'Jewbilation' Turns to Sexuality

What Biblical pair do some experts consider gay? What are the top Jewish online dating sites? What Biblical figure’s name has became associated with masturbation?

All these questions were answered at “Kosher Sex: The Game Show,” an event held yesterday evening as part of “Jewbilation,” a week-long celebration of Jewish life on campus sponsored by Harvard Hillel.

Rabbi Ethan Linden, the rabbinic advisor for Hillel’s Student Conservative Minyan, hosted the event, which featured a Jeopardy-style game show and a close reading of a Torah passage.

“The literature on sexuality in Jewish law is vast,” said Linden. “It has something to say about all aspects of life.”

The turnout of about a dozen people failed to rival past “Jewbilation” events, like a discussion with Institute of Politics Fellow Tony Leon, according to an e-mailed statement from Danielle L. Charlap ’09, the president of Hillel’s steering committee.

“It was a shame that it was not more widely attended,” said audience member Ilan J. Caplan ’10. “The topics touched on are very important.”

The trivia game addressed a variety of Jewish idiosyncrasies, from famous Jewish director Woody Allen’s views on sex­ to the need to immerse oneself in the mikvah, a purifying bath, after touching a lizard.

“That’s not a euphemism—actually a lizard,” Linden said.

Game-show questions were divided into three categories: “Distance Learning,” “Different Strokes for Different Folks,” and “I ‘Know’ You, Biblical relations.”

The game revealed that some modern scholars consider the relationship between David, a king of Israel, and Jonathan, the son of David’s predecessor Saul, to have been homoerotic.

Another question asked contestants to name two popular Jewish dating Web sites. Jdate.com and Frumster.com—from the Yiddish word “frum,” meaning religiously observant—were acceptable answers.

Topics also focused on more contemporary aspects of Jewish sex law, such as the Conservative movement’s 2006 decision to allow openly gay rabbis and Jewish rulings on birth control. Because they prevent men from spreading their seed, condoms are prohibited, while birth control pills are generally considered acceptable, Linden said.

The second part of the event centered on a discussion of Genesis 38:1-11, a Biblical passage used by some Christian and Jewish scholars to justify religious prohibitions on masturbation and other non-procreative sexual activities. The passage tells the story of the character Onan, who engages in “coitus interruptus” and is killed by

God as a punishment.