“The art of loving is hard to learn… and even harder to master.”

— Dr. Elliot Malamet

When you are part of a religious community, the acts of loving and being loved can be surprisingly complex, requiring a delicate balancing act between personal freedom and external expectations, and between sexual pleasure and religious duty.

Singlehood is seen in the community as a problem to be solved — particularly for Jewish women.

From accessing the ritual of the mikvah to negotiating healthy sexuality to coping with the pain of breaking up, single Jewish women regularly navigate complicated terrain, and often without rules or rituals that are compatible with dating in modernity.

This episode is an instalment of Across the Sea, a podcast about mental health and Judaism. In this episode, Dr. Elliot Malamet invites guests Rabbi Rachel Rosenbluth and Micki Lavin-Pell to discuss dating and building healthy relationships while Jewish.

“Singleness is definitely supposed to be a temporary stage — as temporary as possible.”

— Bluth

This‌ ‌episode discusses:‌ ‌

✔ The possibility of “holy intimacy,” a sacred sexuality that may be experienced before marriage

✔ The lessons that we can learn from break-ups & how to benefit from them going forward

✔ Whether we need to develop a new Jewish sexual ethos — and what it may include

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