Friday, October 9, 2020

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 a...
Wednesday, October 7, 2020

Changing the Halachic Masturbation Paradigm

›
It should be obvious that the Shulchan Aruch is by far not the last word in the Halacha, and that things have continued to develop over the ...
12 comments:
Wednesday, September 30, 2020

Rav Yosef Karo Uses the Zohar to Eliminate the Opposition

›
In this post we will finally tie our two separate threads together, the mystical Kabbalistic thread and the Halachic thread.  Rabbi Yosef Ka...
Tuesday, September 29, 2020

The Tur Interprets the Rambam

›
In this post, we will go back to Halachic world, and see how the conception of the prohibition against masturbation evolved as it became cod...
Friday, September 25, 2020

The Zohar and Lurianic Kabbalah

›
The influence of the Zohar on the future attitude of Jewish religious thinking regarding masturbation would be impossible to overstate.  I s...
Wednesday, September 23, 2020

The Spanish Kabbalists, the Science of Semen, Pegam HaBrit and more Concepts are Born

›
While the Halachic world was evolving its definition of "Hashchatat Zera" and eventually  codifying it as law, the parrallel world...
Tuesday, September 22, 2020

The Transition to one of the Ten Commandments - Rabbeinu Yona of Gerondi, the Semak, and more

›
The influence of the Chasidei Ashkenaz was not limited to French and German Jewry.  Their Sephardic brethren to the South were in close cont...