In our inaugural blog, we mentioned that we will be writing a lot about sex. Someone asked me why? He said that it wasn’t modest to discuss the subject in a public forum, and that it would only cause readers to think about it, something which the Torah forbids. This is a little like saying that one should not talk about the dangers of drugs because it may lead to drug abuse.

The saintly Kabbalist, Rabbi Eliahu Leon Levy, has been warning the public about the dangers of immodesty and sexual transgression for years. According to the Kabbalah, most of the tribulations, tragedies, sicknesses, family conflicts, and economic hardships that come upon the individual and nation all stem from sexual wrongdoing, known as blemishes to the Covenant, or Brit. Not to speak about these matters out of modesty, Rabbi Levi maintains, is like seeing a woman drowning in a river and not diving into the water to save her because it is forbidden for a man to touch a strange woman. “When you see that someone is about to fall off a cliff,” he asks, “Do you keep silent, or do you cry out in warning?”

The Torah giant, Rabbi Aharon Cutler, was also strident about the need to address these crucial matters:

“I want to awaken you to a painful and shocking matter about which many people err. There are many people whom refrain from speaking about these things under the pretext of modesty. May Heaven help us! In such a fallen and licentious generation as ours, where everything is exposed without shame in the open - to speak about holiness and modesty – this is considered an affront to modesty?! Can there be a greater deception on the part of the evil inclination than this?! On the contrary, it is an absolute obligation to speak about these matters in public!”


Today, with pornography available to everyone over the Internet, and with immodest fashions wherever you look, the need to educate people in these matters is even more imperative.
Today, with pornography available to everyone over the Internet, and with immodest fashions wherever you look, the need to educate people in these matters is even more imperative. I have spent a lot of time in yeshivas for quite a number of years, and almost no one talks about the importance of guarding the Brit, which means observing the laws of proper sexual relations with one’s wife, and with one’s wife alone, for all other sexual relationships and acts are forbidden. Sorry, guys, but that’s the way it is. Ever since G-d made an eternal Covenant with our forefather, Avraham, sexual holiness has been the foundation of the Jewish People. If a person doesn’t learn these matters, again and again, the evil inclination is very adept at convincing us that forbidden and immodest behavior isn’t so bad.

Let’s face it – the sexual urge is overwhelming in its power, and it is easy to succumb to its wiles and tricks.

Every week, people with all sorts of very serious problems come to speak with Rabbi Levy, and it turns out that in about seven out of ten cases, the root of the problem is sexual wrongdoing. In one way or another, all of us are victims of the immodest, immoral culture that reigns throughout the world. Today, in the age of the Internet, the plague of pornography has even spread to our homes. Only education can combat it. This is the reason that sexual issues will be addressed in this blog. If our warnings help even one Jew, it is, as our Sages have taught us, as if we have saved the whole world! And if, on the other hand, what we write causes a reader to think about sex in an improper fashion, chances are that it was in his head already. In the meantime, readers can visit our website: www.jewishsexuality.com for in-depth articles on this all-important issue to both the holy Nation of Israel and to the world.