ga lit & ,: 2 •

Mazel
Toy!.

"Kosher Sex" rabbi
promotes marital passion.

DAVID SACHS
StaffWriter

sounlit

ge

At
3N

U.

AI U
ee

e

ena,

Uninht.

Rabbi conveys

prescription for

marital happiness

at JCC talk.

S

hmuley Boteach's parents
divorced when he was just
8 years old. Since then, he
has learned a lot about tra-
ditional Judaism and sex.
And if they knew then what he
knows now, his parents might still be
together.
Rabbi Boteach isn't shy when
talking about sex and he isn't coy
about his motivation. He repeated it
several times.
"I'm a child of divorce," said the
rabbi, author of the best-selling self-
help book, Kosher Sex. He says he

was chosen by God to "strengthen
marriages and bring passion back
from the marital morgue.
"I want to believe in love and so
do your kids," he said.
Rabbi Boteach spoke
to some 600 people on
June 13 at the annual
Reva Stocker Memorial
Lecture at the Jewish
Community Center in
West Bloomfield. This
was the fifth such lecture of the
series endowed by Reva Stocker and
co-sponsored by the Southfield-
based Jewish Family Service and the
Jewish Federation of Metropolitan
Detroit. The series is designed to
raise issues involving abuse within
the family and to advocate healthy
choices of behavior. This year's was
the first "memorial" lecture; Mrs.
Stocker died Aug. 17, 1999.
Although Rabbi Boteach used
extensive humor in his lecture, he
expressed horror when citing a cur-

rent 67 percent divorce rate for mar-
riages in the U.S. since 1980. He
also is disturbed that the average age
of Jewish first-time married couples
has increased by five years to close to
age 30 over the last
decade. He targeted his
talk to married couples
who want to revive their
relationship and singles
possibly hesitant to get
married.
The rabbi describes a lack of both
passion and intimacy in many mar-
riages, and much boredom. Fear and
faultfinding have replaced love and
devotion. People look for satisfaction
outside the marriage through affairs
and pornography, he says.

Mode, And Passion

Rabbi Boteach advocates "kosher
sex" remedies based upon traditional
Jewish law:
• Modesty. Modesty by women

6/23

2000

