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Book review
Author throws his own
light on love and sex
"LOVE AND SEX: A Modern
Jewish Perspectiveby Dr.
Robert Gordis (Farrar. Straus A
Giroux), $8.95, 290 pages.
In one of the segments of the
British Broadcasting Corpora
tion’s brilliant TV series, “I
Claudius,” Claudius steps out of
his house into the streets of Rome
and is immediately overwhelmed
by the talk of intrigues, assassin
ations, plots, counterplots,
infidelities, adulteries, corruption
and murder characteristic of
Rome’s precipitous moral decline.
He returns home and decides to
bury himself in the task of writing a
history of Carthage.
Is is to the credit of Robert
Gordis, a distinguished biblical
scholar and rabbi, that in the face
of mounting moral chaos in our
society he has not buried himself in
the confines of his own discipline,
writing arcane tracts mainly for
other scholars, but has attempted
to confront the issues and clarify
them for the Jewish public.
Although the subject of this book
arouses intense passions, erotic
and intellectual, the author's
reasoned, balanced approach
generates more light than heat.
Dr. Gordis contrasts the
classical Christian and Jewish
views of sex. Classical Christianity
distinguished between spiritual
love and carnal love, the former
holy, the latter unclean. Thus, the
less love was involved in sex, the
higher it became. The new
morality also separates sex and
love but inverts the relationship. It
glorifies sex and maintains that
love is, or should be, unrelated to
sex.
Traditional Christian morality
sought to minimize the
contamination of love by sex; the
new morality tries to avoid
complicating sex with love. In
contrast to both, Jewish tradition
insisted that love and sex are two
Dr. Robert Gordis'
sides of the same coin whose
denomination is marriage. It
insists that marriage and marriage
alone is the proper framework for
sexual experience.
The author is sensitive to the
powerful pressures in our society
which have underminded this
point of view, but he argues that an
unbiased reading of the record
indicates that there is substantial
evidence that sexual relationships
have not changed for the better;
they have merely changed.
He points out in connection with
the laws of divorce and abortion
that the American approach is
official severity in law and total
laxity in life. Judaism establishes
the contrary balance: the attitude
toward divorce and abortion is
strict, underscoring the need to
strive for permanence in marriage
and the need for retaining a sense
of reverence for life, even unborn
life. But the laws on divorce and
abortion are liberal, offering
release where marriage is
intolerable and where a pregnancy
endangers the life and well-being
of the mother.
In confronting the new life-style
of sex without marriage, Gordis
urges firmness of principle but
compassion in its implementation.
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He cites numerous instances of
how the rabbis sought to combine
flexibility and firmness in dealing
with widespread sexual laxity in
medieval Spain.
He urges parents dealing with a
son or daughter involved in a
premarital or extramarital
relationship to avoid the extremes.
They should not become hysterical
or hostile and drive the young
people out of the family, nor
should they condone the action on
the grounds that everybody is
doing it, or because they are afraid
of being stigmatized as old-
fashioned.
In his treatment of homosex
uality, Dr. Gordis waffles a bit. I
agree with his view that
homosexuals should not be treated
as criminals. But he docs not take a
stand on the issue of how to
prevent homosexuals from
winning others over to their life
style.
This book will convince the
already Jewishly convinced. The
author knows this, for he writes:
“In the face of prevailing
fashion...no quick remedy is in
sight. Only a lifelong process of
education can avail. The example
of the home will prove far more
effective than formal teaching in
the classroom or eloquent
preachment in the pulpit." More
effective also, we might add, than
books on love and sex.
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examples of good Jews.
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Pag* 18 THE SOUTHERN ISRAELITE April 28, 1978