Sex-Ed Lockdown

By Josh Tapper April 20, 2010

Remember your old Hebrew school curriculum: Jewish ethics, Jewish history, Jewish laws and customs, Talmud Studies, Jewish sex? …Jewish sex? Right, there was no Jewish sex.

But this past weekend, Houston-area high schoolers had the rare opportunity to talk shop — that is, talk sex — from a Jewish perspective. The overnight retreat, “There’s Only 1U,” which was billed as “the sexuality and Jewish crash course,” was created by Rabbi Amy Weiss as a way of applying Jewish values to basic sex education.

Held at the Houston Hillel, the event was lock-in style – guys on one floor, girls on another – and included off-beat educational tools, like a “South Park” sex-ed episode, to get the conversation flowing.

Jewish mothers have that “my kid doesn’t do that”-type of attitude, Weiss, the executive director of the Initiative for Jewish Women told Houston area blog Believe It Or Not, but such is not the case according to an Atlantic Monthly article, which cited a trend of kids having oral sex at bar mitzvahs.

Now that’s disturbing.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse..

Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.

— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO