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May 15, 2009
Some kosher secrets of sex
Rabbi recommends couples enliven eroticism within marriages.
DAVE GORDON
Even though sex has permeated television, magazines, sports and movies, best-selling author Rabbi Shmuley Boteach claims that sex for most American couples is missing – in the bedroom. The facts, he said, appear to back up his claim, given recent CNN and New York Times reports that seem to confirm one-third of all marriages is completely platonic. About 40 million of them, if you're counting.
"One of the reasons I wrote this book is from all of the letters I've received from women who tell me what it's like to lie next to their husbands each night and he won't even touch them. How painful is that form of rejection?" he said.
Boteach is no stranger to giving advice or counselling on relationships. He is the author of 19 books, most notably, Kosher Sex, Kosher Adultery, The Private Adam and Why Can't I Fall in Love?
In his latest book, Kosher Sutra: 8 Sacred Secrets for Reigniting Desire and Restoring Passion for Life, Boteach offers to fix the problem, by suggesting that people enliven the erotic, recreating the mystery of sex and reawakening desire.
"This book is all about lust and desire," he told the Jewish Independent. "How do we create desire in the mind?" He said that there are eight mental conditions that lead to desire.
"The first is the sinful, the forbidden. Notice that one of the most written-about themes in literature is the adulterous wife who does things she's not supposed to: Anna Karenina, Madame Bovary, Tess of the D'Urbervilles, Lady Chatterley's Lover. We don't have very erotic novels about the wife who does all of the right things. How do we bring sinfulness into marriage? That's one of the things that this book deals with."
Even though these "secrets" are out, he believes there has been a long-term, yet subtle, societal shift in the way that people (especially men) see the opposite sex.
"You'll notice you go to the beach and you see women walking around in bikinis. It's sexy, but not erotic. The proof? Most men fall asleep at the beach. But if you peer into a woman's bedroom accidentally and she's got the blinds open and you see her walking around in the same amount of clothing as she did in the beach, but this time it's in her undergarments, you don't think of throwing a Frisbee or falling asleep. It's now erotic. Why? Because you're seeing something you're not supposed to see. Bringing that element of forbidden-ness is essential."
Another component to reigniting passion, according to Boteach, is to understand and harness the thrill we find in our pastimes, to find that which arouses us, and apply it to sex.
"In Canada, you watch hockey and, in America, we watch baseball and football. Isn't it amazing that sports gives us an erotic thrill, but our wives don't? Eroticism isn't just a sexual idea," he said. "It's a general idea. For me, it's defined as an electric curiosity for life. It's a desire to peel back the external layers of existence. To get really deep into life, to feel as if life is magnetized; it draws you and pulls you. You've got this insatiable desire to know."
Indeed, Boteach is quick to point out that it's not necessarily what you know, or how much you know, about sex, but instead how best to leverage one's passions.
"My argument in the Kosher Sutra is: what's the point of knowing 10 trillion positions but it's all worthless if you don't have the desire to implement them ... the first step is you must have lust in your relationship. Notice that the Tenth Commandment is that you shall not lust after your neighbor's wife. By implication, you sure as heck should be lusting after your own wife."
Dave Gordon is a freelance writer in Toronto. His website is DaveGordonWrites.com.
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