First published in Times of Israel

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.

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 accessible. The question is no longer whether our children will learn about sexuality. The question is who will teach them – and what will they learn?

Parents and educators understandably worry that talking openly about sexuality will encourage experimentation. Yet avoiding the conversation altogether has not protected this generation. Instead, many young people are left to navigate some of the most confusing and vulnerable aspects of development on their own.

Our goal cannot simply be that our children refrain from prohibited behavior. Our goal should be that they emerge from adolescence with their dignity intact.

A teenager nervously asks whether masturbation means there is something wrong with him. A young woman wonders whether feeling attracted to someone makes her less religious. Two dating young adults struggle to navigate shomer negiah while developing genuine emotional closeness. These are not fringe questions. They are ordinary developmental questions. The tragedy is that many young people have no trusted adult with whom they can discuss these questions.

When an adolescent struggles with his or her sexual thoughts and feelings, or when two teenagers are trying to understand what shomer negiah means in the context of real attraction and real relationships, do we want their primary emotional experience to be shame? Or do we want them to have enough knowledge and trusted guidance to navigate these challenges while remaining connected to their values – and to themselves?

Jewish sexual ethics are not merely about saying “no”; they are about cultivating relationships characterized by mutual respect, rather than by coercion; curiosity rather than shame; responsibility rather than impulsivity; generosity rather than entitlement; and intimacy rather than performance. If all our children hear are prohibitions, they may know what to avoid without ever learning what they are ultimately striving toward.

The challenge is not that young people have questions. The challenge is that too many believe those questions cannot be asked.

When trusted adults remain silent, other influences step in. Increasingly, those influences come from pornography, anonymous online forums, influencers, or social media. When pornography becomes a young person’s primary sexuality educator, we should not be surprised that they learn about bodies without relationships, pleasure without responsibility, and performance without empathy.

Pornography teaches a vision of intimacy stripped of empathy, mutuality, communication, commitment, and genuine human connection. It offers pleasure without responsibility and bodies without humanity.

We can, and must, offer something better.

Healthy sexuality education is not simply about preventing mistakes or preparing for a wedding night. It is about preparing young people for healthy, satisfying, and loving relationships.

It means helping them understand that attraction is normal. That desire is part of being human. That boundaries matter not because our bodies are shameful, but because intimacy is meaningful. It means teaching communication, empathy, emotional regulation, respect, consent, responsibility, vulnerability, and the ability to care for another person’s dignity alongside one’s own.

Consent, for example, should not be understood merely as a legal requirement or a cultural slogan. Consent is not only about preventing harm; it is about cultivating the ability to see another person as a full human being whose wishes, feelings, and autonomy matter. At its heart, consent is about recognizing another person’s humanity. It requires listening, respecting boundaries, communicating honestly, tolerating disappointment, and understanding that genuine intimacy can never be coerced. Those are not merely contemporary values; they are profoundly Jewish ones.

Perhaps we also need to broaden what we mean by “sexuality education.” If all we teach are the laws and some basic anatomy, we should not be surprised if young adults know the rules but struggle with relationships. Halacha provides an indispensable framework, but halacha alone is not a developmental curriculum. Young people also need help understanding what they are feeling, why they are feeling it, and how to integrate those feelings into a healthy religious life.

This is especially true during emerging adulthood, a period marked by identity formation, increasing independence, dating, and difficult moral decisions. We should not promise young people that every tension has an easy solution. Religious life often asks us to hold competing values in creative tension. The goal is not to eliminate struggle but to ensure that struggle is informed rather than isolating, thoughtful rather than shame-filled, and connected to trusted relationships rather than hidden behind secrecy.

As a therapist, I have spent decades listening to adults describe the origins of struggles that surfaced long before they stood under the chuppah. Again and again, I have seen how misinformation, silence, shame, and loneliness can cast long shadows over intimate relationships. Conversely, I have seen how honest conversations, compassionate guidance, and accurate information can become powerful protective factors.

If our goal is not simply religious compliance but emotionally healthy, deeply connected Jewish adults, then we must ask more of ourselves as parents, educators, rabbis, and therapists.

Are we preparing our children only to know what is forbidden?

Or are we teaching them how to become people capable of intimacy?

That means cultivating empathy alongside ethics, communication alongside commandments, relational integrity alongside religious commitment, and self-awareness alongside self-control. These are not competing values. They are the very qualities that enable young people to build marriages – and lives – marked by trust, dignity, and genuine connection.

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You can find Intimacy and Sexuality for Emerging Adults, Powered by Intimate Judaism, on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. The first episode has already dropped, and the remaining nine episodes all drop on Saturday night, August 8, 2026.