The Passionate Torah: Sex and Judaism
Edited By Danya Ruttenberg
New York University Press, 320 pages, $19.95.
Jewish attitudes about sex and sexuality span a wide spectrum. For liberal Jews, sex and religion may seem unrelated; for those who follow the family-purity laws, the relationship between sex and Jewish tradition may seem set in stone. But neither of these stances takes the whole picture into account. Judaism, as Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg writes in the introduction to “Passionate Torah,” is both an earthy religion of the body and a distressingly patriarchal institution. “Jewish sexuality,” she writes, “is nothing if not complex.”
In the past few decades, postmodernism, feminism and queer liberation have changed the way sexuality is understood and discussed across the board. “Passionate Torah” brings all these to bear on the Jewish conversation about sex.
Taking a page from Martin Buber, Ruttenberg organizes the anthology into three sections: “I-It: Challenges,” “I-Thou: Relationships” and “We-Thou: Visions.” The essays focus first on problems, then on connections and finally on visions of the future.
Anthologies can seem like grab-bags. This tripartite organizing principle helps give “Passionate Torah” coherency, but the tone of the essays still varies. On my first reading, I found this frustrating; on my second read-through, I decided it was a plus rather than a minus, because it offers readers a variety of ways in. This is a book best read in small doses.
Sarra Lev’s exploration of Tractate Sotah (a tractate of Talmud that explores questions of female infidelity) subjects it to the scrutiny of film theory, particularly the theory of the gaze, and pushes the reader to grapple with the question of whether Sotah constitutes rabbinic pornography. (Short answer: Sure looks that way.)
Scholar Wendy Love Anderson notes that rabbinic Judaism tended (and arguably still tends) to see boundary-crossing sexual relationships “as indicative of systemic moral failure.” Suddenly, the anti-intermarriage rhetoric of mainstream American Judaism makes a new kind of sense.
For me as a rabbinic student interested in gender, sexuality and our communal boundaries, this is fascinating material. For someone who isn’t as invested in wrestling with the texts, or in these particular questions, the essays might not hit home.
By the same token, Forward columnist Jay Michaelson’s essay “On the Religious Significance of Homosexuality” explores kabbalistic understandings of masculinity, femininity and the divine. If you already enjoy stretching your brain into the acrobatics of classical Kabbalah, this essay is for you. If you don’t, you may find yourself skimming until you reach his closing assertions about why sexuality matters.
The more personal essays are more universally accessible. Rabbi Haviva Ner-David offers an interpretation of the traditional categories of tumah (ritual impurity) and taharah (ritual purity), reflecting on how she relates to her own oscillation between the two states.
“This is especially compelling for me when I am trying to conceive,” she notes. “When my period comes, I turn inward… I need my space to grieve, and that is what I get — days and days of tumah space.” And then, when the time comes to return to taharah, the mikveh immersion allows her to wash away the grief. This may not inspire me to take on the family-purity laws, but it offers me a new way of understanding them.
My favorite essay in the anthology is probably Ruttenberg’s ”Toward a New Tzniut,” which explores questions of body and modesty. Many women today see traditional modesty laws as a patriarchal attempt to control women’s bodies and thereby our sexuality. Ruttenberg puts forth a case for a more nuanced understanding, though she’s conscious of tzniut’s problematics.
On her first day of rabbinic school, she writes, a male colleague ran his finger up her arm and noted that she’d better cover up. (That the gesture itself is a creepy sign of unconscious male entitlement to women’s bodies doesn’t escape her, but she doesn’t dwell on it.) Classical texts argue that it’s a woman’s job to protect men from her potentially arousing form; can these arguments be redeemed or reclaimed?
Ruttenberg argues that we should dress with awareness that we are “subjects” rather than “objects.” There’s a difference, she writes, between “I’m going to wear this shirt to the bar so guys will think I’m desirable” and “I’m going to wear this shirt because I feel beautiful in it.” In the first case, the woman is an object; in the second, she is a subject, erotic and whole. The difference lies in intention. For Ruttenberg, selfhood, subjecthood and connection to the erotic and the divine trump the spiritual value of modesty, though ideally the two sets of values can come to coexist.
If any of this startles you into thinking, “This isn’t what I expected,” the book is doing its job. These essays were chosen to expand the reader’s sense of what Judaism has to say on the subject of sex. Our understanding of Jewish sexuality needs to become as complex as the realities are. And as our understanding evolves, we become aware of new questions to pose to the tradition.
Rachel Barenblat, an ALEPH rabbinic student, holds an MFA from the Bennington Writing Seminars and blogs as The Velveteen Rabbi.
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In promoting his health-care agenda, President Obama has repeatedly reassured Americans that they can keep their existing health plans -- and that the benefits and access they prize will be enhanced through reform.
A close reading of the two main bills, one backed by Democrats in the House and the other issued by Sen. Edward Kennedy's Health committee, contradict the President's assurances. To be sure, it isn't easy to comb through their 2,000 pages of tortured legal language. But page by page, the bills reveal a web of restrictions, fines, and mandates that would radically change your health-care coverage.
If you prize choosing your own cardiologist or urologist under your company's Preferred Provider Organization plan (PPO), if your employer rewards your non-smoking, healthy lifestyle with reduced premiums, if you love the bargain Health Savings Account (HSA) that insures you just for the essentials, or if you simply take comfort in the freedom to spend your own money for a policy that covers the newest drugs and diagnostic tests -- you may be shocked to learn that you could lose all of those good things under the rules proposed in the two bills that herald a health-care revolution.
In short, the Obama platform would mandate extremely full, expensive, and highly subsidized coverage -- including a lot of benefits people would never pay for with their own money -- but deliver it through a highly restrictive, HMO-style plan that will determine what care and tests you can and can't have. It's a revolution, all right, but in the wrong direction.
Let's explore the five freedoms that Americans would lose under Obamacare:
1. Freedom to choose what's in your plan
The bills in both houses require that Americans purchase insurance through "qualified" plans offered by health-care "exchanges" that would be set up in each state. The rub is that the plans can't really compete based on what they offer. The reason: The federal government will impose a minimum list of benefits that each plan is required to offer.
0:00 /2:07Health reform and you Today, many states require these "standard benefits packages" -- and they're a major cause for the rise in health-care costs. Every group, from chiropractors to alcohol-abuse counselors, do lobbying to get included. Connecticut, for example, requires reimbursement for hair transplants, hearing aids, and in vitro fertilization.
The Senate bill would require coverage for prescription drugs, mental-health benefits, and substance-abuse services. It also requires policies to insure "children" until the age of 26. That's just the starting list. The bills would allow the Department of Health and Human Services to add to the list of required benefits, based on recommendations from a committee of experts. Americans, therefore, wouldn't even know what's in their plans and what they're required to pay for, directly or indirectly, until after the bills become law.
2. Freedom to be rewarded for healthy living, or pay your real costs
As with the previous example, the Obama plan enshrines into federal law one of the worst features of state legislation: community rating. Eleven states, ranging from New York to Oregon, have some form of community rating. In its purest form, community rating requires that all patients pay the same rates for their level of coverage regardless of their age or medical condition.
Americans with pre-existing conditions need subsidies under any plan, but community rating is a dubious way to bring fairness to health care. The reason is twofold: First, it forces young people, who typically have lower incomes than older workers, to pay far more than their actual cost, and gives older workers, who can afford to pay more, a big discount. The state laws gouging the young are a major reason so many of them have joined the ranks of uninsured.
Under the Senate plan, insurers would be barred from charging any more than twice as much for one patient vs. any other patient with the same coverage. So if a 20-year-old who costs just $800 a year to insure is forced to pay $2,500, a 62-year-old who costs $7,500 would pay no more than $5,000.
Second, the bills would ban insurers from charging differing premiums based on the health of their customers. Again, that's understandable for folks with diabetes or cancer. But the bills would bar rewarding people who pursue a healthy lifestyle of exercise or a cholesterol-conscious diet. That's hardly a formula for lower costs. It's as if car insurers had to charge the same rates to safe drivers as to chronic speeders with a history of accidents.
3. Freedom to choose high-deductible coverage
The bills threaten to eliminate the one part of the market truly driven by consumers spending their own money. That's what makes a market, and health care needs more of it, not less.
Hundreds of companies now offer Health Savings Accounts to about 5 million employees. Those workers deposit tax-free money in the accounts and get a matching contribution from their employer. They can use the funds to buy a high-deductible plan -- say for major medical costs over $12,000. Preventive care is reimbursed, but patients pay all other routine doctor visits and tests with their own money from the HSA account. As a result, HSA users are far more cost-conscious than customers who are reimbursed for the majority of their care.
The bills seriously endanger the trend toward consumer-driven care in general. By requiring minimum packages, they would prevent patients from choosing stripped-down plans that cover only major medical expenses. "The government could set extremely low deductibles that would eliminate HSAs," says John Goodman of the National Center for Policy Analysis, a free-market research group. "And they could do it after the bills are passed."
4. Freedom to keep your existing plan
This is the freedom that the President keeps emphasizing. Yet the bills appear to say otherwise. It's worth diving into the weeds -- the territory where most pundits and politicians don't seem to have ventured.
The legislation divides the insured into two main groups, and those two groups are treated differently with respect to their current plans. The first are employees covered by the Employee Retirement Security Act of 1974. ERISA regulates companies that are self-insured, meaning they pay claims out of their cash flow, and don't have real insurance. Those are the GEs (GE, Fortune 500) and Time Warners (TWX, Fortune 500) and most other big companies.
The House bill states that employees covered by ERISA plans are "grandfathered." Under ERISA, the plans can do pretty much what they want -- they're exempt from standard packages and community rating and can reward employees for healthy lifestyles even in restrictive states.
But read on.
The bill gives ERISA employers a five-year grace period when they can keep offering plans free from the restrictions of the "qualified" policies offered on the exchanges. But after five years, they would have to offer only approved plans, with the myriad rules we've already discussed. So for Americans in large corporations, "keeping your own plan" has a strict deadline. In five years, like it or not, you'll get dumped into the exchange. As we'll see, it could happen a lot earlier.
The outlook is worse for the second group. It encompasses employees who aren't under ERISA but get actual insurance either on their own or through small businesses. After the legislation passes, all insurers that offer a wide range of plans to these employees will be forced to offer only "qualified" plans to new customers, via the exchanges.
The employees who got their coverage before the law goes into effect can keep their plans, but once again, there's a catch. If the plan changes in any way -- by altering co-pays, deductibles, or even switching coverage for this or that drug -- the employee must drop out and shop through the exchange. Since these plans generally change their policies every year, it's likely that millions of employees will lose their plans in 12 months.
5. Freedom to choose your doctors
The Senate bill requires that Americans buying through the exchanges -- and as we've seen, that will soon be most Americans -- must get their care through something called "medical home." Medical home is similar to an HMO. You're assigned a primary care doctor, and the doctor controls your access to specialists. The primary care physicians will decide which services, like MRIs and other diagnostic scans, are best for you, and will decide when you really need to see a cardiologists or orthopedists.
Under the proposals, the gatekeepers would theoretically guide patients to tests and treatments that have proved most cost-effective. The danger is that doctors will be financially rewarded for denying care, as were HMO physicians more than a decade ago. It was consumer outrage over despotic gatekeepers that made the HMOs so unpopular, and killed what was billed as the solution to America's health-care cost explosion.
The bills do not specifically rule out fee-for-service plans as options to be offered through the exchanges. But remember, those plans -- if they exist -- would be barred from charging sick or elderly patients more than young and healthy ones. So patients would be inclined to game the system, staying in the HMO while they're healthy and switching to fee-for-service when they become seriously ill. "That would kill fee-for-service in a hurry," says Goodman.
In reality, the flexible, employer-based plans that now dominate the landscape, and that Americans so cherish, could disappear far faster than the 5 year "grace period" that's barely being discussed.
Companies would have the option of paying an 8% payroll tax into a fund that pays for coverage for Americans who aren't covered by their employers. It won't happen right away -- large companies must wait a couple of years before they opt out. But it will happen, since it's likely that the tax will rise a lot more slowly than corporate health-care costs, especially since they'll be lobbying Washington to keep the tax under control in the righteous name of job creation.
The best solution is to move to a let-freedom-ring regime of high deductibles, no community rating, no standard benefits, and cross-state shopping for bargains (another market-based reform that's strictly taboo in the bills). I'll propose my own solution in another piece soon on Fortune.com. For now, we suffer with a flawed health-care system, but we still have our Five Freedoms. Call them the Five Endangered Freedoms.
Shawn Tully's right-wing boilerplate is irrelevant to this article. Delete it.
According to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency (July 20), the Kolech Religious Women's Forum conference in Jerusalem last week declared that the Hebrew title for an ordained female rabbi should be rabba. How prosaic! I have a much better suggestion, which endows this milestone with its appropriate heft. The Hebrew letter bet (the letter "b") is the first letter of the first word of the first chapter of the first book of the Torah, Bereshit. It is, of course, about beginnings -- the creation of something brand-new. Many midrashim comment on this, and on the significance of the bet. So why not take this "b" and affix it to the word rabbi, forming the neologism "brabbi"? It's a perfect fit! Moreover, when considered against the backdrop of the overwhelmingly patriarchal and, indeed, androcentric nature of rabbinic/Orthodox Judaism, can one even remotely conceive of a more pointed, symbolic representation of an individual's commitment to nourish, support, shape and uplift the system? For further research, naturally enough, the place to start is the Torah, in the portion called Titzaveh (Exodus: 28:20-30:10).
Mt Tully's argument becaome more relevant when the Torah is used to endorse promiscuity. Once the "progressives" have their way, well go back to early 1980s SF and NYC, only to meet up with an epidemic of HIV that is resistant to everything
Nimrod,
your silly comment lives up to your name!
In the article "Lets talk about sex" a slur term "queer" liberation was used. How would it sound if a non-Jewish news letter were using slur terms such as "kike" liberation? I am shocked that the Forward would allow such a bigot word as "queer" would be allowed to be printed in their newsletter. Next thing they might allow is "nigger" and "speck." Jews of all people should not use such slur terms as Jews to this day are still hated and called by many slur names. Lets end the hatred of other minorities and show love and understanding for all people if Jews are ever going to be accepted by everyone.
hi
i ma intrested in sex stores plese send stores and movies