Q&A: Masturbation
Masturbation
Question
Niddah 13:
Rabbi Eliezer says: Whoever holds his member and urinates is as if, etc.
They said to him: But droplets splash onto his feet, and he appears like one whose urethra is severed,
and it turns out that he casts aspersions on his children, that they are mamzerim.
He said to them: Better that he cast aspersions on his children, etc., than make himself wicked for even one moment before the Omnipresent. End quote.
And this is difficult for me, because the Talmud goes on to say: “And if you wish, say…” — that he may assist from below by the testicles, and that is how the Shulchan Arukh rules in 3:15.
But if he assists by the testicles, then droplets will not splash onto his feet, no?
(So too wrote the Mishnah Berurah, Orach Chayim 3, subsection 24.)
Answer
This whole assertion seems very strange to me from the outset.
Discussion on Answer
What seems strange to the Rabbi?
Is it the assertion that whoever holds his member and urinates is as though he brings a flood upon the world?
Or perhaps the concern that droplets may splash onto his feet and people will say about his children that they are mamzerim?
Or perhaps the assertion that it is better that people say his children are mamzerim than that he commit a transgression?
It seems to me that it’s odd to spell out the obvious: the “droplets” means urine, and the question is this: if he doesn’t hold his member, then the droplets will make people suspect him of having a severed urethra; but when he assists, he moves the spray farther away so it doesn’t reach his feet.
Hope that helped.