Which Sex Toy Would Jesus Choose?

According to NPR, one Christian woman went looking for a way to add a little spark to her waning marriage “without compromising her Christian beliefs.” The result was the creation of this website, which sells all sorts of sex toys and other “intimate” products, but only for married couples.

And, apparently, the people who run this site are doing it out of the goodness of their hearts, and not because they actually need to use any of these products: " Wilson says she and her husband are blessed with good health, but that God has shown them that other couples might need help from a particular toy." I give to you all things holy: including the Jelly Rabbit.

That is very good to know. So how do they know which products to include?

"We pray about things before we add them to our site," she says. "We live our lives very openly in front of Jesus, so we just kind of pray for direction about which way he would have us go, and I have to be honest with you — he's really surprised us. ... Almost our whole entire 'special order' page has come about from that."

Of course I clicked on the “special order” page. Wouldn’t you be curious about which products Jesus “surprised” the couple with? She says their site steers clear of certain types of sexual activity that they believe are unholy. Hmmm . . .

I’m not married, and so technically I shouldn’t be browsing this site that exists for “married couples” only. But it was difficult not to be curious about what constitutes “sin-free” sex toys as opposed to . . . well, that’s just it—as opposed to what? Sinful sex toys?

What I discovered, however, is that apparently any sex toy can be “sin-free” as long as it’s used by a married couple. It’s unclear whether the pleasure device retains its “sin-free” status if enjoyed by a married individual by him or herself. But since we all know that masturbation leads to blindness, one imagines that it’s best not even to experiment with this idea.

I'm not slamming the site. So many religions—or at least the more orthodox manifestations of various religions—define themselves more or less on what they do not do, as opposed to what they do, in fact, do. In other words, it’s not uncommon to hear a religious mother say, to a child who has questioned an unquestionable tenet of the said faith, something along the lines of, “We’re Christians. We don’t engage in premarital sex,” or, “We’re Jews. We don’t eat pork, and we don’t drive over Shabbas.”

If only we defined ourselves according to our actions, rather than our inactions: “We’re Christians/Jews/Muslims. That means we love our neighbors.”

But, back to this scandalous Christian sex toy site. Maybe, I mean to say, this site is a positive thing. Maybe it’s positive because it’s as if they’re saying, “We’re Christians. We have good sex,” instead of, “We’re Christians. We don’t have certain kinds of sex and you shouldn’t either.”

What I can’t quite figure out is this: Are they using Jesus to sell sex? Or, are they using sex to sell Jesus? Is this a really creative attempt to proselytize? Either way, I’m sure it’s a win-win situation—as long as you’re married, that is.

According to an article over at the Forward, Ms Magazine has refused to run an advertisement (pictured below) that features images of Israel’s top female political leaders, and the American Jewish Congress is pissed off about this.This is Israel: And it makes Ms. Magazine uncomfortable.

The ad was submitted by the American Jewish Congress to Ms. Magazine, and spotlighted photographs of Dorit Beinisch, president of Israel’s Supreme Court; Tzipi Livni, Israel’s foreign minister, and Dalia Itzik, speaker of the Knesset, over the text, “This is Israel.”

According to the AJCongress, Ms. initially approved the ad but then reversed course, saying that the ad would “set off a firestorm.”

Says AJCongress President Richard Gordon:

“Since there is nothing about the ad itself that is offensive, it is obviously the nationality of the women pictured that the management of Ms. fears their readership would find objectionable. For a publication that holds itself out to be in the forefront of the women’s movement, this is nothing short of disgusting and despicable.”

But according to Ms. Magazine’s executive editor, Kathy Spillar, it's not "the women’s nationality but their party affiliation that was the problem. Two of the featured officials, Itzik and Livni, are both members of the Kadima political party," and thus, Spillar said, "the ad would leave Ms. Magazine open to the charge of political favoritism."

The AJCongress created the ad to highlight the fact that women now occupy leading positions in Israel’s executive, legislative and political branches. In response, a Ms. representative said that “we would love to have an ad from you on women’s empowerment, or reproductive freedom, but not on this,” according to the AJCongress.

But, for me, this is the kicker:

“Not only could the ad be seen as favoring certain political parties within Israel over other parties, but also with its slogan, ‘This is Israel,’ the ad implied that women in Israel hold equal positions of power with men,” she said. “Israel, like every other country, has far to go to reach equality for women.”

Oh, no, god forbid that a feminist magazine recognize the fact that women in Israel have more opportunities than women in surrounding countries. That wouldn't be fair to Saudi Arabia.

Now, I don't think anyone is going to argue that the equality gap between men and women has completely closed in any nation. But it's hard to deny that there are some countries that have done a much better job of narrowing this gap than others. In particular, I can think of many countries in the same region as Israel (i.e., again, Saudi Arabia, where women can't even drive cars) that have done virtually nothing to rectify this situation. In my opinion, the position of women in Israel is one of the best in the world (comparatively), and the fact that women can hold positions of political influence in Israel should be celebrated by a feminist magazine, especially when considered in contrast to other countries in the Middle and Near East.

I don't know that I agree with the political ideologies of all three of these Israeli women, but I do appreciate the fact that they have been given the opportunity, as women, to hold these positions of power, and I think that is something worth celebrating (or, at least, acknowledging). But the only thing worth acknowledging here is the ease with which Ms. Magazine is able to flaunt its own political and ideological biases at the expense of their own cause.

This semester I taught a college-level Bible as Literature class, and it has been quite the ride, to say the least. Out of 30 students, I would say that at least 25 of them come from conservative Christian backgrounds, which means they view me—and all of my claims about midrash and an evolving biblical text—with more than an inkling of suspicion, despite my own unapparent but sordid, long-lost background in the world of Evangelicals.

On the first day of class, four or five students approached me, and one said, “So, we really need to know: are you Jewish, or are you Christian? We need to know so that we can decide whether we are going to stay in this class.”

And now, my suspicions kicked in. They had been talking about me, and had somehow elected a leader, their own little makeshift Moses, to rise up from among them and ask the loaded question. I was the Egyptian, about to be struck down and buried in the sand. I was sweating on the inside, unperturbed on the outside. In my imagination: this could have been me.

The implied question seemed to be, “Are you going to regurgitate all of the ideas about the bible that have been communicated to me since birth by my conservative Christian community? If not, I’m out of here.”

It’s a literature class, not a theology class, which means that how, or rather if, I define myself is none of their business. But I felt compelled to answer.

My initial inclination was to say “Jewish,” but then I thought, why make it so easy? “I’m both,” I responded, “and neither. If that sounds interesting to you, then you’ll want to stay in this class. If not, I believe there’s a Catholic teaching one of the other sections, and there’s also a Reform Jew teaching a section. Plenty of diversity. The choice is up to you.”

Moses seemed satisfied: “Okay.”

I knew I would never see them again. But I was wrong. I was also impressed—they all came back, and they, along with all of the other students, have been amazing, despite their initial difficulty with reading the bible as literature, and not as theology.

Of course, it has taken some longer than others to shed the tell-tale signs of religious indoctrination. Last week, one young woman, a great student, asked me earnestly if the confusing reference to both God and God’s messenger in the story of Moses’s encounter with the burning bush was a reference to “the trinity.”

In a way, I didn’t mind, because it revealed that she was reading closely and interpreting the text from her own perspective and position. And it was a question—an attempt to understand—rather than an authoritative statement. She was searching for a way to make it mean something to her, and I think I can respect that. I wonder if we might even call it midrash.

A midrashic impulse is what keeps Torah alive. I myself have a slightly unnatural obsession with midrash and anything that feels midrashic, and so I’m happy when I see my students starting to think along these lines. I derive curious pleasure from listening to them during class discussions, as they “turn it and turn it,” much like the rabbinic admonition.

Do they know they are being Talmudic?

But I got a little surprise last week, when Brandon Kleiber, one of my students, turned in his weekly response essay. It wasn’t exactly an essay. In fact, he completely disregarded my instructions, and decided instead to re-tell the story of Abraham’s binding of Isaac. It made me laugh so hard that I had to share it (with his permission), and give him an A. I only wish I had discovered this little gem in time to post it during the Days of Awe . . .

Enjoy. (And, note how he has even incorporated the Hebrew emphatic—“drink, yes, drink”—into his “midrash.”)

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I always knew there were two Norman Finkelsteins.

But I was not quite positive about which was which until last week, when this Norman Finkelstein came to Purdue University to give a talk and to read some of his poetry. Yes, I said poetry. This Norman Finkelstein is a poet--and a good one, at that.Norman Finkelstein: ProvocateurNorman Finkelstein: Poet

After the lecture, I was fortunate enough to join the poet Finkelstein and another professor for coffee and a lively discussion. Somehow, I also managed to score a free copy of Finkelstein's newest book of poetry, Passing Over, which is a gem.

Below are a couple of exquisite excerpts from two of the poems.

From "inscription of the body on the text":

Something I know of bodies and something of texts, / how lines are inscribed and how they curve, / how they mingle freely and how they are forbidden, / how they articulate their wonted and unwonted fires.

And, from "Elegy":

Let the Angel of Death stay in his dressing room / forever redoing his makeup, / and let our hopes flourish falsely into flowers / for our lovers, who will laugh and throw them away.

Let the old world remake itself / into a sequence of lights. / There will be crowns in the sky and we will look up amused, / for we were told that the past / could be cleansed of all its imperfections. / Yes, we will laugh and turn the switch; / the lights will be extinguished and we will embrace in the dark, / thinking, before we give up on thinking, this is how it was meant to be.

The other Norman Finkelstein, the political theorist of the recent DePaul tenure scandal (and the subject of recent Jewcy discussions), does not write poetry. Both Finkelsteins, however, do publish books and articles on Jewish-American culture--though one is more politically-inclined, while the other relegates his critiques to the world of the literary, metaphorical, and poetic.

It is funny, though, no?

I wonder if, somewhere, there is also another Alan Dershowitz.

I have always been a fan of Hannah Arendt.

I have not always, however, been a fan of the "banality of evil" argument. I get it--we are all capable of evil. I agree with that. But when applied to the "logic" of the Holocaust, I think the argument becomes problematic and potentially even transgressive. By saying that anyone could have been capable of the atrocities committed by Nazis and their sympathizers during World War II, we also, whether we intend it or not, minimize the extent to which each individual is responsible for his or her own behavior. We cut the perpetrators a bit of slack by implicitly suggesting that they only did what anyone else would've been equally capable of.

My point: okay, yeah, maybe it could've been anybody, but it wasn't. Each person who contributed in any way to the destruction of Jews and others during the Holocaust is individually responsible. The "it could have been anybody" argument is dangerous because it lessens the degree to which we are all responsible for our actions. And this goes for any genocide or act of violence--not just the Holocaust.Just Another Beautiful Day: In Auschwitz.

But then . . . there are times when I want to re-think this position.

Today there's a piece in the NYT about a letter received by a young archivist at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. The letter, written by a former US Army Intelligence officer, contained photographs of Auschwitz he had found 60 years ago in Germany.

It's not uncommon for someone to send old photos from the Holocaust to the museum, but these particular pictures depict something that is not often seen.

. . . a scrapbook of sorts of the lives of Auschwitz's senior SS officers that was maintained by Karl Hocker, the adjutant to the camp commandant. Rather than showing the men performing their death camp duties, the photos depicted, among other things, a horde of SS men singing cheerily to the accompaniment of an accordianist, Hocker lighting the camp's Christmas tree, a cadre of young SS women frolicking and officers relaxing, some with tunics shed, for a smoking break. . . . The album also contains photos of Josef Mengele, the camp doctor notorious for participating in the selections of arriving prisoners and cruel medical experiments. These are the first authenticated pictures of Mengele at Auschwitz . . .

Museum curators have avoided describing the album as something like "monsters at play" or "killers at their leisure." Ms. Cohen said the photos were instructive in that they showed the murderers were, in some sense, people who also behaved as ordinary human beings. "In their self-image, they were good men, good comrades, even civilized," she said.

I still don't like the "banality of evil" argument, but needless to say, these kinds of pictures give it a lot more credibility.

I highly suggest watching the slideshow here (turn your speakers on for the audio) -- it's only around two minutes long.