Al hamdu lillah.

Sometimes I feel that the main impetus of the fanatic youth wing of the religious Zionist movement is not a pure and intense love for the land of Israel, but rather misapplied sexual frustration built up from brushing up against so many orange-clad hotties while occupying synagogues and dumping paint on police officers. Certainly the War for the West Bank from certain angles looks like a sort of apocalyptic twist on sleepaway camp, and it ain’t sleepaway camp without youthful hormones zinging through the air like rocks and rubber bullets.

Well, I have good news for our nation’s frustrated youth. According to a professor at Bar Ilan University, noted for producing such interesting projects as the CD Jewish text database and Yigal Amir, Judaism permits premarital sex.

According to an article by Professor Tzvi Zohar of Bar Ilan University, which has aroused fervent debate in religious Zionist circles, the answer [to the question of whether premarital sex is permitted] is yes, but only if the relationship is based on mutual respect and the woman immerses herself in a mikve [ritual bath].

Zohar’s article, which appears in the latest edition of Akdamot, an academic journal on Jewish thought published by Beit Morasha, analyzes the opinions of leading halachic authorities from the Middle Ages, such as Nachmanides, to the modern era, such as Rabbi Ya’acov Emden, and shows that many permitted sexual relations without marriage.

In the arrangement, sanctioned by Jewish law according to these opinions, the woman becomes a pilegesh, or concubine. Neither the man nor the woman has any obligations or rights. Both must adhere to family purity laws in accordance with halacha.

According to halacha, a man is not allowed to come into physical contact with a woman after she has menstruated until she has immersed herself in a mikve. This prohibition is called nida.

Young religious men and women who are committed to the halacha need no longer struggle with their libido, argues Zohar. All those hormones can be channeled into a kosher communion that is free of marital obligations.

“Mom, Dad, I’d like to you meet someone. Her name is Shira. She’s my concubine. I think she might be the one.”

I, for one, am all in favor. What’s better for the Jewish nation: that the religious Zionist kids should be taking to the rooftops with cinder blocks, or taking to the back room to hump like Jerusalem stray cats?

But the best quote is this:

“There are certain laws that are best kept secret. Zohar’s article will give some young people the justification they were looking for. Nobody wants to be a sinner.”

“Shit! If we let them know that they’re not breaking any rules, they might take advantage of it and start not breaking rules!” Other secret Jewish laws include permission to eat Burger King cheeseburgers but godforbid not McDonalds, permission to masturbate on the second Sunday of every month, permission to strike your wife but only if the bitch keeps breaking your balls in front of company, and permission to have disobedient children taken to the village gates before the elders and stoned to death.

Wait, I didn’t make that last one up.

Of course, the fact that Judaism apparently legally sanctions obligation-free shtupping and has an official halakhic status of “unpaid-if-respected-whore” kind of throws a wrench at all those people who make a living writing about the perfect holiness of the Jewish family ideal. But whatever keeps these damned kids inside, you know?

Now we just need somebody at Bar-Ilan to dig up a Nachmanides quote on the Pill and we’re all fucking set.