Influence of Christianity and the General Culture on Jewish Views of Masturbation

I have referenced a few times the idea that at least some of the negative Halachic attitude towards masturbation was a result of Christian and general cultural influence. I argued in the last post in favor of taking the OMP approach toward masturbation instead of the SAP approach. It would be somewhat satisfying to blame all of this on "the other guys" and say that it wasn't the Jews' fault, but it was their fault i.e. the Christians.  As my grandfather of blessed memory used to say, tongue in cheek, "it doesn't matter what goes wrong, as long as you can blame it on somebody else."

I am sorry to say that in this case, we cannot blame it on the Christians.  At least not the development of the SAP which I described in detail before.  The SAP was heavily influenced by the Zohar.  The Zohar stands out as the most vehemently harsh condemnation of the practice of masturbation in all of human religious history.  It was the most comprehensive, zealous, and forceful religious work to take up the subject, and the earliest religious text to discuss it in such intense detail.

While there are references and condemnations of masturbation scattered here and there throughout the Christian writings starting from the second century on, it doesn't seem to have been a particularly big deal to Christians until the mid-18th century.  Some exceptions exist, such as Pope Leo II (b.1002- d.1054) who wrote harshly about it, but it never quite became a big deal for a long time. One of the most famous books to deal with this subject is Thomas W Laqueur (2003) Solitary Sex:A Cultural History of Masturbation. According to Laqeuer, "the ancient world cared little about the subject; it was a backwater of Jewish and Christian teaching about sexuality."  He claims that the big obsession with the topic really began with the publication of an anonymous tract called "Onania" in England somewhere around 1722.

There is a phenomenon that I seem to find often when reading secular scholars discuss "Jewish teachings".  It seems that they frequently assume that the Jews were more or less saying the same things that the Christian scholars were over the centuries. In modern parlance, this often presents itself as the "Judeo-Christian" tradition.  Unfortunately, all too often, these scholars are much more familiar with the Christian teachings than they are with Jewish teachings and traditions. They are frequently  unqualified to say what the "Judeo" part of Judeo-Christian" actually teaches.   I am not particularly proud of the Jewish contribution to this subject, but Laqueur, when he stated that masturbation was "in the backwater of Jewish teaching" had no idea or clue just how robust and influential the anti-masturbation teachings of the Zohar was about 600 years before 1722. He should've stuck to Christianity.

I am not the only one to point this out, as Shilo Pachter, in his doctoral dissertation that I have quoted many times, makes the same point regarding Laqeuer's assertion. The Jewish opposition to masturbation came out of the "backwater" as soon as the Zohar came to light. Long before 1722.

However, there is a period of time in which I do believe the influence of the Christian world and the academic world did have a strong influence on the Jewish world, and that, I believe, did start with the book that Laqueur just mentioned.

It seems to me that the widespread acceptance of the SAP and the stringent opinions regarding masturbation were helped along by the strong anti-masturbation rhetoric that took over the Christian, philosophical and scientific world starting in the early 1700s.  Starting in this time period, in both the protestant and the catholic world, Onanism became synonymous with masturbation and it became accepted as a terrible sin.  In the philosophical world, no less a personality than Immanuel Kant condemned the practice strongly. In the scientific world, it became accepted that masturbation was both a sign of a mental disorder and the cause of all sorts of physical maladies.  It wasn't until the mid-20th century that these ideas started to change, and masturbation began to be understood as a normal part of sexual development.

The strongest Halachic influence on contemporary post WW2 Orthodox Judaism, comes from the Hassidic traditions of eastern Europe and the non-Hassidic yeshiva world of Lithuania.  Both of these traditions began and were nurtured within a surrounding culture that thought that masturbation was a sign of mental illness, that is was medically unhealthy, and that it was an abomination and a perversion for which God gave the death penalty.  It is not surprising that the Halakhists and moral teachers of the era didn't pay much heed to the opinions of the Ri Hazaken and others and accepted the paradigm of the SA.

An indicator that this is the case, is that the opinions expressed by the proponents of the OMP did not disappear immediately when the Shulchan Aruch suppressed them. It took a while for the SAP to take hold. As we shall see, immediately after the publication of the SA many rabbinic authorities objected to the negation of the opinions of the Ri HaZaken, Tosafot Rid, and Rambam.

It makes sense that it wasn't easy for the SA to suppress the opposition by omitting the Ri HaZaken.  This opinion wasn't just a random outlier.  Many halachic authorities among the Rishonim (Halachic authorities from circa 1100 - 1550) and early Acharonim (halachic authorities from circa 1550 - 1800s) supported the opinion of the Ri HaZaken. Here are just a few: Rabbi Mordechai ben Hillel HaKohen (Germany, 1250-1298, known as "the Mordechai") in Massechet Niddah Hagahot Mordechai 247:744;  R Bezallel ben Avraham Ashkenazi (Israel, 1520-1592) in Shita Mekubeztet Nedarim 20b; R Asher ben Yechiel ("The Rosh" Germany then Spain, 1250-1327) Tosafot HaRosh Yevamot 34b; R Meir HaKohen of Rothenburg (Germany, late 13th century) in Hagahot Maimuniot Hilchot Isurei Biyah 21:9; R Isaiah DiTrani "the younger" (Italy late 13th - early 14th century) in Piskei Riaz Ketubot 5; R Solomon Luria (Poland 1510-1573 "The Maharshal") in Yam Shel Shlomo Yevamot 34b; R' Avraham Chaim Shur (Belz, Poland late 16th, early 17th century) in Torat Chaim Sanhedrin 54a.   All of the above and many more at least supported the opinion of the Ri Hazaken as a viable alternative to the stringent prohibition against "spilling seed".  

It is for this reason that the important commentary on the SA, the Beit Shmuel (late 17th century) immediately qualifies the statement of the SA that the sin is "the most severe in the Torah" by saying that the SA really didn't mean it.  (IMHO. the SA clearly did mean it, as he had learned from the Zohar how severe it is). 

Despite this solid and robust opposition to the SAP, in the centuries following the publication of the Shulchan Aruch, the SAP eventually did become the predominant paradigm. The OMP receded into the past almost as if it had never existed. As (at least Eastern European) European Jewry eventually developed into the Hassidic and "Lithuanian" branches preceding WW2, the SAP became firmly ensconced. I believe this was largely because the same thing was going on in the world "outside.  Why else would the Jewish world almost completely ignore one major tradition and exchange it for another? Clearly, the Christian, philosophical, and medical thinking of the time regarding the "horrors" of masturbation dominated Jewry in the same way that it dominated western thought in general.

So, in conclusion, I don't believe that we can blame "the others" for foisting this stringency upon Judaism.  We were there first :(    However, the fact that it became the predominant Halachic paradigm was almost certainly heavily influenced by outside factors.

The only silver lining I can think of, is that maybe the reverse can be true.  If the general society's dislike for masturbation helped push us toward a stringent Halachic attitude, maybe modern science's recognition that occasional masturbation is normal can push us back to the original Halachic paradigm which accepted indeed that this is true as well. Perhaps. Maybe. With God's help and with common sense and the strength of the Torah sources I have quoted in this series, maybe it can work.  Thanks for reading through my posts on this subject, I think I can move on now to other important subjects. Please let me know in the comments if you think I left something out.