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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, as interpreted by Rabbinic Judaism, or by Karaite Judaism, together with a number of other subsequent injunctions. Engaging in some forbidden relationships is considered such a serious sin in Jewish law that that one should be willing to die, rather than commit them; the Talmud argues that most other biblical commandments are not so important that one need commit self-sacrifice, in order to obey them

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.

Sexual intercourse with a menstruating woman is often regarded with disgust; the Torah is no different, as the Holiness Code twice prohibits it. Israelite society is not the only culture with a formal prohibition against intercourse during menstruation; the Dogon, for example, also strictly forbid it.

Exogamy

The Biblical position on exogamous marriage is somewhat unspecified, except in relation to intermarriage with a Canaanite, which the majority of the Israelite patriarchs are depicted as criticising. This attitude is formalised in the Deuteronomic Code, which forbids intermarriage with Canaanites. 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..

However, intermarriage to non-Canaanites clearly occurs on several occasions in the Torah, and early parts of the Deuteronomic history, without direct criticism; for example, King David is described as marrying the daughter of the king of Geshur, and Bathsheba as having married Uriah the Hittite. The Talmud accounts for this, on the basis that marriage between a Jew and a convert to Judaism was not regarded as intermarriage. Hence, all the Biblical passages which appear to support intermarriages, such as that of Joseph to Asenath, and that of Ruth, were regarded by the classical rabbis as having occurred only after the foreign spouse had converted to Judaism.

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. 18:13)
• 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 additional relationships were termed seconds (Hebrew: sheniyyot), and included:

• 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)

The Kohen Gadol 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.

The Talmudic writers also forbade marriage between a priest and:

• women captured during warfare
• a widow who's brother-in-law refused to perform a levirate marriage and she consequently performs the Halitzah ceremony.

Although the first century destruction of the temple in Jerusalem resulted in the priesthood being redundant, the Torah frequently portrays the Israelite priesthood as an hereditary position, and so the rabbis of the middle ages regarded these regulations as applying, still, to all men who claim to be descended from such priests; such claims can often be detected in modern surnames resembling the Hebrew word kohen, the term used in most parts of the masoretic text to mean priest (the cognates in related languages, however, mean soothsayer).

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 completely 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. Sanhedrin, 74a
3. Leviticus 18:20
4. Leviticus 20:10
5. Deuteronomy 22:22
6. Peake's commentary on the Bible ad loc
7. Numbers 5:11–31
8. Paula Weideger, Menstruation and menopause : the physiology and psychology, the myth and the reality, (1975), pages 126-127
9. Leviticus 18:19
10. Leviticus 20:18
11. Beverly Strassmann, Predictors of fecundability and conception waits among the Dogon of Mali in American Journal of Physical Anthropology (1996), volume 105, pages 167-184
12. Genesis 24:2–4
13. Genesis
14. Deuteronomy 7:3
15. Kiddushin 68b
16. Yadayim 4:4
17. 2 Samuel 3:3
18. 2 Samuel 11:3
19. Berakhot 28a
20. Kiddushin 5:4 (Tosefta)
21. Genesis Rabbah, 65
22. Rabbi Joseph Karo, Shulchan Aruch, III:4:10 and commentaries, Habahir edition, Leshem publishers
23. Yebamot, 4:13
24. ^ Cite error: The named reference JELaws was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
25. Maimonidies, Mishneh Torah, Sanctity, Laws of Sexual Prohibitions, 15:7-8
26. Jacob ben Asher, Eben ha-'Ezer, 5
27. Leviticus 21:17 (in the King James Version, it is verse 14 instead)
28. Ketubot 22a
29. Ketubot 27a
30. Yebamot 24a
31. This article incorporates text from the 1903 Encyclopaedia Biblica article "Priest", a publication now in the public domain.
32. Leviticus 18:22
33. Eisenberg 2005, p. 327.
34. Eisenberg 2005, p. 325
35. http://www.reformjudaism.org.uk/a-to-z-of-reform-judaism/contemporary-issues/homosexuality.html
36. Rabbi Joseph Karo, Shulchan Aruch, III:20:2
37. Beit Sh'muel, ad. loc. based on Maimonidies
38. Exodus 22:19
39. Leviticus 18:23
40. ^ Leviticus 20:15
41. ^ Leviticus 20:16
42. ^ Sanhedrin 76b
43. Yebamot 44a
44. Sanhedrin 76a

• Jewish marital law