Let's talk about sex Let's talk about sex

Awkward coupling at the train station

Minor brouhaha as rabbi takes offense at public event discussing sexuality

By Jessica Steinberg

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15 May 2015, 8:13 am

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Jessica Steinberg, The Times of Israel's culture and lifestyles editor, covers the Sabra scene from south to north and back to the center

An illustration of lovers (Photo credit: Yossi Zamir/Flash 90)

A prominent Haifa rabbi is finding fault with a planned series of public talks about sex and intimacy.

Merkaz Yahel — The Center for Jewish Intimacy — is sponsoring “TED in Bed,” a series of TED-style talks about sex, intimacy and the body, at Jerusalem’s First Station on Monday. The center gears itself toward the modern Orthodox community which, they say, often lacks knowledge and information about healthy sexual relationships.

After the program was written about in Kipa, a website for Israel’s national religious community, Rabbi Eliyahu Zini, the head of Yeshiva Or Vishua, took umbrage at the event.

Zini, who also has a doctorate in math and lectured at the Technion as well as serving as its rabbi, has always advocated combining science and Jewish learning.

The prominent rabbi is also known to be fiercely opinionated and at times dogmatic in his statements. Several years ago, he led Technion students in a battle to remove mezuzahs affixed to the dorm rooms used by gay couples, in protest of the university’s decision to allow gay couples to live in housing for married couples.

Zini has since retired from his posts at the Technion.

When interviewed in a follow-up piece in Kipa, he said that a public forum is not the place to discuss intimate subjects.

“In recent years, this kind of discussion has become an opportunity to put an ultra-Orthodox stamp of approval on pornography,” he told Kipa.

He said the subject of sexuality and intimacy should only be discussed in a private, more personal framework.

The first meeting of “TED in Bed” will offer short, 20-minute talks about how to talk about sexuality with kids, female sexuality, and what men really want in bed. The speakers include two Orthodox rabbis — Rabbi Raffi Ostroff, a founder of the center; and his Yahel cofounder, Michal Prins, a social worker specializing in sexual issues.

Prins initially told Kipa that the idea of the event was to create a comfortable forum for Orthodox Jews to discuss sexuality.

TED in Bed, Monday, May 18, 8:15 p.m., First Station.