What lies behind the attraction between the genders?
Sexuality is a subject about which no one is neutral. Everyone has a sexual
nature, everyone has a need for sexuality, and everyone has a sexual
personality that has been formed by home, schooling, the trial and error of
life experience, and whatever they pick up along the way from the subtle and
not-so-subtle influences of the society in which they live.
In seeking to make sense of our sexuality we must look to
its origins. Where does our sexuality come from? In this article, I would like
to look at two approaches to that question.
One is the prevalent, contemporary, scientific approach. And
then we'll contrast it with the Torah approach - specifically, the
Kabbalistic-Chassidic perspective on Torah.
There are, of course, numerous secular-scientific theories
of sexuality. Let us examine what is probably the most dominant one: the
biological or evolutionary theory which is essentially based on the idea that
"the survival of the fittest" is the primary force in nature and the
source of any given creature's particular characteristics, from single cells
right up the "evolutionary chain" to animals and humans.
From this perspective, our sexuality derives from the fact
that the perpetuation of the species is achieved through a sexual relationship
between a male and a female. The male will therefore search for the female that
is most fertile, and that will bear the healthiest offspring; and the female
will search for a male that provides the healthiest seed, that is the most
virile and that will protect the young.
This theory explains many things about our sexuality. It
explains why men and women seek out and mate with each other. It explains why
certain features in the woman or in the man are extremely enticing to the
opposite gender because they reflect on elements of fertility or signs of
health that are important for the perpetuation of the species.
What this theory essentially says is that behind the
mystique and the beauty, the romance and the sensuality in which human
sexuality comes enveloped, behind it all really lays a primal force: the need
to exist, and to perpetuate that existence. Since the human being is an animal
with a certain degree of sophistication, human sexuality has evolved to address
that sophistication. Modern man is not prepared to think of him or she merely
as production machines to bear children, so in order to entice two people into
a union, evolution and biology have conspired to imbue the sexual act not only
with pleasure but also with a mystique that compels us along the romantic
journey.
Gazing into a loved one's eyes across a candlelit
table-for-two, the human being may think that he or she has risen above a survival-of-the-fittest
mode of existence; but, in truth, this "rising higher" is just
nature's way of packaging that drive. Two human beings courting each other are
essentially the same as two bees courting each other. One bee will buzz a certain
way or give off a certain scent, but what it comes down to is that these are
tactics to get them together to mate and bear offspring. By the same token, the
accouterments of human sexuality, the romance, the flowers, the music, the
moonlight are really just nature's way of getting two people together.
Nature is ruthless. Nature must prevail. So nature finds the
means to get a male and a female to mate.
This, basically, is the scientific approach to human
sexuality. Let us now contrast this with the Torah's approach.
The Torah's conception of human sexuality is expressed in
the opening chapters of Genesis, and states that sexual attraction between
human beings is driven by a completely different force: their search for their
divine image, for their quintessential self.
The Torah describes man as originally having been created as
a "two-sided" being: "Male and female He created them and He
called their name: man." G-d then split this two-sided creature into two,
and ever since, the divided halves of the divine image seek and yearn for each
other.
They're not half individuals; man is a full-fledged
personality and woman is a full-fledged personality. But there are elements in
their transcendental persona, in their completeness, that remain incomplete if
they don't find each other. There's something missing in each of them; they
were once part of a greater whole.
To put it in more mystical, or more divine, terms: they're
really searching to become one with G-d.
The human race is in essence one entity, a male-female singularity.
When man and woman come together and unite in a marital union, they recreate
the divine image in which they were both formed as one.
The teachings of Kabbalah take this a step further, seeing
the male/female dynamic not just as two genders within a species. According to
the Kabbalah, these are two forms of energy that, in the most abstract form,
are referred to as an internal energy and a projective energy. Feminine energy
and masculine energy exist in each man and in each woman, and in every part of
nature.
Even G-dliness is sometimes described in the feminine and
sometimes in the masculine. Contrary to the common perception of the
"patriarchal" G-d of the Bible, many of the divine attributes are
feminine, such as the Shechinah, which is the feminine dimension of G-dliness.
So what we have here is a split of two energies, and a
yearning and inclination to become one whole. The human race was created in the
divine image, but that human race is half male and half female, and through
their union they become that larger whole, that divine image that searches for
union with G-d, that seeks a higher reality.
This is the soul of sexual attraction. This attraction,
which manifests itself in many physical sensations, from a faster heartbeat to
a physical attraction to another person, is essentially the attraction of male
to female and female to male to become a complete, divine whole, connecting to
their source in G-d. Not that they've ever been completely disconnected; but
consciously, people can go off on their own individual narcissistic, even
selfish, path. And here, there's a voice in you saying: I yearn for something
greater. When a man is physically attracted to a woman, or a woman to a man, it
may seem a very biological thing, but from a Jewish, Torah perspective, it's
just a physical manifestation of a very deep spiritual attraction.
This is not to say that the Torah's concept of sexuality is
not intrinsically tied in to the objective of creating new life. It certainly
is. But perpetuation of the species is not the sole end of our sexuality.
Rather, it's the other way around: the divine nature of our sexuality - the
fact that the union of male and female completes the divine image in which they
were created - is what gives us the power to bring life into the world.
So there is something divine about the union itself. This is
reflected in Halachah (Torah law) which extends the sanctity of marriage also
to circumstances in which the generation of offspring is not a possibility
(such as in the case of a man and/or woman who are beyond childbearing age, or
who are physically unable to bear children). If sexuality were simply the
mechanism for childbearing, one might argue: "Hey, no perpetuation of the
species, what's the point of marriage and sexuality? Just a selfish pleasure?
Where's the holiness?" The answer is, yes, sexuality qua sexuality is
holy. Male and female uniting is a divine act, a divine experience.
