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Kosher Coupling
Rabbi Shmuley Boteach

The Bible's Erotic Book
What's a long erotic love poem doing in the biblical canon? Teaching us how to improve our ordinary lives.

For all our material prosperity and our technological marvels, it still seems that something is missing from life. For all our successes, we in the West don¹t feel good about ourselves.

We're insatiable and we don't savor our achievements. We're medicated, materialistic, and divorced. Some say we've become shallow and have dedicated our lives to insubstantial pursuits. Others accuse us of being narcissists, too self-absorbed to rise to the level of sacrifice of previous generations. Still others fault our ambition. We have no time for relationships. We're all working too hard. We're driven by insecurity and fear.

All of the above are symptomatic of a more fundamental problem....

That is the reason, in my opinion, that the Jews have always read the Song of Songs (Song of Solomon) on the holiday of Passover, a holiday which celebrates the birth of our nationhood. Being freed of Egyptian slavery made our bodies free, but it did not necessarily make our spirit come alive. God wished to free us not only from the chains of slavery, but from the bane of an unanimated existence. God did not wish for us simply to exist, but to live; to subsist not merely with necessities, but with magic. For this reason He gave us the Song of Songs to teach us the power of discovering an erotic existence....