In Jewish thought marital intimacy exists to create “an intellectual, physical and emotional unity between a husband and wife”. It is the way to form the deepest possible connection between a married couple spiritually and physically.

The Torah, when it talks about the first ever couple, Adam and Eve (and by the way the sages point out that they were actually married with a chupah and all the trimmings), says that when they were intimate Adam “knew” his wife. The Hebrew word ledaat, implies connecting to and understanding the essence of a thing. Adam did not know his wife until they were intimate. The purpose was not physical pleasure and was not an attempt to populate the world, it was to connect. Marital intimacy is celebrated in Jewish thought, whilst being extremely private it is never seen as something sinful or shameful.

When Gd created Adam, it was originally a hermaphrodite, a being that was both male and female, and then Gd saw fit to split that original being into two, Adam and Eve, each one of them possessing half of that original soul. Then when Adam and Eve married in the Garden of Eden the two bodies and souls fused back together to create one flesh, basar echad. In marriage, one of the many difficult tasks we are faced with, is to slowly but surely work towards the reuniting of our souls with our wives, whom we consider to be our lost soul mates.

During marital intimacy one of the proper thoughts is that we are reaching the ultimate physical expression of that coming together to form one flesh.

To learn more about this topic email us at the Jewish Marriage Institute