How do we learn how to love? to Make better love?
Never too late and there are multiple options, often surprising, as Emma Thompson and Daryl McDonald portray in the moving and sexy recent Netflix late night watch: GOOD LUCK TO YOU, LEO GRANDE.
Pre porn, pre movies, perhaps pre patriarchy , there seems to have been priests and priestesses whose task it was to initiate and reignite the eros of the people, teaching how to be better lovers. Much is unclear about these old traditions. But it seems clear that the sacred aspect of the complex, often cruel, world of what we call today sex-work was what once elevated the proficient providers of pleasures to the position of priesthood, serving in temples devoted to divine and embodied love.
Though it’s unclear how these ancient customs functioned, there is sufficient evidence to their existence in Sumerian, Phoenician, Canaanite and other cultures, which is likely why these love rituals are explicitly banned in today’s chapter. Listed among the last list of do’s and don’t’s that Moses tells his people in preparation for their new promised land chapter, this one prohibits the Hebrews from participating in a specific form of sex work (though it doesn’t, or can’t - ban the practice itself):
לֹא־תִהְיֶ֥ה קְדֵשָׁ֖ה מִבְּנ֣וֹת יִשְׂרָאֵ֑ל וְלֹֽא־יִהְיֶ֥ה קָדֵ֖שׁ מִבְּנֵ֥י יִשְׂרָאֵֽל׃
“No Israelite woman shall be a Kedesha, sacred prostitute, nor shall any Israelite man be a Kadesh, sacred prostitute.”
Scholars identify kedeshah and kadesh as individuals involved in ritualized sexual activity as part of worship at specfic temple, in service to a deity. Whether this was an autonomous choice at all times is debated. Biblical scholar Samuel R. Driver (1846-1914) commented:
“… The rendering ‘harlot’ and ‘sodomite’ are both inadequate: in neither case is ordinary immorality intended but immorality practiced in the worship of a deity, and in the immediate precincts of a temple.”
The link between the Hebrew word for Sacred - Kodesh, Kaddish, Kiddush - and the Semitic term for these providers of the sacred sensual - is the stuff of much research. This biblical ban on “Jewish sex work’ in this specific context affirms the popularity of the phenomena, known enough for this book’s authors to merit prohibition. Was the problem that these local rituals provoked about explicit sexuality in an increasingly puritanical society- or about worship of other local deities beside YHWH? Probably both, it’s unclear. But what is clear that there are cultures here at war, this culture war on the sensual and sacred that goes on.
My friend and teacher Ohad Pele Ezrahi’s compelling book Kedesha reimagines in vivid detail what may have really happened in Jerusalem’s competing temples. Messy then and now - we are still figuring out how to learn how to love more and hurt less.
Under the radar, and below the bible belt are hidden reservoirs and rituals of sensuality and sacred connections, still alluded to in some of our rituals today - where the Kodesh persists. With consent and mutual respect.
Tonight, under the full full moon, we begin the harvest holiday of Holy Huts - Succot, celebrating abundance and joy of a new season. It once was a pilgrimage holiday famous for its ‘lewd love making’ celebrations in the temple. O well. Nowadays, Kiddush cups are raised, and shared with feasting friends, full to the brim with juices of blessings, sensual semitic somatic eros in domestic dosage, kodesh in multiple ways. A ritual of lifting up love of life, no matter how messy.
All week long, through this week festival, echoed in the chapters coming up in the Book of Words, other rituals will emerge, marking life’s up’s and down’s, all sacred transitions.
Happy Holy Days of Huts.
Below the Bible Belt: 929 chapters, 42 months, daily reflections: Join Rabbi Amichai’s 3+ years interactive online quest to question, queer + re-read between the lines of the entire Hebrew Bible, with daily reflections, weekly videos and monthly learning sessions. January 2022-July 2025
#Deuteronomy #D’vraim #fifthbookoftorah #Kadesh #Kedesha #sacredsex #Dvarim23 #holysexworkers #kedoshim #sacredsexwork #thetorah #hebrewbible #whowrotethebible? #Succot #holyhuts #freelove #hebrewmyth #929 #torah #bible #hiddenbible #sefaria #929english #labshul #myth #belowthebiblebelt #postpatriarchy