Notes about Sexuality and Religion

by Daniel Boyarin    –    Journal of the History of Sexuality , Jan., 1995.

page 345 footnote 30

This can be demonstrated philologically. The term that is used, and which I have translated as “rubbing,” is used in another sexual context as well: “Our Rabbis have taught: One who is rubbing with her son and he enters her, Bet Shammai say that he has rendered her unfit to marry a priest, and Bet Hillel say that she is fit to marry a priest” (Babylonian Talmud, Sanhedrin 69b). From this context we learn clearly two things: “Rubbing” in- volves contact of external genital with external genital, and it does not include penetration, for the rubbing here is contrasted with the entering. We also learn, by the way, of a fascinating sexual practice that, as long as it did not include penetration, was apparently hardly even disapproved of, to judge from the tone of this passage