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Summary
Summary
Contradictory stereotypes about Jewish sexuality pervade modern culture, from Lenny Bruce's hip eroticism to Woody Allen's little man with the big libido (and even bigger sexual neurosis). Does Judaism in fact liberate or repress sexual desire? David Biale does much more than answer that question as he traces Judaism's evolving position on sexuality, from the Bible and Talmud to Zionism up through American attitudes today. What he finds is a persistent conflict between asceticism and gratification, between procreation and pleasure.
From the period of the Talmud onward, Biale says, Jewish culture continually struggled with sexual abstinence, attempting to incorporate the virtues of celibacy, as it absorbed them from Greco-Roman and Christian cultures, within a theology of procreation. He explores both the canonical writings of male authorities and the alternative voices of women, drawing from a fascinating range of sources that includes the Book of Ruth, Yiddish literature, the memoirs of the founders of Zionism, and the films of Woody Allen.
Biale's historical reconstruction of Jewish sexuality sees the present through the past and the past through the present. He discovers an erotic tradition that is not dogmatic, but a record of real people struggling with questions that have challenged every human culture, and that have relevance for the dilemmas of both Jews and non-Jews today.
This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1997.
Contradictory stereotypes about Jewish sexuality pervade modern culture, from Lenny Bruce's hip eroticism to Woody Allen's little man with the big libido (and even bigger sexual neurosis). Does Judaism in fact liberate or repress sexual desire? David Bial
Author Notes
David Biale is the Emmanuel Ringelblum Professor of Jewish History at the University of California, Davis. He lives in Berkeley, California.
Reviews (2)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Critiquing a body of texts that runs a wide gamut from the Bible to Philip Roth's Portnoy's Complaint , this fine, authoritative history of Jewish sexuality may well become a standard reference. Biale ( Power and Powerlessness in Jewish History ) explicates a deeply ambivalent tradition: the Bible subordinates erotic desire to fertility; the Talmudic rabbis affirmed marital sexuality and procreation yet also preached sexual self-restraint and flirted with celibacy. In medieval times, the Ashkenazic Northern European elite held a relatively positive view of sexuality, the Jewish philosophers of the Mediterranean sought to separate procreation from desire, and the mystics pursued an erotic relationship with God. The Hasidism of the 18th-century was a widespread movement of sexual asceticism, the 19th-century proponents of the Jewish Enlightenment tried to neutralize sexuality within a bourgeois family framework, and early 20th-century Zionists spouted a theory of erotic liberation but sublimated sexual desire in the service of the Jewish nation. Discussing sexual stereotypes in American Jewish culture, Biale concludes that ``erotic liberation remains the unfinished business of contemporary Jewish culture.'' (Sept.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Library Journal Review
This engaging history of Jewish sexuality from biblical times to the modern era attempts to answer this question: Is the nature of Judaism and the Jewish tradition ascetic and repressive or sensual and liberatory? Biale ( Power and Powerlessness in Jewish History , Schocken, 1986) shows that Jewish sexuality certainly is not monolithic in nature but exhibits both poles--that of asceticism and gratification--which have been in conflict with each other through the ages. The author covers the entire spectrum from the biblical period, the Talmudic era, the Rabbinic writings, the medieval philosophers, Hasidim, and the modern enlightenment to contemporary American Jewish culture exemplified by Philip Roth's notorious novel Portnoy's Complaint (1969). This volume, scholarly yet accessible to general readers, should remain a basic treatment of an intriguing subject for some time.-- Robert A. Silver, Shaker Heights P.L., Ohio (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.