Erotic Conflicts in the Jewish Tradition

Since the Bible and Talmud, the Jewish tradition has advocated a full sexual life for all men and women; celibacy has no valued place in the tradition, as it does in Christianity. Nevertheless, under the influence of Greco-Roman philosophy, the rabbinic tradition was not immune to the attractions of sexual asceticism. In the Middle Ages, the Jewish mystical traditions saw human sexual activity as linked to erotic relations within the divine. This erotic theology might give an honored place to human sexuality, but it also placed a heavy burden in correct performance and thought. The tensions culminated in eighteenth-century Hasidism, a pietistic movement characterized at once by rather extreme marital asceticism and a desire for erotic unification with the divine. The ambivalences of the historical Jewish tradition undoubtedly influenced tensions within contemporary Jewish attitudes towards sexuality and, indeed, Freud himself, who pioneered the concept of ambivalence, may be considered an heir to this tradition.