A Kinky Chanukah to One and All!

Not that any of you need much encouragement from me, but...

8 WAYS TO KINK UP YOUR HANUKKAH

1. Stage your own Maccabees vs Syrians bedroom scene
2. In celebration of the miracle of oil, oil up someone you love
3. Two words: Strip Dreidel
   
4. 10 spanks for every candle
5. Use sufganiyot for your sploshing
6. Wrap yourself up--what better gift can you give?
   
7. How much gelt for a lap dance?
8. And, of course, candle wax, candle wax, candle wax: become a living chanukiyah
   

Today marked the biblical holiday of Tu b'Av, the Jewish Lovers' Day. I am on a campaign to bring this joyous holiday back to the Jewish world. Luckily I am not alone, Israeli society has been embracing Tu b'Av more and more over the past decade and recently Jewish groups in America have been promoting Tu b'Av as perfect day for singles events.

As an ardent advocate for love, I want to see Tu b'Av become one of the most popular holidays throughout the Jewish year. But the lesson of this day is so much more than merely one of love. The Talmudic reference that introduces us to Tu b'Av compares this day of love to Yom Kippur, saying that throughout the year these were the two favorite holidays of all the Israelites.

Comparing Jewish Lovers' Day to the Day of Atonement got me thinking, are there any commonalities between love and atonement? Well, as an ardent advocate for BDSM, this was kind of easy. I have always felt the ascetic rituals of Yom Kippur to be spiritually compelling. Fasting, beating my chest, diminishing comfort, even refraining from romance--all of these ascetic behaviors heighten the intensity of guilt and atonement. I have found ascetics to heighten my experience of love as well. While fasting may not do much for me, romantically, beating, discomfort, forced refrain--each of these have played a role in my love. The kinky Jew inheresntly understands the deep connection between love and atonement and therefore between Tu b'Av and Yom Kippur. The kinky Jew also understands how it is that these two days were in fat the happiest of all the year back in the day.

And so, during these two months between Tu b'Av & Yom Kippur, let us all allow our love from this day the opportunity to mature and purify under the encouragement of the ascetics of our tradition.

The Jewess: Sexually Repressed or Sexually Charged?

Throughout the ages, Jewish women have been the focus of many a sexual fantasy. As early as the Book of Esther, it is the Jewish girl who gets the kings attention for her ravaging beauty and intimate skills. In the Talmud, the rabbis are obsessed with the sexual appetite and sexual potency of Jewish women. In fact, they do everything they can think of to encourage Jewish men to “service” their wives as often as possible so that their wives’ longings do not get the better of them.

The Third Reich portrayed Jewish women as lascivious; much like the rabbis of the Talmud, the Nazis cautioned the Germans to beware the Jewish woman’s sexual appetite. The picture is an example of the Nazi propaganda regarding Jewish women. The text at the side of the picture says: "This puzzle-broadsheet was destined for the French soldiers in the bunkers of the Maginot-line. The German propaganda assumed that the curiosity of the soldiers would become bigger if they had to look for the different pieces at first. Once put together the pieces made up one of the most astute agitational pictures of the ‘paper war’: The demure English virgin, ‘Times’ gets a knowing reply from the mirror by the sluttish whore, ‘Semit[e]’.

At the same time we have been portrayed as repressed, repelled by sex, and downright frigid. Marcy Sheiner, in her introduction to The Oy of Sex, offers a joke that really brings the idea of this oxymoronic way of thinking about the Jewish woman’s sexuality:

"Q: How do you get a Jewish girl to stop fucking?
A: You marry her.
This, one of my all-time favorite jokes, first heard as an adolescent, can be interpreted several ways. On the surface, it says that Jewish women only "put out" to get the brass, or gold, ring. On the other hand, it tells us, frankly, that Jewish girls like to fuck. Unburdened by the Christian admonishments against carnal pleasure, the Jewish girl is more likely to rejoice in her sensuality. This is, of course, a positive identity, one we can at last proudly claim. On the other hand, it feeds the stereotype of the Jewish girl as slutty."

Last week I talked about how the entire nature of Jewish thought leads to a religion that is simply more sex positive. Well, in turn, Judaism has the potential for producing women who are more sex positive. It helps that, even if it hasn’t always been for good, we have been encouraged to think of ourselves as sexually carnivorous creatures!

I can make all of the obvious statements about how every woman is different and some Jewish women love sex and some hate it; some Jewish women are kinky and some as vanilla as extract! But I have been in many a conversation with many a man who has been with both Jewish and non-Jewish women and they seem to have a very particular impression of Jewish women: we like sex.

I, in all my Jewess-ness, love sex.

In the words of a close friend of mine who insists that he had slept with enough Jewish girls to know that, “Jewish girls take it up the ass.”

Just How Hard Wired are We?

At what point does a person know that he is submissive? or Dominant? At what point does a person know that she likes to be tied up? or likes to spank bad boys and girls? Are sexual proclivities hard wired into us or do we learn them from our parents, siblings, friends, lovers? Is BDSM nature or nurture?

On the one hand, there are so many fetishes that, by their very nature, must be the product of nurture, such as electro shock based fetishes, Hello Kitty fetishes, or car fetishes--none of these could have existed until such time as we invented (or in the case of electricity, harnessed) them. In the scope of human existence, they are flashes in the pan--and flashes do not imprint themselves upon our DNA...our psyche, absolutely, but not our very genome.

So, while the particulars of a fetish may rely on the world/culture/family we grow up in, what about the archetype of the fetish? Could a person, theoretically, have an inherent fetish for shock type stimuli, totems, or big powerful inanimate objects--things that have always been present throughout human existence? Could a person be born submissive? Dominant? Masochistic? Sadistic? Could a person have in hers or his genetic make-up a need to serve? A need to portray an animal? A need to humiliate another?

As is generally true of any nature vs. nurture argument, I imagine the answer will be neither one nor the other, but rather...both.

We come into this world with aspects of our dispositions already hard wired; I, for example, failed my first Apgar test because, no matter what the doctor did to me, I didn't cry (anyone here see a future stubborn masochist?) Nevertheless, how my hard wired disposition blossomed into the happy sub who writes this today has everything to do with how I have been nurtured, for better or for worse, throughout my life.

So, why this question right now? I have a teenage kid who I am watching express her overwhelming desire to be dominated (sans any of the language of the BDSM culture). I cannot help but wonder is this desire imprinted upon her DNA or is it the result of events in her life that have left her feeling distrustful of her own ability to make decisions?

Once I opened my eyes to my true self, I knew that so much of this had been with me from the very beginning. But is that necessarily true for everyone else?

What about your fetish, nature or nurture?

B'ruchim HaBa'im!!!

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