Why Antisemites Are So Miserable

Is there a connection between sexual repression and antisemitism? Strange question, right? But is it?

Over the last six months, since the start of the October 7^th war, initiated by the Hamas massacre, I have debated some of America and the world’s leading antisemites. In nearly every case, I was viciously attacked for my international best-selling book “Kosher Sex” and the marital-aid company my daughter Chana, and IDF veteran, set up in Israel by the same name.

I was astonished at the sexual prudishness of my opponents and how much they indulged attacks about Jews and sex. Indeed, I was unprepared for just how obsessed each was about Jews and sex in general. The attacks were constant. Why did you write your books “Kosher Sex,” “Kosher Lust,” “The Kosher Sutra,” “Kosher Adultery,” etc etc. And why is your daughter selling products that enhance intimacy and passion between married, monogamous couples.

As I pondered why each of these antisemites brought up Jewish sexual activities and teachings, it dawned on me what the connection was between antisemitism and sex.

What is sex other than a celebration of life? At its best, sex is simply something that makes a husband and wife feel most alive. Let’s face it. Marriage can be filled with drudgery. Changing diapers. Paying bills. Affording a mortgage. And the stultifying deadness of any everyday routine. Then comes along a passionate sexual connection which invigorates the couple.

And that’s what antisemites must hate most about Jews: we always choose life.

Why does Hamas, Iran, Hezbollah, and all the other terrorist sickos hate us so much? Because no matter how much they pledge to spill our blood, we continue to choose life. Israel is filled with cafes, restaurants, museums, universities, parks, and children’s playgrounds. Gaza, by contrast, well before Israel’s invasion last year, was just a giant garbage dump. I know because I was personally there with the Reverend Al Sharpton in October of 2001.  The place was an ugly trash heap. Our Palestinian brethren – not Israel – had chosen to make it so.

The same is true of so many other places that were once beautiful – like Lebanon and Beirut, once called the Paris of the Middle East – which today are essentially piles of rubble.

Our enemies hate us because no matter how hard they try to make our lives miserable, we remain joyous, we rise above their hate, we always choose life.

Have you noticed how miserable all the pro-Hamas and anti-Israel activists look? The only joy they get is by ruining your day. They will protest concerts and shut them down. They will shut down airports so you miss your flight and can’t visit your family or take a vacation. They are miserable people who spread misery. Show me even a single pro-Israel rally where we have taken that attitude or tried to spread agony.

Antisemites are generally miserable. Their only joy is in making sure you have no joy. That’s why little by little all these vile anti-Israel protests and marches are backfiring—because they’re making the lives of everyday Americans miserable.

Jews don’t thrive on misery. Just the opposite. We thrive on joy. Arguably the single happiest nation on earth, relative to their historical misfortunes and current global challenges, are the Jewish people.

Larry David just ended his 24 year-run of the most successful comedy on TV, Curb Your Enthusiasm. Yes, he plays a curmudgeon. But it’s all about making you laugh. Notice how some of the world’s greatest comics and wits are Jews and how so much of their humor is about taking everyday misery and learning to laugh at it.

Who are the Jews? The nation that has learned not just to survive persecution but to flourish. What is Israel? The most irrationally hated nation on earth that was simultaneously – according to the 2024 World Happiness Report released last month – just voted the fifth happiest country in the world, and this despite the war in Gaza and the October 7 massacre.

Now you see why all these Jew haters whom I’ve debated hate Jewish sex. Because Jewish sex is not only that which keeps our nation surviving, quite literally, but thriving, quite literally as well.

Judaism is the only religion on earth that says sex is not for procreation – survival – but for intimacy, thriving. As the book of Genesis says (2:24) “Therefore shalt a man leave his father and his mother, he shall cleave unto his wife and they shall become one flesh.”

So much of religion leads to sexual repression. In Catholicism priests and nuns – the religious leaders of the Church – have to be completely celibate, easily the most unnatural human state. St. Paul said, “Now to the unmarried and the widows I say: It is good for them to stay unmarried, as I do. But if they cannot control themselves, they should marry, for it is better to marry than to burn with passion” (1 Corinthians 7).

And many Islamic countries have taken sexual repression to an extreme by cloaking women in such austere and severe garb, and by so separating the sexes, that there can be little everyday joy in social interactions.

Hitler, of course, famously created the Lebensborn program that likewise reduced sex to simply birthing more and more soldiers for the Fuhrer.

That may explain why so many antisemites attack my book “Kosher Sex” and my daughter Chana’s company of the same name. Because both are a clear distillation of that most essential of ideas, that Judaism wants us to celebrate life. That Judaism doesn’t believe that men and women marry primarily to have children but to feel alive in each other’s company and make love. And that life is meant to be lived at the mountain’s summit and not just the deep dark valleys.

The holiest book of the Hebrew Bible is something that is anathema to antisemites, who appear to hate life as much as they hate Jews. The Song of Solomon is an erotic lust poem that describes the burning yearning between a man and a woman: “Your breasts are like two fawns, like twin fawns of a gazelle that browse among the lilies… Your stature is like that of the palm, and your breasts like clusters of fruit. I said, ‘I will climb the palm tree; I will take hold of its fruit.” For Jews, lust within intimacy is hot, sexy, and holy. The tenth commandment is clear: “Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife.” Which means, by direct implication, you ought to be coveting your own.

The antisemites, well, they too covet. They covet, whether they realize it or not, Jewish joy. They are jealous of Jewish prosperity, of Jewish success, of Jewish happiness. And instead of following our lead and imitating our greatest teaching of all – L’Chaim, always choose life – they’d rather drag us down so we can’t choose life by making us dead.

Rabbi Shmuley Boteach whom Newsweek and The Washington Post call “the most famous Rabbi in America,” has just published the 25^th special anniversary edition of Kosher Sex (Skyhorse Publishing). His website is www.shmuley.com. Follow him on Instagram and X @RabbiShmuley.