Parents throughout the spectrum of Jewish practice share a common hope: that their children will grow into adults capable of building loving relationships, healthy marriages, and lives guided by Jewish values.

Experiencing  intimacy — the capacity to know another person and to be known, to balance autonomy with connection, to communicate honestly, and to tolerate vulnerability — is central to that hope. Sexuality is one expression of intimacy, but not its only definition. Healthy sexual development means learning to integrate desire, relationships, and behavior in ways that are consistent with one’s values.

Are we educating toward that goal?

For many years, conversations about sexuality in religious communities have focused primarily on what is prohibited. We teach boundaries, we teach modesty and in premarital education courses typically offered to engaged young adults, we teach the laws that govern physical relationships.

Those conversations are important. But they are not enough.

Sexuality cannot be reduced to behavior alone. It encompasses bodily changes, powerful emotions, curiosity, attraction, desire, identity, and the gradual task of learning how to relate to oneself and to others. While discussions of prohibitions and boundaries have their place, many religious teens and young adults experience these normal developmental processes with loneliness, confusion, conflict, and shame.

We spend a great deal of time teaching sexual boundaries, but far less time teaching relational integrity. Relational integrity means learning to respect another person’s autonomy, communicate openly, tolerate rejection, repair conflict, cultivate empathy, and recognize that intimacy is built through mutuality rather than entitlement.

Today’s adolescents and emerging adults are growing up in a world saturated with sexual messages. Whether through social media, artificial intelligence, peers, or pornography, information about sex has never been more........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)