As a young teenager, few things gave me as much joy as making my parents and teachers proud of me. When I was 15, I made a siyum on 400 blatt Gemara. When I was 17, I had already completed over half of shas. I would glow with pride whenever my Rebbeim complimented me, or my parents expressed their satisfaction in my accomplishments. But deep down, I knew it was all fake. I did not deserve praise - I was a Rasha, contaminated with the most filthy avoros imaginable. I was a fraud.
It is a bit difficult to talk about these topics, but so many of us have been hurt that I feel I must speak of it. It would start innocently enough. I was a healthy, energetic, and testosterone-filled male teenager, and, like every other normally developed primate on planet earth, I needed sexual release. I would throw myself into my learning, hoping against hope that my urges would somehow disappear. Of course, I was fighting a failing battle. It is difficult to describe the sense of despair and hopelessness that would fill me after I inevitably succumbed to my natural desires.
Next to my bed, I kept a tiny paper with a list of numbers. Each number represented the number of days that I had managed to control myself. Each time I sinned, I would cry, resolving to do better. Inevitably I failed, forced to add a new number to my little paper of guilt. Sometimes, after enough failures, I would stop crying, too broken to conjure tears. Yet when I put my paper away, I had to go out and face the world. I had to plaster on a mask, stepping into the role I did not deserve. To the world, I was a sincere and dedicated masmid, the star of the yeshiva. Only I knew the truth.
My sins were my dark secret. I could talk to nobody. I had far too much pride to discuss the horrific problem (being an average teenager) with my mentors or rebbeim. I spiraled into a cycle of commitment, falling, promising to do better, falling again, recommitting, trying to find new ways to guard myself, falling, getting sick and tired, recommitting for real this time, falling, feeling filthy and dirty, re-committing, finding some new Sefer or system to control myself, re-falling, getting sick and tired of getting sick and tired, re-committing, etc., until all sanity was lost.
Our Rebbaim did not help us. Many understood the nightmare we were dealing with in our private lives, but few were courageous enough to stand by our side. I have spoken friends who have gone to the Mir, Chaim Berlin, and other mainstream yeshivas, they all affirm that – by and large – the topic of masturbation was verboten. At best, they were given some token, heavily hinted at form of the classic “Toryah, Toryah, Toryah!” shmooze and told just to focus on learning, and everything will be ok.
But we knew better. People from Modern Orthodox backgrounds often fail to see the problem when these issues are discussed. They believe that as long as the rebbeim doesn’t expose their bochurim to guilt-inducing texts, the problem will solve itself. But the rebbaim cannot control the narrative. As young scholars, trained to research and revere the words of Chazal and the poskim, we could (and did) research these texts ourselves. Once a person is exposed to the primary sources, no amount of sugarcoating wash away the trauma. We knew the Gemara in Niddah that exhorted one to cut off their hand rather than lower it below the navel. We knew that the Shulchan Aruch categorized masturbation as the worst sin in the entire body of biblical prohibitions. Furthermore, the Shulchan Aruch writes that one who masturbates must sit in charem, for he is like a murderer whose “hands are full of blood.”
Irrespective of the inefficacy of trying to mitigate these barbaric texts, the truth was that most self-respecting bochurim are far too embarrassed to approach their rebbeim with their struggles, and most rabbeim feel too queasy speaking about it. Even if our rebbeim dared to talk to us about this topic, there is precious little that they could say. No one can override the Shulchan Aruch. Consider the following quote from Rav Wolbe:
The difficult period of adolescence is fertile grounds for the development of excessive guilt feelings. Masturbation is a serious transgression. The vast majority of young people stumbles in this area and are incapable of totally overcoming this problem. The result is guilt feelings. This is the place for proper guidance from rabbis and educators. Rabbis are not authorized to permit what is forbidden, but they can guide, reassure, and encourage the youngster to develop patience with himself. In addition, promoting an active social life and introducing the youngster to the noble treasures of Torah will gradually bring him to forget to transgress. Rather than a constant battle, which is for naught, a positive toiling in Torah and social activity will bring him gradually to wean himself off. This is the approach that is proper in our times.
Look how Rav Wolbe struggles to find a way to help us lost teenagers. But what can he do… “Rabbis are not authorized to permit what is forbidden,” Backed into a corner, he retreats to platitudes and fantasy. Maybe give the boys an active social life and introduce him to the pleasures of the Torah. That will do the trick. If that doesn’t work, tell them to click their shabbos shoes three times and repeat “I think I can, I think I can…”
Rav Wolbe was a Baal teshuva, and like many other self-taught experts, feels competent to opine on matters he did not experience himself. Trust me; all this approach does is cause bochurim to blame themselves when they inevitably fail. Perhaps if I had fully thrown myself into Torah study, then I could have stood strong. But we were failures.
Consider how cruel someone must be to devise a system where every heathy teenager is doomed to fail. For all the guilt, shame, and helplessness that filled my teenage years, the truth was that I had done nothing wrong. I was just a sincere, average teenager being a typical teenager. Almost every living thing that possesses a sexual organ masturbates. Birds masturbate. Masturbation is healthy; it relieves stress, helps induce sleep, and is generally part of the natural order of life. Like Thanos, masturbation is inevitable.
But Yiddishkeit ruined us. It filled us with guilt and a conviction that we were unable to control ourselves. It taught us that no matter how hard we tried to do something, we were not in control. We were helpless and dirty. People love talking about how beautiful Yiddishkeit is – but Judaism is cruel.
As a male, I can only speak about the experience of men and how this Torah law hurt us. But men aren’t the only victim. Married women are also damaged. By denying men the ability to relieve themselves, the Torah places an impossible burden on the wives – like it or not; your body is the only thing preventing your husband from committing the gravest of sins. Aside from the general duty of a wife to make herself available to her husband whenever he pleases, [2] the prohibition against wasting seed adds enormous psychological guilt to a spouse who tries to fend off her partner.
How does Yiddishkeit respond to the basic primal instinct that comes built into men? They constructed barriers, segregating the sexes and forcing women to limit any exposure of the flesh lest their bodies tempt the men around them. What a horrifically misguided approach! Such segregation accomplishes little more than turning young men into quasi-creeps, sensitive to even the slightest exposure, and forever likely to view women as oversexualized objects of forbidden desire.
I wish there were a way out of this mess, but I fear the damage is done. As American culture seeps ever deeper into the frum community, our leaders react by clamping down harder than ever before. TAG has opened up a center in every town, and few schools will accept children unless their parents submit to draconian filtering systems. When I went to an interview with a school to accept my four-year-old child (yes, in Lakewood, they interview the parents, not the children), the first question I was asked is what filter I have on my phone. (The second question was whether I am ready to commit to never expose my children to anything other than Jewish media – no Disney princesses, Peppa Pig, Magic School Bus, only Uncle Moshe and wedding videos.)
All these fences, decrees, and prohibitions, futilely trying to quell the male libido. On the third page of the Mishna Berura, one is confronted with over 100 laws regarding how men can hold their penis and conduct themselves while urinating in order to avoid arousal. Forget about mixed dancing; Men are prohibited from looking at animals mating – even bugs—for fear of becoming aroused. Men are exhorted to walk behind a lion rather than follow a woman in the street, lest one gaze at that which is forbidden. Women’s clothing could not be looked at; heck, men were discouraged from looking at their own organs.
What folly! What utter stupidity! The truth is that biology does not care how carefully you try to guard yourself against becoming aroused— unless you have a chemical imbalance disrupting your physiology, biology always wins. All that these laws and restrictions accomplished was to drive us insane and convince us that it was all somehow our fault.
A respected Rabbi, in a Facebook comment on this topic, suggests that “I don’t think that those who struggle with this should feel demonized, but I also still think the ideals and values serve an important purpose.” Guilting people over masturbation serves an essential societal function.
The problem with this approach is twofold. Firstly it ignores the harsh reality as it is experienced by frum teenagers. We demonize ourselves. Anyone sophisticated enough to read Hebrew cannot avoid stumbling into the brutally condemnatory statements of Chazal and the Rishonim on this topic. How are we supposed not to feel demonized when the core texts exist, raw and open for anyone to read?
Additionally, the actual reality is that this entire construct is human-made. Some men living thousands of years ago were repulsed with their bodies and built laws that hurt countless generations of young men. There is no “ideals and values” that are served by making young men feel ashamed when they indulge in a perfectly natural and healthy activity.