Tuesday, August 17, 2010

Are Lustful Thoughts Sinful?

Luke Ford writes:


I got some very bad news this afternoon.


I was lying on my bed of nails listening to Torah talks by Rabbi Ari Kahn.


In his second lecture on Rosh Hashanah, he says that lustful thoughts are a sin. Most other thoughts about doing a sin are not a sin, only the deed, but when it comes to dreaming of immoral deeds of an explicitly sexual nature, the thought itself is a sin.


Oy vey! I am sunk in iniquity. All I do all day long is think lustful thoughts.


Rabbi Kahn cited a verse from Job, "I have made a covenant with my eyes, how can I look upon a maid?"


Sheesh, I might as well be a Christian. Jesus said that if you look with lust upon a woman (even your own wife according to the last pope), you have committed adultery with your heart. Dennis Prager often says that Judaism holds that you can commit adultery with only one organ of your body and it’s not your heart.



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