After 5000 years of persecution, you’d think we’d be sick of it: name-calling, whips and chains, submitting to dominance. We Jews ought to be pretty over that whole scene by now. And we are—until it comes to the bedroom door. Most sex experts estimate that ten to fifteen percent of sexually active adults regularly go in for kinky sex—and much as our rabbis might prefer to keep it under wraps, the Tribe fits right into that kink-inclined population. Jews who like it a little different have been going public lately, coming clean about their interest in the intertwined cultures of sadomasochism, bondage, and leather play. Many express this by joining fetish groups: some general interest, some drawn together precisely because of a shared affinity for knishes and kreplach. At this November’s Fetish Fair Fleamarket, an annual event in Boston that brings together BDSM leaders, practitioners, and the just plain curious, one of the most popular discussion sessions was “Birds of a Feather”—a space for Jewish conference participants to discuss pressing issues like how to reconcile traditional Jewish views of sexual behavior with an active BDSM lifestyle.
The BDSM (that’s bondage-domination-sado-masochism, a general catchall that includes what it says, plus consensual sexual slavery, foot fetishism, and pretty much anything that incorporates black leather) community is the fetish world’s crossover act. While still deviant, most people have heard of it, and for the most part we’ve come to accept it as a “mainstream” fetish—its forays into popular culture range from pointy-toed stilettos to most of Madonna’s pre-Kabbalah music videos. Even the Holy Land has gotten in on the (tough) love: down the beach from Tel Aviv, the city of Yaffo is now home to Dungeon, a BDSM-themed eatery where the décor is torture-chamber chic, patrons are shackled to their seats, and even the most well-intentioned complaint about the food merits swift and merciless punishment—from your standard whipping to being locked in a cage suspended from the ceiling.
Mainstream or not, fetishistic sexual practices can easily be at odds with Jewish sexual dictates. Jews have an elaborate code of rules and regulations letting us know what’s kosher in the physical intimacy department—in fact, pretty much the entirety of basic sexual behavior is dealt with in Torah passages and a few R-rated midrashim. Little is said about bondage and role-playing, though, so the question remains of whether those of the Hebraic persuasion have some reconciling to do when it comes to black leather in the bedroom.
“As long as it’s safe, sane, and consensual, there’s no problem, Jewish or otherwise,” says Madame Alexia, a professional dominatrix in Chicago—who just so happens to be Bat Mizvahed and have a last name ending in “berg.” Alexia takes a green light from the fact that that nearly half her clients are Jewish as well, and is pleased to note that they range from wholly unobservant to “full-on guys with beards and black hats” whose presence in her dungeon confirms to her that she’s not doing anything halachically wrong.
This confirmation comes virtually in absence of an official ruling. There’s nothing in Jewish religious texts that either condemns or condones sadomasochistic behavior, and when it comes to professional opinion, it’s not easy to get a straight answer. A main reason for this is that most rabbis clam up when bondage enters the conversation: we approached three potential halachic advisors, but two never returned our calls. A third called back, only to flat-out refuse to speak to us, calling the question “offensive to [his] position.”
So we turned to Askarabbi.com, a web site that allows visitors to posit awkward questions anonymously, and we wound up with conflicting opinions. In response to one woman’s question about the propriety of fulfilling her husband’s domination fantasies, the site’s Rabbi David Roller assured her that “religiously there is no prohibition, as long as there is no force involved.” While physical force is often an integral part of BDSM, it appears that Rabbi Roller was referring to a lack of consent, which puts his philosophy in accord with Madame Alexia’s: as long as both partners want to be involved in a dominant/submissive relationship, she says, they render moot the more questionable implications of submission. But Rabbi Judy Freeman Epstein, also of Askarabbi.com, warned us, “I think this is very grey territory.” Contradicting Roller and Alexia, Freeman Epstein said that just because something is consensual doesn’t make it OK: “to humiliate another human being or degrade the equality of a marriage,” she said, “would be frowned upon by Jewish law.”
Either way, most Jewish BDSM adherents don’t mind interpreting halachah to their advantage: Vivienne Kramer, an observant Jew and a fixture on the Northeast fetish scene—she’s chair of the New England Leather Alliance and president of the National Coalition for Sexual Freedom—has no problem reconciling her religion with her sexual practices. “I probably wouldn’t play [engage in BDSM] on a Friday night,” she says, merging the two practices into her own version of religious observance. Madame Alexia, a product of 12 years of Hebrew school and a Jewish Studies minor at a state university, views the textual omission as a go-ahead: “my understanding is that the Torah forbids certain actions—sex outside of marriage, rape, and things like that,” she says. “Even if you interpret it in a modern context, there’s no mention of restraint, domination and submission, or anything like that being taboo.”
Alexia believes that BDSM is not only A-OK in the Jewish tradition—it’s consistent with it. She points out the bondage-like imagery of laying t’fillin and the self-flagellation that accompanies the Yom Kippur service—both of which, to her, contain echoes of sadomasochistic behavior. And while contemporary religious leaders often encourage Jews to view their relationship with God in a loving, parental context, Alexia notes that, “In the Torah, no one tries to pretend that they’re not terrified of God. There’s this constant threat of punishment and wrath, but the Israelites don’t mind—it’s like that’s what they love about God.”
According to Dr. Ken Stone, Associate Professor of the Hebrew Bible at the Chicago Theological Seminary, Alexia and her clients are in some pretty good company. In a recent paper, Dr. Stone argues that there’s quite a bit of sadomasochism in the Holy Books—particularly in Jeremiah, where the prophet describes his relationship to God in terms that resemble a dominant/submissive sexual dynamic: “O Lord, you have enticed me, and I was enticed; you have overpowered me, and you have prevailed.” While most scholars interpret the sexual language and submissive tone as a symbolic “rape” of Jeremiah, Dr. Stone argues that the worshipful attitude Jeremiah takes towards God is more in line with a voluntary sexual submissive—someone who derived sexual or spiritual pleasure from the domination imposed on him by God.
If Stone is right, and Jeremiah did enjoy being dominated, well, that doesn’t surprise Vivienne Kramer. To her mind, Jews—as a result of a millennia-old tradition that centers on questioning and challenging limits—would be particularly attracted to sexual kinks. “I think a Jewish person would be drawn to this community—it’s one of resisting being put into a societal or sexual box. If you start with the premise that Jews are raised to question and to explore—then yes, this community
would be a draw,” she says.
Whether it really is a hereditary inquisitiveness that leads Jews to bondage is up for grabs. A clichéd explanation of this kind of fetish might trace it back to overbearing mothers, sexual guilt, and other hallmarks of the stereotypical Jewish childhood. Take, for example, British comic Ivor Dembina. Describing himself as “Comedian, Jew, and Sadomasochist to the Stars,” Dembina goes public with his fetish in a stand-up piece called “SadoJudaism”—a 60-minute disquisition on his BDSM fixation, focusing on its origins in an oedipal childhood marked by corporal punishment from his stereotypical Jewish mother (as he says on his web site: “I wanted great sex with the woman I love. Unfortunately, she was married to my father”).
But in contrast to the stereotype, most Jewish fetishists are pretty open about their inclinations. In a community like the BDSM scene, where permutations of identity—sexual preference, fetishes, preferred roles—are nearly infinite, public self-identification is an expected part of life. Kramer herself never hides her religious identity in the course of a day’s kink: “I always identify as a bisexual Jewish feminist who’s into SM,” she says. And Kramer notes that at conferences, meetings, and other fetish-related activities, she often finds herself in the company of quite a few other Jews. “Any time you have a large group of individuals, the Jews are going to gravitate to each other,” she points out. And she doesn’t think it’s an accident that among BDSM adherents, the Jewish folks often are among the most vocal and likely to take charge. She herself is a leader in the crusade to bring about popular acceptance of BDSM, and attributes her active role in part to her strong sense of religious identity: “I think Jews have a particular sense of duty to be activists and to take an active role in their lives …and I see a lot of Jews in the activist community of this group,” says Kramer.
Whether they’re activists, bystanders, or in it for the free whippings, kinky Jews across the nation are coming together, as it were, over a common love for smacking each other around. Much like the gathering at the Fetish Fair Fleamarket, where topics ranged from the relatively tame (dealing with mixed-faith relationships) to the highly irregular (Judaism’s views on sexual slavery), Jewish SM adherents don’t seem to pay much attention to the Torah’s take on their activities. But because of—or maybe in spite of—halachic dictates, they remain Jewish to the core. As Ivor Dembina says, “I enjoy being beaten—just not in business.”
