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Forbidden relationships in Judaism (Hebrew עריות Arayot, or איסורי ביאה Isurey bi'ah) are those intimate relationships which are forbidden per the various prohibitions in the Torah and subsequent rabbinical injunctions. Engaging in some forbidden relationships is considered such a serious sin in Jewish law that unlike most other negative commandments, in which one is allowed to transgress the commandment when a life is on the line, engaging in a forbidden relationship is forbidden, even when the alternative is death.

With married women

According to the Holiness Code, and the Deuteronomic Code, Adultery is forbidden. In the Priestly Code of the Book of Numbers, it is required that a pregnant woman suspected of adultery be subjected to the Ordeal of Bitter Water, a form of trial by ordeal, if her husband had become fiercely jealous about the pregnancy (literally has the storm-wind of jealousy), and there are not enough witnesses able to confirm the woman's guilt or innocence.

The Holiness Code twice prohibits a man from having sexual relations with a woman during the time of her menstrual period

Exogamy

Exogamous marriage is forbidden in Judaism. In relation to intermarriage with a Canaanite the prohibition is biblical,, while marriage with other nationalities is forbidden by the Talmudic sages. Two special classes of people in Israelite society - Nethinim and Gibeonites - were regarded as foreigners in relation to this rule, and hence the Talmud forbids marriage to them.

Incest

As with most religions, incest is forbidden by Jewish religious law. However, the exact definition of incest does not necessarily correspond to the laws which western nations have against incest; in particular, they are not based on degree of relation. The Book of Leviticus outlines the categories of kinship which constitute "incest" according to Jewish religious law. As literally stated in Leviticus, they are:

• One's mother (Lev. 18:7)
• One's father (Lev. 18:7)
• One's stepmother (Lev. 18:8)
• One's paternal or maternal sister (Lev. 18:9)
• One's paternal sister through one's father's wife (Lev. 18:11)
• One's daughter (inferred from Lev. 18:10)
• One's granddaughter (Lev. 18:10)
• A woman and her daughter (Lev. 18:17)
• A woman and her granddaughter (Lev. 18:17)
• One's aunt by blood (Lev. 18:12-13)
• One's father's brother (Lev. 18:14)
• One's father's brother's wife (Lev. 18:14)
• One's daughter-in-law (Lev. 18:15)
• One's brother's wife (Lev. 18:16)
• One's wife's sister during one's wife's lifetime, even if since divorced (Lev. 18:18)

Rabbinically prohibited relationships

In addition to the relationships biblically prohibited to Jews, rabbis have gone further to prohibit certain additional relationships with various blood relatives and in-laws. These are called "Shni'ot" (secondary prohibitions). Some of these are:

• One's grandmother
• One's great-grandmother
• One's grandfather's wife
• One's great-grandfather's wife
• One's grandson's wife

Exclusions from the assembly

The Bible prohibits men from taking part in the qahal of Hashem if they are members of certain categories of people. Jewish tradition considers this to be solely a limitation on marriage.

Groups

Jewish people are prohibited from marrying with the following groups:

• Male Moabite and Ammonite converts (Deut. 23:4)
• Egyptian converts up to the third generation (Deut. 23:8-9)
• Edomite converts up to the third generation (Deut. 23:8-9)

As the people currently living in those areas may not be be descended from the original peoples, these three prohibitions do not apply today.

Bastards

The Talmud forbids marriage to a mamzer. This includes children resulting from an incestuous marriage, and children resulting from adultery, but does not include the children of two unmarried people, who are not related to each other. A convert may marry a mamzer, but the children are still mamzerim.

Spadones

Jewish tradition also forbids marriage to a man who has been forcibly emasculated; the Greek term spadones, which is used to refer to such people, is used in the Septuagint to denote certain foreign political officials (resembling the meaning of eunuch). The Jewish prohibition does not include men who were born without visible testicles (conditions including cryptorchidism), or without a visible penis (conditions including hermaphroditism). There is dispute, even in traditional Judaism, about whether this prohibited group of men should include those who have become, at some point since their birth, emasculated as the result of a disease.

Special rules for priests

According to the bible, Israelite priests are not allowed to marry:

• divorcees
• a woman who has had a forbidden sexual relationships (like with a married man or a Canaanite (such a woman is called a zonah in the Torah) (Lev. 21:7)
• a woman who was born of the prohibited relations of a kohen (called a chalalah) (Lev. 21:7)
• women captured during warfare
• a widow who's brother-in-law refused to perform a levirate marriage and she consequently performs the Halitzah ceremony.

The Kohen Gadol (high priest) must also not marry a widow (Lev. 21:14). Sexual relations with a widow outside of marriage are also forbidden (Lev. 21:15). He is required to marry a virgin maiden (Lev. 21:13), and may not marry converts. However, if he was married to such woman prior to becoming high priest, he may remain married to her.

Homosexuality

The Holiness Code of Leviticus forbids certain activity involving two men together.

Orthodox

Orthodox Judaism inteprets this regulation as forbiding men from lying with other men in the manner in which they would with a woman. Leviticus 18:14 specifically prohibits such relationships with one's father or uncle.

There are three reasons Orthodox rabbis give for homosexuality being prohibited in Jewish law:

1. It is a defiance of gender anatomy, which is unlike God's intention of procreation and sexual activity
2. The sexual arousal involved results in a vain emission of semen
3. It may lead a man to abandon his family

Reform

Reform Judaisim interprets the regulation as forbidding men from using sex as a form of ownership over men. Reform Jewish authors have revisited the Leviticus text and ask why the text mentions that one should not lie with a man “as with a woman.” If it is to be assumed that the Torah does not waste words, the authors ask why the Torah includes this extra clause. Most Reform Jews suggest that since intercourse involved possession (one of the ways in which a man ‘acquired’ a wife was to have intercourse with her), similar to the Christian theology of using sex to 'consumate' a marriage, it was abhorrent that a man might acquire another man – it is not the act of homosexual intercourse itself which is abhorrent, but using this act to acquire another man and therefore confuse the gender boundary.

Lesbianism

In Orthodox Judaism, lesbianism is prohibited, on the assumption that it falls under the category of "the activities of (ancient) Egypt (see Lev. 18:3)". However, it is not considered adultery, and does not prohibit the woman to a kohen.

Animals

Bestiality is prohibited by the Covenant Code of the Book of Exodus, and by the Holiness Code of Leviticus; the prohibition occurs in two distinct parts of the latter, both of which emphasise that bestiality is prohibited both for men and for women.

Age

The average age of puberty was deemed to occur at 14 years of age; it was strictly forbidden, by classical rabbinical literature, for parents to allow their boys to marry before reaching this age. Despite the young threshold for marriage, marriages with a large age gap between the spouses (eg. between a young man and an old woman) were thoroughly opposed by the classical rabbis

Ability to give consent

Children, however, were not regarded as old enough to make an informed decision, and so could not consent to marriage themselves, although marriage to a female child was still permissable if her father consented, whether she agreed to it or not; if the father was dead, such consent could be given by her mother, or her brothers, but in this latter case the girl could annul the marriage when she reached the "standard" age of puberty (12), if she wished.

The mentally handicapped, and deaf-mutes, were also regarded, by traditional Jewish law, as being unable to give their consent; indeed, marriage to such people was forbidden. However, the rabbis allowed deaf-mutes to marry each other.

References

• Lamm, Maurice (2008), The Jewish Way in Love and Marriage, Jonathan David
• Eisenberg, Ronald (2005), The 613 mitzvot: a contemporary guide to the commandments of Judaism, Schreiber Publishing

1. ^ Eisenberg 2005, p. 324.
2. Leviticus 18:20
3. Leviticus 20:10
4. Deuteronomy 22:22
5. Peake's commentary on the Bible ad loc
6. Numbers 5:11–31
7. Leviticus 18:19
8. Leviticus 20:18
9. Genesis 24:2–4
10. Genesis
11. Deuteronomy 7:3
12. Kiddushin 68b
13. Yadayim 4:4
14. Rabbi Joseph Karo, Shulchan Aruch, III:4:10 and commentaries, Habahir edition, Leshem publishers
15. Yebamot, 4:13
16. ^ Cite error: The named reference JELaws was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
17. Maimonidies, Mishneh Torah, Sanctity, Laws of Sexual Prohibitions, 15:7-8
18. Jacob ben Asher, Eben ha-'Ezer, 5
19. Ketubot 22a
20. Ketubot 27a
21. Yebamot 24a
22. Leviticus 21:17 (in the King James Version, it is verse 14 instead)
23. Leviticus 18:22
24. Eisenberg 2005, p. 327.
25. Eisenberg 2005, p. 325
26. http://www.reformjudaism.org.uk/a-to-z-of-reform-judaism/contemporary-issues/homosexuality.html
27. Rabbi Joseph Karo, Shulchan Aruch, III:20:2
28. Beit Sh'muel, ad. loc. based on Maimonidies
29. Exodus 22:19
30. Leviticus 18:23
31. ^ Leviticus 20:15
32. ^ Leviticus 20:16
33. ^ Sanhedrin 76b
34. Yebamot 44a
35. Sanhedrin 76a

• Jewish marital law