After reading the classic Cecil on today’s front page - http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a5_181.html - I was reminded of an e-mail I had received once. It was one of those “bizaare facts” e-mails.
One of the “facts” was about Guam requiring the deflowering of a bride prior to marriage.
Now, I doubt this is the case today, and a lot of the e-mail seemed a bit questionable, but could this have possibly been the custom at one time?
In any case, I’ve reproduced the e-mail below (with the usual forwarding garbage cleaned up).
It’s good to get all the kinky urban legends in one place. Actually, I wouldn’t be surprised if the Islamic ones have a grain of truth, if only because the Abrahamic religions are pretty weird when it comes to gettin down and groovy. There are actually some pretty neat sex/marriage facts that are actually true. At a Jewish wedding I went to recently, I learned that there is a time set aside for the bride and groom to be alone. “They’re supposed to be having sex!” said one of my fellow attendants. Apparently this is a well-known fact, but then there are a lot of well-known facts I’ve only just learned. Anyway, I think it’s pretty cool to actually have a formal time during the wedding set aside just for the wild thing.
Anyway, next time you get that list, I want you to add some brand new urban legends I promulgate hereby:
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In the Republic of Biafra, young brides are encouraged to watch lizards mating to learn techniques of lovemaking. A particularly adept young woman will often gain the reputation of being a ynnuf si bsorib, which translates roughly to, “She who copulates like the finest of skink damsels.”
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On the Isle of Minos, young men play a game called sehsiw eh os ro, in which they hurl the preserved genitalia of their deceased male relatives at young women they find attractive. A woman stricken by one of these dried penises is automatically married to the man who threw it. Sometimes, when a particularly attractive Minoan woman is hit, more than one man will claim that he is the one who threw the body part, in which case they will fight a duel for the right to her hand in marriage. The weapons: crystallized wolf testicles, fired out of slingshots made from donkey scrotum.
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No one is permitted to be married on the island of Diego Garcia before he or she has turned 60. Young lovers would often sail thousands of miles in open boats in order to be married. Nowadays they usually fly.
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In eastern Chile, there is a tradition that no one is allowed to be married to a human before they have been married to wooden pole for at least a year. Each marriage between humans is preceded by an elaborate ceremony finalizing the divorce between each partner and her or his wooden spouse. The divorces are often more expensive than the weddings that follow them.
I think your pronunciation was a bit off.
Instead of:
ynnuf si bsorib
I believe:
ynnuf si bsirob
Is closer to the actual spirit of the saying…
To set the record straight (at least, with respect to Orthodox Jewish Weddings)
Right after the wedding ceremony, there is a period of time where the bride and groom are isolated. The reason for this is to establish the * legal presumption * that the marriage has been consumated. Witnesses watch the couple go into seclusion to establish this legal presumption. In reality, however, there isn’t any consumating going on in there.
In most cases, the bride and groom will not have seen each other for about a week (many Orthodox Jews have this custom, but not all). In addition, in most cases, the bride and groom will have been fasting all day (certain days are exempt from this requirement). Between all this and the wedding itself, I don’t think anyone would have the energy to do it.
In reality, what usually happens (and what happened by my wedding) is:
The bride and groom grab a bite to eat
Talk, hug, kiss (reunion after not seeing each other for a while)
Give gifts. Many grooms give their new wives a nice piece of jewlery in the Yichud room.
Get themselves ready for photographs (since they couldn’t see each other before the wedding, any “together” pictures could not be taken earlier.
Zev Steinhardt
Boris B - shame on you! This site is supposed to be dedicated to eradicating ignorance. Inventing urban legends hardly furthers that goal.
Zev, while modern orthodox Jewish wedding ceremonies have the mere legal presumption in mind, I suspect that the tradition dates back to people actually consumating their wedding at that time. It is also possible, though perhaps unlikely, there are a few people who make the presumption true. Though I guess it depends on how long is reserved for the event.
P.S.
The column (including Slug Signorino’s illustration) can also be found on pages 181-183 of Cecil Adams’ book “Triumph of the Straight Dope”.
Kyberneticist, I’ve seen that e-mail before, and I see it reproduced at a lot of humor pages on the Internet. I always thought the whole thing was made up. (Couldn’t find it on snopes, http://www.snopes.com, though.)
OK, time for a little history and Jewish law lesson here. You are partly right ** Irishman **. Here’s the Straight Dope.
A Jewish marriage is done in two stages. The first is called * kiddushin *. The common English translation for this is betrothal, but it is actually more than that. After * kiddushin *, the bride is forbidden to anyone else. In addition, however, she is not fully married yet. As such, she is also forbidden to her husband. The * kiddushin * is accomplished by the groom giving the bride an object of value (always done with a plain gold ring now).
The second stage is * nissuin *. This is where the groom brings the wife into his house. This is the actual wedding.
In Talmudic times, the two stages were seperated by as much as a year. So, after the wedding, the groom and the bride would go home and that would be that.
Nowadays, the two stages are done together, before the wedding meal. Thus, after * nissuin * the groom brings the bride into his “house” (in this case, a room in the wedding hall that is rented for this purpose).
As to whether some couples actually “do it” in the yichud room, there is one more fact to be pointed out: many Orhtodox Jewish couples do not touch at all before marriage. In most cases, the first physical contact they will have with each other is in the Yichud room. (Yeah, I know you’re saying "come on, Zev, get real!!) While not everyone holds to this standard, many do. I don’t think, however, that most people look forward to their first physical contact being sex. Usually, a hug and kiss would be more appropriate.
I could not tell you for sure (hey, it’s supposed to be private!) if people do have sex in the yichud room. It would not surprise me to find that some do. However, I would think that most people don’t, considering everything I’ve posted above.
Zev Steinhardt
Thanks, Zev, for the extra info. Given what you’ve said, I agree sex probably isn’t on most people’s list at that time. Especially if they are as orthodox as you’ve said, and haven’t had any physical contact before that point.
My Muslim girlfriend read the original list, and dismissed them as
a) absurd, baseless rumors
b) mistranslations / misunderstandings
c) intentional slander
People are people…
Interesting. I am working on a sort of “medieval fantasy” novel – althought I think “historical fantasy” is a better description. Anyway, the marriage laws of this place are modelled on our own medieval world, where there were two underpinnings to (Christian) marriage: consortio, or mutual consent; and consummatio, the obvious. However, in my fictional world, I have introduced the idea of “implicit consummation”, where unless the married partners state otherwise within some time frame, consummation is presumed to have occurred. So it is interesting to me to find that this concept already exists.
Perhaps I will work the Jewish custom into their wedding ceremonies. Thanks for the information, Zev!
You’re welcome.
I certainly didn’t expect to see this thread again after so long a period of time.
Beruang,
Just out of curiosity, is there a source you can post showing that these are myths?
I don’t want you to get the wrong idea. I’ll believe you that they are myths (hell, there are plenty of baseless myths about Jews out there…), but it would be nice to have an “offical” source to quote next time I see these.
Zev Steinhardt
Well, this raises the whole issue of “burden of proof.” If someone makes a claim, particularly an unusual one, it is their responsibility to provide evidence or documentation. Most of the items in the original post refer either to laws or religious customs; thus, there ought to be a citation somewhere. Simply reading it in a widely-circulated e-mail doesn’t cut it.
Of course, taking everything my girlfriend says at face value may not cut it, either. (For you, that is. For me, I learned long ago that every word that comes from her mouth is the golden truth. It’s just easier that way.) By way of credentials, all I can say is she was born and raised a Muslim, currently studies the Q’uran, and lived three decades in Indonesia. So, if she says these activities are not part of the culture or the religion, I tend to give her the benefit of the doubt.
There’s also an issue of definition. Indonesia, to take one example, has some 17,000 island. It is conceivable that, in some corner of the archipelago, the punishment for masturbation is indeed death. But it is certainly not a wide-spread custom or the law. By way of example, there are a few towns and counties in the U.S. that are “dry” – you cannot buy or sell alcohol. Thus, the statement “In America, it is illegal to buy beer” is true, in a very strict, narrow sense, but it’s awfully misleading. This may very well be the case with some of these “customs.”
In your opinion, maybe. In my opinion, inventing urban legends which are obviously untrue serves to make people more skeptical and quicker to recognize urban legends. My guess is a good as yours.
Beruang,
I wasn’t shifting the burden of proof. I was willing to agree that the “facts” were false. I was, however, asking for more info.
Zev Steinhardt
Mr. Steinhardt -
Is “kiddushin” the state that Mary and Joseph were in when Jesus was born?
I have heard (from a Christian, not a Jew) that it would not have been considered scandalous if Mary and Joseph had had sex, even though they were not living together. What I did not understand was why Joseph and Mary would have travelled together to Bethlehem if they were not fully married yet.
I believe the Greek word that Luke used in his gospel corresponded more to what modern Americans think of as ‘engagement’ - i.e. a commitment to marriage, but not entitling the couple to sexual relations. I don’t believe there is a Greek word that would correspond to ‘kiddushin’.
Thanks in advance for any light you can shed.
Zev –
Please accept my apologies. I did not mean to cast aspersions. But this is a touchy subject, as you can well understand, and my defensiveness got the better of me.
However, we are now faced with the proposition of proving a negative. Always a difficult thing to do. My girlfriend and I went through her annotated and indexed translation of the Qu’ran (of course, the only legitimate Qu’ran is in Arabic), and could find nothing about sex with sheep or bricks on genitals. We did not, however, read the Book cover to cover. Short of memorizing the text, I suppose there’s no way ascertain that these practices are never mentioned.
Of course, the Qu’ran is not the only book in Islam. There are other writings of the Prophet (pbuh), the name of which I forget, and which I did not have access to over the weekend. We cannot therefore definitively eliminate the possibility that these practices are alluded to there.
Finally, there is the matter of interpretation. We all know that, in every religion, different sects, cults, denominations, etc. will interpret the same passages differently. We must allow for the possibility that these practices could be (or could have been) observed in some limited respect.
Far from completely satifying, I know. My solution is to smile sweetly (something which, unfortunately, does not come across well in cybertext) and say “Really? Can you tell me where you get that from? Because I have several friend who are practising Muslims, and they’ve never heard of these practices. They are curious to know their source.”
Asking for facts and documentation – a sure way to kill an urban legend, and lose a lot of friends in the prcoess. 
First of all, please feel free to call me Zev. 
Secondly, I am not a Christian scholar (heck, I’m not even a Christian) and I cannot then tell you what state Joseph and Mary were in at any particular time.
What I can tell you is that if Joseph and Mary had done kiddushin, she would have been forbidden to Joseph, and to any other man. Had any other man cohabited with her, it would have been considered adultery (just as if she were fully married).
As for the Gospels and Greek, I am not a scholar in either field. Traditionally, the word ‘engagement’ or ‘betrothal’ is used in translations from the original Hebrew, but neither word really conveys the actual status of the couple accurately.
Zev Steinhardt
That’s OK. Happens to us all.
**
Agreed 100%. I wasn’t, however, asking for proof, just for a source of further information. I am perfectly willing to accept the matter as untrue on your say so (as you have more knowledge of the subject than I).
**
This is fine. I thank you for the research. There is an FAQ posted in the soc.culture.jewish usenet newsgroup, which addresses many of the questions that people ask about Jews and their culture, practices, etc., as well as debunking some of the more common myths. Is there a similar resource about Islam on the net?
Zev Steinhardt
Speaking of bizaare muslim laws, facts, and documentation.
http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/261/nation/Islamic_law_sows_division_in_Nigeria+.shtml
How the heck did the Sharia (which already has some pretty disturbing bits of intollerance in it) add banning women getting taxi rides? (somewhere around the middle of the article)
Not being a Muslim or knowing the Sharia, I can only speculate.
I imagine it is an extrapolation of injunctions about keeping women separate from men. There are all sorts of laws requiring women to wearing certain clothing, not to do certain activities, etc. There are many injunctions about keeping women and men apart. I suspect this one had something to do with the fact the rides were women on motorcycles with men. That would be somehow violating the taboo - unmarried women in the same vehicle with an unrelated male? Having to sit behind and hold onto said male?
Keep in mind that Orthodox Judaism has similar injunctions about keeping men and women apart. Maybe not to the same extreme.