Tikvah
Editors’ Pick

May 8, 2023

Understanding Jewish Attitudes toward Lust

Why pornography can’t be benign.

In a recent online video discussion, a prominent conservative commentator asserted that Judaism, while strictly forbidding adultery, takes a lenient position on lust more generally; he then went on to assert that pornography can serve a benign purpose. Rafi Eis suggests such a misunderstanding of traditional views on sexuality rests on a “simplistic” view of the distinction between thought and action:

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