10 Ernest I. Jacob

or placing their hand below their belt(Shab. 118b) or wearing tight clothing, and so forth.

Unnatural sexual acts remained prohibited, and as Jews were not to have such inclinations(A.Z. 22b), they were assigned solely to the villains of certain biblical tales as the people of Sodom, Pharaoh , the pagan prophets, Balaam , and Nebuchadnezzar . The list also included the Romans, the oppressors of Jews in the talmudic period. This followed the universal human pattern of accusing political, religious, or personal adversaries of objectionable sexual behavior.

The serpent of Paradise could also be blamed for evil thoughts and deeds; one teacher claimed that it had intercourse with Eve and implanted dirt into human heredity; however, with Israel , this heredity, a kind of original sin, supposedly lost its power when the people stood at the foot of Mt. Sinai. Another talmudic scholar testified to bestiality by asserting that he had witnessed a non-Jew have intercourse with a goose that he had brought to market and then fried and eaten(A.Z. 22b). In reality, Jews could not have been free of such abnormal sexual behavior, otherwise there would have been no need to prohibit being alone with an animal(Kid . 81b) or a widow keeping a dog(B. M. 71a). Jews were also prohibited from exposing non-Jews to such temptations(A. Z. 22b).

Normal sexual activity was never prohibited and was considered willed by God . This thought was colorfully expressed through the story that God once delivering the yetzer hara,“evil inclination,”(sexual urge) into the hands of the pious;,they imprisoned it. As a result all procreation ceased and not even an egg could be found throughout the land. The sages debated and stated that if we execute it, the world will come to an end, so they pleaded that its power be reduced by half, but Heaven did not permit it. So they blinded it, with the result that people are at least not infatuated with their close relatives(San. 64a). Another talmudic sage stated“let us be grateful to our parents. Had they not sinned we would not have been born.”(A. Z. 5a). Another recommended that the yetzer hara