the origins of humans, illicit sexual unions, marriage, and the family’s central role in transmitting the covenant.

Document 1–1

g e n e s i s 1 – 3

1:1When God began to create heaven and earth—2the earth being unformed and void, with darkness over the surface of the deep and a wind from God sweeping over the water—3God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light.

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4God saw that the light was good, and God separated the light from the darkness.

5God called the light Day, and the darkness He called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, a first day.

6God said, “Let there be an expanse in the midst of the water, that it may separate water from water.” . . . 8God called the expanse Sky. And there was evening and there was morning, a second day.

9God said, “Let the water below the sky be gathered into one area, that the dry land may appear.” And it was so. 10God called the dry land Earth, and the gathering of waters He called Seas. And God saw that this was good. 11And God said, “Let the earth sprout vegetation: seed-bearing plants, fruit trees of every kind on earth that bear fruit with the seed in it.” And it was so. . . . 13And there was evening and there was morning, a third day.