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Oral Sex at the Synagogue
Uncomfortable or not, it is time for clergy to
speak out about how God wants our kids to use their
bodies
Last Sunday afternoon I had a nice chat with
sixth-grade children and their parents about oral
sex. Let me assure you that when I studied to be a
rabbi, oral sex was not an elective in my
seminary’s curriculum, but now it seems to me
of much greater importance than teaching these kids
how to bless a challah bread.
I write this week, not only to both of my
dedicated readers, but also to the thousands of
clergymen and clergywomen who have avoided teaching
their congregants and the children of their
congregants about sexual promiscuity—and I
know why. First of all, it is just unbelievably
embarrassing to talk about this stuff. I am a
fearless public speaker but my palms were sweating
all through the lecture last Sunday. In the
follow-up to the lecture, the main question the
kids had was, “Do you really have
sex?”
There is another obstacle to speaking about
things sexual in a house of worship, and that is
the ancient and nearly universal religious
embarrassment about talking about the urges of the
body. Religion simply prefers things soulful to
things corporal. This is derived from
Aristotle’s preference of form over matter and
therefore we are regularly addressed from the
pulpit as creatures who are but little lower than
the angels, when in fact we are also like my
guide-dog-in-training who, as I write these words,
is happily humping my leg. Religious leaders today
must remember that we are embodied souls, and those
bodies are now being seduced by an unprecedented
avalanche of sex carried by TV, movies, video
games, music, magazines and beer ads. The
avalanche’s roar carries a single message:
love and sex do not have to be connected in any way
at all. Sex can be just hooking up, this message
says, and to avoid pregnancy (obviously true) and
to avoid AIDS and STDS (utterly false) oral sex is
seen by our kids as nothing more than an
after-school snack. Many kids now consider it as
nothing more than a social convention, a mark of
popularity, a sign of sexual liberation and a
pleasant way to pass the time in the back of the
bus on the way to school.
Houses of worship have not been quite as blind
to the threat of drug, alcohol and cigarette abuse
because those health dangers are obvious and
speaking about them does not cause your palms to
sweat. However, it is time for us clergy folk to
speak out in a sensitive, not hysterical,
non-judgemental, but loving and firm way about how
God wants our kids to use their bodies.
What is needed now is a common and loving
message to our kids that they don’t have to
live this way. That message, grounded in our faith
and values and love for our children can and must
stretch from liberal to evangelical pulpits. It can
be a message offered not imposed, reasoned not
dictated and lovingly shared, not bombastically
ordered. Even though the religious leaders of
America are theologically and politically divided
on a host of topics, there ought to be, there must
be, universal agreement that the national upsurge
of oral sex between minors who do not love each
other is not what God wants for them, even if, in a
moment of boredom or passion, it is what they want
for themselves. Even if such sexual behavior were
not illegal or physically harmful or immoral, which
it is, it would be profane. If the religious
leaders of our country cannot all bring themselves
to speak about this intimate and embarrassing but
central moral issue in our culture now, then
frankly it does not matter much if we give great
movie reviews or political diatribes in our next
sermon. It does not matter if our kids perfectly
know the words to prayers and hymns but have no
idea how to preserve their sexual virtue until a
time when they are no longer children and when they
no longer ride the bus, prowl the malls and play
Grand Theft Auto.
I asked the girls I teach and love last Sunday,
“When you offer oral sex to a boy who does not
love you and may not even like you and who will
most probably destroy your reputation by telling
his friends what you will do, are you proud of
yourself? Do you think you are making your parents
proud of you? Do you think this is what God wants
you to do with your body? You are better than that.
You are much better than that.”
I asked the boys I teach and love last Sunday,
“When you ask or beg or plead or coerce or
manipulate a young girl who likes you and just
wants to be popular to go down on you, are you
proud of doing that to her? Do you think you are
making your parents proud of you? Do you think this
is what God wants you to do with your body? You are
better than that. You are much better than
that.”
Then I surrendered to my need to explain that
this was not just me talking, but our faith talking
and so I quoted the Talmud to them: “Be very
careful if you make a woman cry, because God counts
her tears. The woman came out of a man’s rib:
Not from his feet to be walked on. Not from his
head to be superior, but from the side to be equal.
Under the arm to be protected, and next to the
heart to be loved.”
And then I took a deep breath and wiped the
sweat off my palms and watched their faces as they
thought about something deeply important and
difficult. Maybe I changed nothing. I think I
started some important conversations at home, and
all this happened in my synagogue. Last Sunday I
know I did my job, and I did it without teaching
anybody how to bless a challah.
Source: By Marc Gellman, Nov. 9,
2005 www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9979345/site/newsweek/from/RL.1
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