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Forbidden Desires
Orthodox Judaism keeps husband and wife apart and passion alive.
by Lynne Meredith Schreiber
Two little drops of reddish brown on my underwear. Here we go again.
Since I had kids, my cycle is irregular, which wouldn’t be a big deal except that I’m an Orthodox Jew and I can’t even pass the salt to my husband—let alone touch, kiss, or have sex with him—for 12 days after my period starts. We never know when we’ll have to sleep in separate beds or place a vase with a single rose between us on the dinner table as evidence of our separation.
I was beginning to hate the rigid restrictions on my sex life until the other day, when I was sitting on a blanket with my two toddlers in a suburban Detroit park, eating pretzels from Ziploc bags and listening to other moms talking about their sex lives.
“We haven’t had sex since we conceived the twins,” said one mom. “And they’re a year-and-a-half old. Add nine months to that.”
“I just don’t feel like it since I had my baby,” confessed another, stroking her 15-month-old’s hair.
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1 Anon // Mar 27, 2008 at 3:38 am
Here’s what she says about her “wonderful” husband now via her blog: “My three children – gifts, all – will learn in time that their father does not have it together. They will be disappointed by him….But I know there will be pockets of dangling when I’ll have to remember why I ended my marriage in the first place: because I deserve more than a life of loneliness.” This is why you don’t write articles about how your marriage is morally superior to everyone else’s. I feel bad for her and her kids.
2 Jeanne // Mar 22, 2008 at 1:17 pm
If you read the author’s blog, she notes that she is now in the middle of divorcing her husband! So much for the ancient Jewish laws keeping their marriage hot. This article was only published about 1.5 years ago, and Schreiber tells us how happy her marriage is. But it does now sound that she has been unhappy for a long time, judging from her blog, so it is curious why she even bothered to write this article at all.
The moral of the story seems to be that becoming Orthodox didn’t guarantee her the husband of her dreams. It struck me as a very peculiar reason to become orthodox in the first place, or her idea that orthodox men were somehow a step above the average. Perhaps now is a good time for Schreiber to reconsider what she wants in her religious faith and in a husband.
3 Yerushalayim Yocheved // Jan 11, 2008 at 6:34 pm
I converted to orthodox Judaism when I was 21 years old, was “dunked” in the mikvah by the Holy Beit Din of Yerushalayim Ir HaKodesh for my conversion. I believed that I had found G-d. I was devout and devoted to both othodox Judaism and my husband. Instead I found a closed community ruled by men. [Thank you Anonymous Commentor #5.]
I left Jewish practice because my husband was anything like Ms. Schreiber’s. [Thank you Anonymous Commentor #9.]
My cycle was irregular during my orthodox marriage and continued to be so up until I had a hysterectomy at the age of 42. [Halleluyah, I wish I had done this immediatly after my second daughter was born, what a relief!]
This was a biological problem that orthodox Judaism could not and would not help me with the situation–12 days! Hah! I would have welcomed 12 days. Try 6 months, then going to the mikveh and that very night before intercourse becoming tameh again, or how about right after this first intercourse and having to separate the beds again and go another 4 months. My downstairs neighbor complained about the sound of us pushing the beds together and then pulling them apart so quickly. [She didn’t know why, thank G-d.]
Per my husband’s orders, my b’dikah cloths andor underweear had to be shown to nothing less than the Chief Rabbi . . . talk about daunting when your husband is away for miluim and one spots frequently as I did. I never hit my fertile “period” since I ovulated so irregularly and could not have sex the majority of the time. I only go pregnant when (1) I was coming off of birth-control pills [the only way to have a regular period, and, yes, they were sanctioned by the Chief Rabbi too!] and (2) when I took ferility pills to make me ovulate. Thank G-d I only had these two children in hindsight (and I thank G-d that I do have two lovely grown-up daughters). But it was quite a shanda to have to explain why I wasn’t pregnant, wasn’t pregnant, wasn’t pregnant, no I was just fat . . .
Thank you Commentor #16, my husband didn’t “really” love me, he did nothing to make our marriage exciting, and even posited that the problems I was having with irregular periods and spotting was G-d punishing him (my husband) for his having gotten two prior girlfriends pregnant and having abortions before he “hashav b’tshuva.”
My conversations with other orthodox wives and Rabbis were met with pitying signs and the few offers of assistance from Rabbis were overruled by by husband as not being good enough, since they were not the Chief Rabbi [have I mentioned how hard it was to get an appointment with him, get a babysitter, take 2 buses in the Jerusalem rain to show him a cloth that had been in my vagina?!?].
Last but not least, while I live and let live and I know that G-d loves me and all of creation (no mistakes), when people who have not lived this life ask me about it, I give them the example that if I as a woman have to cover MY elbows (guard the mitzvah!) so that a man, my husband or otherwise, would not get turned on by seeing a woman’s ELBOW (!), there is something wrong with that allegedly pious man and with the rules that dictate this. This is why I left practice and my husband (there were obviously personal conflicts here too! LOL!).
I will be Jewish according to Judaism forever. I prefer to think of myself as a precious child of G-d and an Israeli.
Cheers!
Yocheved
P.S. Both of my daughters have thanked me on numerous occasions for taking them out of orthodox Judaism and only now as adults do they feel comfortable re-establishing a relationship with their still orthodox. . . Rabbi. . . Abba, because they have control of their own lives.
Also, recommended viewing, “Kadosh,” it’s on DVD . . . oh, wait, can you watch movies?!?!?
4 C. Ville Edde // Jan 9, 2008 at 7:35 am
I am a man who has been happily married for 55 years. And I am an atheist, while my wife is a Catholic. I am a lay student of theology and anthropology, along with two degrees and 5 majors, all in science. I found this article to be a beautiful statement of a woman’s commitment to her religion and to her husband. Many thanks for sharing it.
5 sarah // Jan 8, 2008 at 2:21 pm
What crap!
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