Q: Is there a Jewish pro-abstinence movement?
A: Lenny Bruce once divided the world into things that are Jewish and things that are goyish. Black cherry soda, Ray Charles, and Hadassah are Jewish; Kool-Aid, the Marine Corps, and B’nai Brith are goyish. These distinctions, of course, are not exactly etched into Moses’ tablets. But they create a semiotic code that ties together Jews in New York (Jewish) and North Dakota (goyish).
Like tent revivals and faith-infused rock and roll, there is something distinctly Not Jewish about abstinence education programs, which tend to be sponsored by evangelical Christian groups like True Love Waits. These programs typically encourage teens to practice abstinence through a mixture of religious teachings and semi-scientific studies that caution against birth control measures. According to a growing number of reports, they have not been demonstrably effective in preventing teenagers from having sex. And yet, as these programs come under increasing scrutiny, the National Conference of Synagogue Youth (NCSY), the youth group affiliated with the Orthodox Union (OU), has started an abstinence campaign of its own.
That the Orthodox Union supports abstinence before marriage is hardly news. Halacha (Jewish law) and rabbinic writings prohibit not just non-marital sexual relations, but also some seemingly benign behaviors that might precipitate sex outside of marriage. Many traditional Jews are shomer negiah, which means that they refrain from physical contact with members of the opposite sex other than a spouse or close relative. They may also practice yichud, which prohibits members of the opposite sex from spending time alone together.
What’s new is the OU’s adoption of Evangelical tactics designed to promote abstinence among teenagers. NCSY recently unveiled Negiah.org , which advertises itself as “€œthe first Jewish abstinence website for teens.”€\xc2\x9d The short articles on the site, compiled by NCSY’s Rabbi Jack Abramowitz, are divided into four sections: Your Bod, Your Mind, Your Life, and Your Soul. While the articles in Your Soul concern traditional Jewish ideas about sexuality and restraint, the other sections are heavily dosed with popular psychology and statistics. In Your Life, we learn the number one reason girls should be shomer negiah: “€œwhen a man looks for a wife, he prefers a virgin.— In Your Bod, we are told that sexually active girls are three times more likely – and sexually active boys eight times more likely – than their abstinent peers to attempt suicide.
Because NCSY’s abstinence program has only been around for a few months, no studies have yet been conducted on its effectiveness. But some observers, including Orthodox Jewish leaders, are skeptical.
“€œ[The Jewish injunction to abstain] is based on our sense of morality or sensitivity, our sense of religious commitment,”€\xc2\x9d said Rabbi Marc Angel of Congregation Shearith Israel, a traditional Sephardic synagogue in New York. “€œTo try to make arguments based on statistics or other things like that, I don’t know how valuable they are – think that we should just stick to our tradition.”
Rabbi Abramowitz defends his approach on Negiah.org. “€œNot everyone who visits our site is necessarily a Torah-observant Jew and, for those who are, that approach is essentially ‘€˜preaching to the choir,'”€\xc2\x9d he writes. “Even those teens who do not consider themselves ready to be shomer negiah can benefit from being abstinent. We are presenting many sides to an issue that is important for teens, not just the religious.”
But to whom besides the choir should NCSY preach? Where is the line between educating Jews on different Jewish perspectives (‘€œJewish’€\xc2\x9d) and proselytizing a specific set of beliefs (‘€œgoyish’€\xc2\x9d)?
Rebecca Honig Friedman, who writes the popular blog Jewess (http://jewess.canonist.com), remembers that at her Modern Orthodox day school, sex education meant “€œa class on Jewish perspectives on sexuality as well as a unit on sex and birth control in health class. On the rabbi’s instructions, our teacher told us that Judaism prohibits condom use, but that it also prohibits premarital sex, so if we were going to have premarital sex anyway, we should use a condom.”
This approach contrasts starkly with Negiah.org’s: it informs a group of already-observant teenagers about sexuality and halacha, but also accepts the reality that some teenagers will engage in sex and should do so safely.
“œWhen people talk about [abstinence], they talk about it in terms of touching and not touching, but they need to see it in the context of human development,”€ says Rabbi Angel. “€People think that keeping young men and women apart in separate schools, camps, youth groups, will solve the problem, but the feelings are still there. They need to see each other as other human beings, and that requires a lot of thought.”
And what could be more Jewish than that?
