Setting aside the fact that you got this story second-hand, here’s one possible spin on it:
That broker quoted her as saying that “she was stretching the definition even to go to bed with him before they were married.” It’s quite possible that what she WANTED to say was that “she was stretching the definition even to go to bed with a non-Jew before they were married.”, but she refrained from saying that for political correctness or some other reason. Yet another possibility is that she really did phrase it in those terms, but the version you got was sanitized of that.
Not really. Many rabbis have no problems with tattoos or are neutral towards them. There’s still a resistance against them but lots of observant Jews have ink.
Chapter 4 is the big build up before the marriage is consummated:
Specifically I was referring to 4:16. The preceding verses in Chapter 4 help put the passage in context.
4:16:
The Shulamite
Awake, O north wind,
And come, O south!
Blow upon my garden,
That its spices may flow out.
Let my beloved come to his garden
And eat its pleasant fruits
Girls say all kinds of things to get or get out of doing what they want. Your “friend” should just hang it up. The women have all the power as far as sex goes in a relationship. And don’t let anyone, even a modern orthodox Jewish girl, tell you otherwise.
Omar Little, I have absolutely no idea what this response is doing in this thread or for that matter in General Questions at all. Since I have previously instructed you to stick to factual responses in this forum, this is an official warning for failure to follow moderator instructions.
“ Even those who have read the major English translation of the “Kamasutra” have not fully appreciated the book because that translation – how can I put this delicately? Well, it sucks. It dates from 1883 and was published just once in the U.S., 40 years ago in 1962. Richard Burton, the British army officer responsible for it, was the editor from hell. He altered the text considerably to ** shoehorn it into Victorian views about sexuality, ** notably the then popular notions that only men experience sexual desire and pleasure, and that women are nothing more than the passive recipients of men’s lust.”
Don’t blame you Chronos, but your understanding is what a Victorian guy would like you to understand.
As for Buddhism; Marriage is a secular part of life. The Buddhists monks or temple don’t get Involved in marriages - it has nothing to do with religion.
Tibetans (Buddhists) famously used to be polyandrists and polygamists.
I grew up at a place about 150 miles from Khajuraho. Built around 1000 AD, there were originally 85 temples in an area about 8 sq miles. Only about 25 survive. Many temples and definitely temples dedicated to sex were destroyed when the Muslims invaded India but temples like Khajuraho and Ajanta survived because they were hidden in the forests. The sculptors per legend had teams trying out the sexual positions to aid in their art work and many of the positions are from the Kamasutra.
After the Muslims, when the British ruled India, they came with their own western “morality”. For example Transgenders who had enjoyed their own position in society were declared illegal by the British 1533 Buggery Act which criminalized non-procreative sexualities. It was last year; I think when the Supreme Court of India legalized them and all government forms has M/F/T for sex.
Well, so do the Abrahamic religions, Christianity, for that matter. It’s a fairly basic mistake to assume that anything which is mentioned in the “holy texts” is implicitly approved by them.
Orthodox Rabbis? And in particular, those not affiliated with the movement that calls itself “Open Orthodox” which diverges significantly from traditional Orthodox belief and practice and is more like the Conservative movement?
Probably not, I think that’s still a bridge that won’t be crossed. But certainly there are some Conservative and many Reform Jewish rabbis who are OK with, or at least neutral to, tattoos.
Sex is naturally related to fertility, and e.g. ritual sex (unrelated to marriage) is, at the least, a concept in some religions. Not that it necessarily indicates an endorsement of random sex between random strangers.
I have no doubt that that’s true, but the views of those Rabbis aren’t really germane to this thread, which asks specifically regarding someone purporting to be Modern Orthodox.
He could convert. It’s not encouraged and it’s not easy, but it has been done.
Regardless of who the father is, any child of hers would be born Jewish. Membership in the tribe is matrilineal.
But yeah, it’s not at all encouraged and traditionally if a Jew marries out of the faith they’re ostracized - when my parents married my dad’s family held a funeral for him and some of them never spoke to any of us, ever. (Others sat shiva yet still associated with us - people are complicated)
Jews are not saints. A lot of them do things against the rules because they’re humans.
Also, whether tattoos are allowed or not is debatable. They certainly are frowned on by most older Jews. Heck, in my father’s family women never pierced their ears (all of grandma’s extensive earring collection were clip-ons) based on the same rationale as no tattoos. Other Orthodox Jews are just fine with pierced ears.
Debatable only in the sense that one might debate whether any of the Torah’s laws are binding or not. The prohibition against tattoos is explicit in Leviticus 19:28.
Darn it, I can’t find it now, but threesomes were permitted in the Torah as long as it was a man, and two of his legal wives-- AND, the wives were not sisters. In fact, that’s actually the point of the verse, that if a man wants to have sex with two of his wives at the same time, they cannot be sisters.
In regard to tattoos, this may be a UL, but I have been told a couple of times that the whole kerfuffle began with a single cemetery that refused to bury Jews with tattoos, because at the time, the ink pretty much invariably contained iron oxide, and that violated the rule for using preservatives or putting metals in a casket.
IF that’s true, it sounds to me that there was someone with a personal beef with tattoos, who went looking for a reason to exclude people with them.
I have no idea whether most tattoo ink still contains iron oxide now, but it really did at one time.
It looks to me like Leviticus 19:28 prohibits cutting or marking oneself for the dead. So a tattoo memorializing a lost loved one (which I’ve seen a fair amount among gentiles) would be forbidden, but that law wouldn’t apply for a tattoo for other reasons (which I’ve seen even more of).