Q&A: Erection
Erection
Question
Hello Rabbi,
I’m a 22-year-old guy who is going out on dates, and during the dates, despite being careful about modesty and so on, I sometimes get a bit of an erection unintentionally, without meaning to and without having thought about anything forbidden, just from ordinary conversation. In addition, a few drops of semen come out as a result.
Is this forbidden? And if so, what am I supposed to do? I don’t really control it..
Thank you.
Answer
It would be advisable to consult a doctor. This is a medical question. After you consult one, if there is no way around it or if the treatment takes a long time, in my opinion you may continue dating for the purpose of finding a partner. If something happens anyway, that is beyond your control. If it can be treated, it is preferable to do that first and then return to dating.
Discussion on Answer
I was referring to both, and both are medical issues. For a normal person this does not happen on every date with a woman. What exactly the treatment is, and whether there is one, I do not know. That’s what doctors are for.
By the way, from a halakhic standpoint I understood from a rabbi who investigated the matter of the first drops that medically they are not semen at all, but some kind of lubricant that the body secretes before semen. [And it’s not the semen itself, which doesn’t come out that easily.] With these medical findings he approached the kabbalist Rabbi Mordechai Eliyahu of blessed memory, and Rabbi Eliyahu agreed that halakhically and kabbalistically this does not have the status of semen being emitted, since it is not semen but only lubricant.
As far as I know, this doesn’t seem to me to be such an unusual phenomenon. And even if it were unusual, I don’t think there is any medical solution to such a problem, because it doesn’t bother someone who isn’t committed to Jewish law.
In any case, the fact that it doesn’t bother someone does not mean there isn’t a treatment that helps with it. There are even pills to reduce sexual drive and the like. But as I said, this is a matter for a doctor.
In my humble opinion, maybe it’s from excitement.
And it’s possible that being preoccupied with strictness about modesty sometimes brings about the opposite and undesirable result.
Clarify the boundaries of Jewish law for yourself in consultation with a rabbi, and that’s it; don’t keep dealing with them any further.
The naive believe this is a serious question
This is definitely a serious question…
Rabbi, were you referring to the erection or to the emission of semen? Because at least regarding the erection, it’s not clear to me what the “medical problem” here is.