Against the background of a world consumed by depersonalizing technology Shabbat emerges as the ‘Day of Love and Relationship’. Drawing on the rabbinic and the mystical traditions, this session will argue that this remarkable feature of Shabbat accompanied by a significant array of Jewish texts present Judaism as a distinctive spirituality that consciously affirms physical pleasure, social interaction and love-making. At the same time we will look at sources that call for the primacy of ascetic denial and for an effort to diminish the experience of sexual pleasure. Interspersed between these sources, we will consider the larger context in which religious commitments provoke anxiety and psychological conflict about sexual pleasure and the centrality of the body, as well as their impact on our narratives and behavior today.
Texts that will be studied include Maimonides’ Mishneh Torah, Joseph Gikatilla’s Holy Letter (a 13th century mystical ‘love’ manual), the Shulhan Arukh (16th century code of Jewish law) and a 17th century Karaite classic.
