Mark Gottlieb on Jewish Sexual Ethics

In the year 2020, we live in the shadow of the sexual revolution. The radical changes in sexual mores and family life that American society experienced in the 1960s and 1970s still reverberate today, having made their impact on everything from popular culture and public education to religious life and the most divisive political controversies.

What caused this massive social revolution? How should Jews think about what it has meant for our own way of life? And what vision of sex, romance, and family can Judaism offer the world?

These are the questions Rabbi Dr. Eliezer Berkovits takes up in “A Jewish Sexual Ethics,” first published in 1976 and republished in 2002 as part of the anthology Essential Essays on Judaism. In this episode, Jonathan Silver is joined by Tikvah Fund Senior Director Rabbi Mark Gottlieb for a discussion of this seminal essay. They examine Berkovits’s life and thought, his understanding of the causes of modern confusion about sexuality, and his distinct vision of Jewish sexual ethics.

Musical selections in this podcast are drawn from the Quintet for Clarinet and Strings, op. 31a, composed by Paul Ben-Haim and performed by the ARC Ensemble as well as “Ulterior” by Swan Production.