A Three Faiths Symposium on Sex and Marriage

Guest Speakers:
• Rabbi Dr Naftali Brawer (Jewish)
• Dr Clare Watkins (Christian: Catholic)
• Imam Monawar Hussain (Muslim)
A meeting held at Northwood United Synagogue on Tuesday 20th September 2005.

Jewish Perspectives: Rabbi Naftali Brawer

One of the most beautiful books in Scripture is the Song of Songs — an erotic love song but the Talmud points out that it can be understood as a metaphor for the love between the Jewish people and God. Love between husband and wife is seen as being integral to one's humanity and to one's understanding of divinity.

Moving on to sex and pleasure, Judaism believes in procreation, it is the first commandment, “Be fruitful and multiply" — but often there is a misunderstanding. The misunderstanding is that Judaism promotes the creation of children but it doesn't see any value in the sexual act itself. Sex is more than just a means, it is an end in itself. The Bible says in Exodus 21, regarding a husband “He must not withhold from her (his wife) her food, her clothing, or conjugal rights." In the Chuppa ceremony when the Rabbi addresses the couple getting married he tells them that they take upon themselves all obligations under Jewish law, and this is a coded reference to sex.

So how much sex does one have to have to fulfil the mitzvar? The Jewish law is codified and the obligation for a husband to make love to his wife depends on what type, or what position, or what stage in life the husband finds himself. In other words how available is he? How tired is he? How much does he travel? So listen to the Talmud. The kind of lovemaking prescribed in the Torah: for men of independence, everyday; for labourers, twice a week; for ass drivers, once a week; for Camel drivers, once in 30 days; and for sailors once in six months. You can extrapolate these rules to cover current professions that reflect the type of pressure and travel. The point is that a husband does have his obligations, and Maimonides said that if a man withholds sex from his wife he commits a sin. There is no law that tells a woman she has to be available to her husband. Maimonides also said that if the man is physically unable to, he wait six months to see if his condition improves. If it does not improve the woman can demand a divorce on these grounds alone. So sexual pleasure is something that is very real and a very important component in a loving relationship.

Regarding the ethics of sex, the urban myth of “the hole in the sheet" runs against the grain of Halacha. The myth is that in very religious communities couples make love through a little hole in the sheet which permits the sexual act itself, otherwise they are very puritanical and modest. The Halacha says that this is not the case and in fact one can't even have any clothing on — one must engage fully with the other.

Some of the ethics of sex in the light of Jewish law are not to make love when you are angry, or drunk; and you are certainly not allowed to think about anyone except the person you are making love to. A husband is not allowed to force his wife to have sex. Perhaps the most beautiful expression of Jewish sexual ethics comes from Maimonides, and Rabbi Brawer read some extracts from the book Jurist and from Maimonides book called The Holy Letter, because he saw lovemaking has something holy. The letter lists ways of showing tenderness towards the wife, and in particular that the woman should be allowed to climax before the man. There is a beautiful quote that when a man cleaves to his wife in holiness the divine presence is manifested.

There is a very amusing story in the Talmud which can be understood at different levels. At one level it is the attachment of the student to his teacher. The story is about a great Talmudic teacher. The student observed his teacher in all aspects of life — Judaism is a living faith, it is not just a textual source of knowledge but one observes the way people behave. The student wanted to know what is the Jewish way to make love. So he hid under the Rabbi's bed, and he heard his Rabbi come in and start chatting and joking around, and his lovemaking was rather noisy, so he popped out from under the bed and said, “Rabbi, you sound like a man who has never eaten” (everything in the Talmud is metaphor) “so I expected a bit more restraint from you." So the Rabbi says, “You’re here! Get out from under my bed”, and the student replies, “Rabbi this is Torah, I need to learn”. The author’s point is to tell us that there is no aspect of Torah that is not holy and that sex is a very important aspect of Judaism as well.

Rabbi Brawer ended his talk with the story of Izzy and Sadie whose marriage just fell apart. They got a civil divorce but they never got a get. A get is a Jewish religious divorce. In Judaism in order to get a get you have to first get a civil divorce. But if you just have a civil divorce Judaism still recognises you as married. In other words it is the get which breaks the bond. In the eyes of God and in the eyes of Jewish law they are still married. Izzy took off on his travels, and when he came back he developed a nice friendship with his wife. One day he calls his Rabbi and says, “Rabbi, I've got to talk to you, something is really bothering me. Since I’ve come back Sadie cooks for me, and one thing has led to another and I've made love to her. I feel guilty, we got a civil divorce a year ago. It is wrong, it is a sin, she's not my wife”. The Rabbi says “No, you are married, in the eyes of God you are married, you didn't give her a get.” Izzy goes away and six months later he comes to the Rabbi and says, “Rabbi, I have to tell you, ever since you told me that that thing about the get, you’ve taken all the pleasure out of it.”

Christian Perspectives: Dr Clare Watkins

She sometimes wonders if we talk too much about these things, and is always struck when these matters come up in teaching how little Jesus had to say about these things. He does say one or two things and in the Gospel stories he is surrounded by prostitutes which is interesting, but he doesn't give a lot of teaching and he doesn't have a lot of opinion, and the Roman Catholic tradition has just tried to say to say too much of a regulative nature about these matters.

Christian tradition has been ambivalent towards both sex and marriage. There is a very positive, creative, “body affirming” tradition within Christianity which tends to come and go, sometimes more pronounced than others and always there. In the end it is routed back in the Genesis narratives that we share with other traditions of God creating things and creating them good — and one of the things he creates is human beings in his own image; male and female. You have there a theology of the body based on this nuptial understanding that humanity has at its heart a man and a woman who are equipped to do the sex thing which is definitive of who they are as embodied human beings. There is no other way of being a human being other than as an embodied human being. So that is a very strong part of certainly the Catholic Christian tradition. And this shouldn’t surprise us because we are a faith that focuses on the Incarnation; it is as a human being that God comes to us most fully.

At the same time as that there is a tradition which develops in the light of Christ’s death and resurrection which also says that your real life is hidden with Christ in God. You have to have your mind on the things of heaven, and as we know marriage and sex are not the things of heaven — especially in the aesthetic tradition, the monastic tradition, which is related to the tradition of martyrdom in the early Church where your life, your bodily existence, was seen to be nothing in the light of the Gospel and the life which is to come. So there is always this tension with the aesthetic and monastic traditions which is particularly strong within Roman Catholicism. Marriage is named as a Sacrament of the Church, and the Catholic tradition that marriage is a holy estate has been carried on after the Reformation within many of the Reformed traditions.

It is odd, isn't it, that God chooses to make unique human beings out of sex. It is the strangest thing that he should think of. “Oh, how are we going to do this?. I know what we will get them to do” So there is a great mystery here. In the acknowledgement of that mystery, in the holding of that mystery is part of the sacramental life of the Church, which in the Catholic tradition is described as an “office”. It is an “office” alongside celibate ordained ministry. It is an office which is at the service of the community. It is at the service of the communed people, of the family primarily but also of the Church and the wider society.

There is something graced and life giving about the man and the woman living a life that is ordered by prayer and companionship, and in which sex has its proper part to play. That proper part is part of the tension of the tradition and it was only in 1964 that the Roman Catholic tradition was prepared to recognise that sex not only had a procreative function but also had a unitive function — a function in the functioning of the relationship. It was as late as that before it got into the official thinking, although if you read the medieval texts there was actually a much more robust of the proper place of the pleasure of sex between a married couple.

Going back to the Gospel and earlier texts addressing the concern with celibacy, there is also a practical concern. St Paul says regarding whether you should marry or not in Corinthians “While I suppose it is better to marry than to burn” – in other words if you can’t restrain yourself it is better to get married, and that will sort you out. That is a very negative reading. If you take the whole passage that is not really what he is saying. He goes on to say is that he wishes everyone could be single, like he himself is, not because sex is a bad thing, but he wished they could be single because then they could be free from the cares of the household. They would be free from economic care for their children, care for their wife. They would be free to live more fully and do the work God is calling them to do. While we may not agree with Paul’s holy pragmatism, more recent understanding of Christian marriage sees it as a place of practical holiness, which in Catholic tradition is referred to as the “Domestic Church”. It is a place of holiness, and sex is a part of it.

A final point is, what’s happened to the society in which we are thinking about? The culture in which our children grow up? We don’t have to watch programmes after 9pm to be aware of the eroticism of the culture. Sex is used to sell shampoo! Dr Watkins said that she didn’t want to start a conversation on Roman Catholic teaching on birth control but there is something about the contraceptive mentality which has a huge effect, in terms of social cultural understanding of marriage, sex and family; especially on our culture here in the West. What happens to a society when we can consider it normative, desirable, the grown-up thing to do, to routinely separate sex from procreation. One of the things that happens is that sex becomes recreational instead of procreational, it becomes trivial, it becomes all-important and at the same time it becomes (not for everybody) a leisure pursuit, it becomes currency for advertising economics, and we lose the context in which we can speak about this with any kind of maturity. Sex is a joyful thing and we need to bring about a shift in our cultural understanding.

Dr Watkins ended her talk by citing the experience of a parent who had been criticised for teaching her children not to have sex too early. She was told that she was depriving her children of their right to sexual activity. How can the love which we heard from Jewish tradition and what we can hear from Christian tradition fit in this type of culture? There is a challenge here which affects us all.

Muslim Perspectives: Imam Momawar Hussain

Marriage and sex are, for Muslims, inseparable. Sex or sexual union can only take place within the framework of marriage. Now what is marriage? In Islam it is quite simple. It is based upon a Proposal and an Acceptance, but of course between consenting adults, a man and a woman. And there must be at least two witnesses present, and a gift from the groom to the bride must be given.

It is traditional that after the ceremony there is a feast. During the last three weeks he has been to three weddings. The first was a Nigerian wedding in London. It was held in a mosque with men and women present, but something took place that he had never experienced. They were chanting and glorifying God, very much a sufti-mystical experience. There were a number of people present like us who were Imams, but everybody took turns to just pray for the couple and wish them good luck and so on.

The other marriage which he recently witnessed was completely different. A cousin of his got married and there wasn't any recitation of the Koran, no prayer. Everybody pretty well mixed, and it showed that although at the centre we have the core, in terms of culture it is very diverse, and that's how traditionally it has been. Something he hopes for is that they will develop a unique British cultural identity, and that is what he saw happening at this wedding. There was a good mixture of people, Muslims and non-Muslims just having a good time. No one was looking at the other person’s colour or religion and so on. It was a wonderful occasion, and he hoped this image of harmony would be seen by the media.

One of the conditions for marriage is consent. Recently there has been a lot of media attention on forced marriages. In terms of Islamic teaching there is no justification whatsoever in the Koran or tradition of the Prophet justifying this practice. It is very much a cultural phenomenon which is not just confined to the Asian community but throughout the world in many societies. Sadly this does happen. What we have to do is to take a lead and say that it is something not acceptable and that there is absolutely no justification in the tradition. But we need to differentiate between forced and arranged marriages. Arranged marriages as a very valuable means of getting people together who know a bit about the families. It is a good way of introducing young people, but of course there mustn’t be any coercion, and that is very important.

Imam Hussain read a translation of a few verses from the Koran which scholars interpret as meaning that men and were men are created from the same essence, and this is very important because Muslims too have this tradition of the woman coming from the rib of Adam and so on. What can be dragged out from this verse is that marriage is a relationship and a reflection of God's mercy that he has created for us partners in which we may dwell. And marriage is a relationship in which we may find rest, tranquility, a sense of security, and mercy. It is also a blessing because through it God endows us with offspring. The key question is, “What kind of world are we going to leave for our children?” Each child is a unique gift and we have to do as much as we can to make a good future for them.

The Koran says that before one has sexual intercourse with one's wife there are prayers that one says because everything is a gift from God, and therefore you are asking God to give you offspring who will be good people, and safeguarded from the arch enemy Satan.

So marriage and sex are in a relationship that is based on mercy, tenderness and forgiveness. But it also has the reciprocal concept of giving, and for a successful marriage it is all about both people giving to one another. One of the definitions of marriage in an Arab dictionary likens it to a fortress in which one takes refuge in one another’s companionship. We need a sense of partnership, we need someone with whom we can share our problems and our troubles, and that's what marriage is about: partnership. For it to be successful one has to subordinate one's own selfish desires and place others first. When we have children they are a great blessing and a great gift, but also a tremendous responsibility for us.

Regarding sexual relationships the Prophet was a wonderful man and he has been so frank. In Medina the women were quite bashful and they would sleep on their side, and his companions wanted to know whether sexual relations could take place while they are lying down. There is a verse which says that your wives are like fields to you, so enter your field as a right, but set before you good for yourselves and guard yourselves for Allah, and know that you shall meet him. So anal intercourse is forbidden but every other position will do.

Another thing that the Jurists talk about is that a failure of sexual fulfilment is a basis for divorce. In another verse “Let none of you fall upon his wife like a donkey falls on a she-donkey”. What it is telling you is that for a relationship to be successful we have to consider one another, and there is a tradition after this which says that in terms of sexual relationships it is very important that one creates the right conditions for intercourse to take place and that is to play, caress one another, and just be joyful. It is not just for the man to feel that he has had his fair share as it were, but not the woman, so it is very much a two-way relationship.

— Bernard Tiley