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Is the mystique and the romance, the music and the moonlight,
just nature’s way of hoodwinking males and females to reproduce?
What lies behind the attraction between the sexes? Sexuality
is a subject about which no one is neutral. Everyone has a
sexual nature, everyone has a need for sexuality, everyone
has a sexual personality that has been formed by home, schooling,
the trial and error of life experience, and whatever they
pick up along the way from the subtle and not-so-subtle influences
of the society in which they live.
In seeking to make sense of our sexuality we must look to
its origins. Where does our sexuality come from? I would like
to look at two approaches to that question. One is the scientific
approach and then we’ll contrast it with the Torah approach,
specifically, the Kabbalistic-Chassidic perspective.
There are numerous secular-scientific theories of sexuality.
From the perspective of the biological or evolutionary theory
for example, our sexuality derives from the fact that the
perpetuation of the species is achieved through a sexual relationship
between a male and a female. The male will therefore search
for the female that is most fertile, and that will bear the
healthiest offspring; and the female will search for a male
that provides the healthiest seed, that is the most virile
and that will protect the young.
What this theory essentially says is that behind the mystique
and the beauty, the romance and the sensuality in which human
sexuality comes enveloped—behind it all really lies a primal
force: the need to exist, and to perpetuate that existence.
Modern man is not prepared to think of him or herself merely
as production machines to bear children, so in order to entice
two people into a union, evolution and biology have conspired
to imbue the sexual act not only with pleasure but also with
a mystique that compels us along the romantic journey.
The accouterments of human sexuality—the romance, the flowers,
the music, the moonlight—are really just nature's way of getting
two people together. Two human beings courting each other
are essentially the same as two bees courting each other.
One bee will buzz a certain way or give off a certain scent,
but what it comes down to is that these are tactics to get
them together to mate and bear offspring. Nature is ruthless.
Nature must prevail. So nature finds the means to get a male
and a female to mate.
This, basically, is the scientific approach to human sexuality.
Let us now contrast this with the Torah's approach.
The Torah's conception of human sexuality is expressed in
the opening chapters of Genesis, and states that sexual attraction
between human beings is driven by a completely different force:
their search for their divine image, for their quintessential
self.
The Torah describes man as originally having been created
as a ‘two-sided’ being: "Male and female He created them…
and He called their name: man." G-d then split this two-sided
creature into two, and ever since, the divided halves of the
divine image seek and yearn for each other. They're not half
individuals; man is a full-fledged personality and woman is
a full-fledged personality. But there are elements in their
transcendental persona, in their completeness, that remain
incomplete if they don't find each other. There's something
missing in each of them; they were once part of a greater
whole.
To put it in more mystical terms: they're really searching
to become one with God. The human race is in essence one entity,
a male-female singularity. When man and woman come together
and unite in a marital union, they recreate the divine image
in which they were both formed as one.
The teachings of Kabbalah take this a step further. According
to the Kabbalah, these are two forms of energy that, in the
most abstract form, are referred to as an internal energy
and a projective energy. Feminine energy and masculine energy
exists in each man and in each woman, and in every part of
nature. Even Godliness is sometimes described in the feminine
and sometimes in the masculine.
Contrary to the common perception of the ‘patriarchal’ G-d
of the Bible, many of the divine attributes are feminine,
such as the Shechinah, which is the feminine dimension
of Godliness.
So what we have here is a split of two energies, and a yearning
and inclination to become one whole. The human race was created
in the divine image, but that human race is half male and
half female, and through their union they become that larger
whole, that divine image that searches for union with G-d,
that seeks a higher reality.
This is the soul of sexual attraction. This attraction, which
manifests itself in many physical sensations, from a faster
heartbeat to a physical attraction to another person, is essentially
the attraction of male to female and female to male to become
a complete, divine whole, connecting to their source in G-d.
Not that they've ever been completely disconnected; but consciously,
people can go off on their own individual narcissistic, even
selfish, path. And here, there's a voice in you saying: I
yearn for something greater. When a man is physically attracted
to a woman, or a woman to a man, it may seem a very biological
thing, but from a Jewish, Torah perspective, it's just a physical
manifestation of a very deep spiritual attraction.
This is not to say that the Torah's concept of sexuality
is not intrinsically tied in to the objective of creating
new life. It certainly is. But perpetuation of the species
is not the sole end of our sexuality. Rather, it's the other
way around: the divine nature of our sexuality—the fact that
the union of male and female completes the divine image in
which they were created—is what gives us the power to bring
life into the world.
So there is something divine about the union itself. This
is reflected in Halachah (Torah law) which extends the sanctity
of marriage also to circumstances in which the generation
of offspring is not a possibility (such as in the case of
a man and/or woman who are beyond childbearing age, or who
are physically unable to bear children). If sexuality were
simply the mechanism for childbearing, one might argue: "Hey,
no perpetuation of the species, what's the point of marriage
and sexuality? Just a selfish pleasure? Where's the holiness?"
The answer is, yes, the sexuality qua sexuality is
holy. Male and female uniting is a divine act, a divine experience.
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