2000 Years of Jewish Debate on Love and Marital Intimacy

Noam Zion is a Senior Fellow Emeritus of the Kogod Research Center at the Shalom Hartman Institute since 1978. He studied philosophy and holds degrees from Columbia University and the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. He studied bible and rabbinics at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America and the Hartman Beit Midrash. In the past, he led the Tichon program for North American Jewish educators and he teaches in Hartman Institute rabbinic programs: the Be’eri program

2000 Years of Jewish Debate on Love and Marital Intimacy

Session 1

Session 2

Introducing a new book by Noam Zion, Sanctified Sex (August, 2021), explore mitzvat onah, sex education, and marital intimacy from the Torah through the Talmud to the contemporary debate between Haredim on sexual and emotional needs and the pursuit of spiritual fulfillment and sanctity.

Does Judaism urge us to transcend those more mundane needs or at most to fulfill them minimally in order to reach a higher plane of intellectual and spiritual achievement? Or is the sacred embodied in the body and its apex in the union of spousal love? Discover thought-provoking advice from traditional Judaism to nurture our own love life in the 21st century.