One may not expound the topic of forbidden sexual relations before three or more individuals

Rav Kahana entered and lay beneath Rav’s bed. He heard Rav chatting and laughing with his wife, and seeing to his needs, i.e., having relations with her. Rav Kahana said to Rav: The mouth of Abba, Rav, is like one whom has never eaten a cooked dish, i.e., his behavior was lustful. Rav said to him: Kahana, you are here? Leave, as this is an undesirable mode of behavior. Rav Kahana said to him: It is Torah, and I must learn.

Rebbi Ḥizqiah, Rebbi Cohen in the name of Rav: Every person will have to justify himself for everything his eye saw and which he did not eat.

She said to them: My husband does not converse with me while engaging in sexual intercourse, neither at the beginning of the night nor at the end of the night, but rather at midnight. And when he converses with me while engaging in sexual intercourse, he reveals a handbreadth of my body and covers a handbreadth, and he covers himself up as though he were being coerced by a demon and is covering himself out of fear.

At the time of the death of Rabbi Yehuda HaNasi, he raised his ten fingers toward Heaven and said in prayer: Master of the Universe, it is revealed and known before You that I toiled with my ten fingers in the Torah, and I have not derived any benefit from the world even with my small finger. May it be Your will that there be peace in my repose. A Divine Voice emerged and said: “He enters in peace, they rest in their beds” (Isaiah 57:2).

The matter is that the Torah cautioned against prohibited sexual relationships and prohibited foods, and permitted sexual relations between a man and his wife and eating meat and wine. If so, one dominated by desires will find room to be lascivious with his wife or his many wives, and to be among the guzzlers of wine [and] the gluttonous eaters of meat, and will be led in accordance with his desire in all degraded activities, for this prohibition is not recorded in the Torah, and he will be a degraded person within what the Torah permits. Therefore, the verse comes, after it specified the prohibitions that it has completely prohibited, and commanded in a general manner that we refrain from excesses.

Sages said: Since it is an auspicious time, let us pray also concerning the evil inclination for sin in the area of sexual relationships. They prayed, and it was also delivered into their hands.Zechariah the prophet said to them: See and understand that if you kill this evil inclination the world will be destroyed because as a result there will also no longer be any desire to procreate. They followed his warning, and instead of killing the evil inclination they imprisoned it for three days. At that time, people searched for a fresh egg throughout all of Eretz Yisrael and could not find one. Since the inclination to reproduce was quashed, the chickens stopped laying eggs. They said: What should we do? If we kill it, the world will be destroyed...They gouged out its eyes, effectively limiting its power, and set it free. And this was effective to the extent that a person is no longer aroused to commit incest with his close relatives.

There was an incident involving a certain man who was diligent about the mitzva of ritual fringes. This man heard that there was a prostitute in one of the cities overseas who took four hundred gold coins as her payment. He sent her four hundred gold coins and fixed a time to meet with her. When his time came, he came and sat at the entrance to her house. The maidservant of that prostitute entered and said to her: That man who sent you four hundred gold coins came and sat at the entrance. She said: Let him enter. He entered. She arranged seven beds for him, six of silver and one of gold. Between each and every one of them there was a ladder made of silver, and the top bed was the one that was made of gold. She went up and sat naked on the top bed, and he too went up in order to sit naked facing her. In the meantime, his four ritual fringes came and slapped him on his face. He dropped down and sat himself on the ground, and she also dropped down and sat on the ground. She said to him: I take an oath by the gappa of Rome that I will not allow you to go until you tell me what defect you saw in me.He said to her: I take an oath by the Temple service that I never saw a woman as beautiful as you. But there is one mitzva that the Lord, our God, commanded us, and its name is ritual fringes, and in the passage where it is commanded, it is written twice: “I am the Lord your God” (Numbers 15:41). The doubling of this phrase indicates: I am the one who will punish those who transgress My mitzvot, and I am the one who will reward those who fulfill them. Now, said the man, the four sets of ritual fringes appeared to me as if they were four witnesses who will testify against me. She said to him: I will not allow you to go until you tell me: What is your name, and what is the name of your city, and what is the name of your teacher, and what is the name of the study hall in which you studied Torah? He wrote the information and placed it in her hand.She arose and divided all of her property, giving one-third as a bribe to the government, one-third to the poor, and she took one-third with her in her possession, in addition to those beds of gold and silver. She came to the study hall of Rabbi Ḥiyya and said to him: My teacher, instruct your students concerning me and have them make me a convert. Rabbi Ḥiyya said to her: My daughter, perhaps you set your sights on one of the students and that is why you want to convert? She took the note the student had given her from her hand and gave it to Rabbi Ḥiyya. He said to her: Go take possession of your purchase.Those beds that she had arranged for him in a prohibited fashion, she now arranged for him in a permitted fashion. The Gemara completes its point about the reward of mitzvot and points out how this story illustrates the concept: This is the reward given to him in this world, and with regard to the World-to-Come

Rav Ketina said: When the Jewish people would ascend for one of the pilgrimage Festivals, the priests would roll up the curtain for them and show them the cherubs, which were clinging to one another, and say to them: See how you are beloved before God, like the love of a male and female.

Blessed are You, Lord our God, King of the universe, Who has created joy and gladness, groom and bride, delight, exultation, happiness, jubilation, love and brotherhood, and peace and friendship.

Rav says: A person must always be careful about mistreatment of his wife. Since her tear is easily elicited, punishment for her mistreatment is immediate.

Our Rabbis taught [in a baraita]: One who loves his wife as himself and one who honors her more than himself…About him Scripture says, “And you will know that there is peace in your tent” [Iyyov 5:24].

And Rabbi Ḥelbo says: A person must always be careful about sustaining the honor of his wife, as blessing is found in a person’s house only because of his wife, as it is stated in allusion to this: “And he dealt well with Abram for her sake, and he had sheep and oxen” (Genesis 12:16).

As you and your mother are both obligated in the honor of your father.

(1) Now the Human knew his wife Eve, and she conceived and bore Cain...

(24) Hence a man leaves his father and mother and clings to his wife, so that they become one flesh.

...The female of man was bone of his bones and flesh of his flesh, he therefore cleaves to her and she nestles in his bosom as his own flesh, and he desires to be with her always. And just as it was with Adam, so was his nature transmitted to his offspring, that the males among them should cleave to their women, leaving their fathers and their mothers, and considering their wives as if they are one flesh with them.

And they become one flesh. In the [physical] place that they become one flesh.

Rabbi Levi said: These are children of those who have nine traits, who are defective from their conception and from whom rebels and transgressors emerge. The mnemonic for these nine traits is children of the acronym aleph, samekh, nun, tav, mem, shin, gimmel, ayin, ḥet.The children of nine traits are as follows: Children of fear [eima], i.e., where the wife was afraid of her husband and engaged in sexual intercourse with him out of fear; children of a woman who was raped [anusa]; children of a hated woman [senua], i.e., a woman who was hated by her husband; children of ostracism [niddui], i.e., one of the parents was ostracized by the court; children of substitution [temura], i.e., while engaging in intercourse with the woman, the man thought that she was another woman; children of strife [meriva], i.e., the parents engaged in intercourse while they were quarreling; children of drunkenness [shikhrut], i.e., the parents engaged in intercourse while they were drunk; children of a woman who was divorced in the heart [gerushat halev], i.e., the husband had already decided to divorce her when they engaged in intercourse; children of mixture [irbuveya], i.e., the man did not know with which woman he was engaging in intercourse; children of a shameless woman [ḥatzufa] who demands of her husband that he engage in intercourse with her.

Our sages are on record (Shavuot 18) that at the time of marital intercourse a person should sanctify himself as a result of which he will have male children. What is the nature of this “sanctifying oneself?” He should have pure thoughts and most certainly not fantasize about another woman at the time he sleeps with his wife...

For it is not solely on account of mitzva…but rather because they are pledged to each other for this [sexual relations], for on this understanding they stood and married…

(1) Before the Torah was given, when a man would meet a woman in the marketplace and he and she decided to marry, he would bring her home, conduct relations in private and thus make her his wife.

Therefore, a person who has relations with a woman for the sake of lust, without kiddushin, receives lashes as prescribed by the Torah

But isn’t he duty bound by Torah law to engage in sexual intercourse with her, as it is written: “Her food, her clothing, and her conjugal rights he may not diminish”?

…Behold she’arah is the closeness of her flesh. And kesutah is the covering of her bed…And onatah is the interval that he comes to her for the time of love [marital intimacy]…

…For [she’ar, kesut, ve-ona] are the essence of marriage according to the Torah...

The set interval defining the frequency of a husband’s conjugal obligation to his wife stated in the Torah (see Exodus 21:10), unless the couple stipulated otherwise, varies according to the man’s occupation and proximity to his home: Men of leisure, who do not work, must engage in marital relations every day, laborers must do so twice a week, donkey drivers once a week, camel drivers once every thirty days, and sailors once every six months. This is the statement of Rabbi Eliezer.

How does one fulfill his conjugal obligation? Every man is obligated to perform his marital duties according to his strength and according to his profession...In regard to what are we talking about, in regards to one whose body is healthy and is able to fulfill the fixed season, but one who is not healthy is only obligated according to what they estimate that he is able to fulfill.The woman who allows her husband to deny her sex, this is permitted. When does this apply? [Only] when he has [already] fulfilled the commandment of propagation....

For certainly she is not pledged to him at every moment if she does not wish it…for we do not force her, for she is not as one taken captive by sword to be sexually available for him at all times.

If so, then also in the case where he unwittingly engaged in sexual intercourse with his wife while she was menstruating, he performed a mitzva, for he occupied himself in the fulfillment of the mitzva of procreation. The Gemara answers that we are dealing here with a case where his wife is pregnant, such that intercourse cannot lead to procreation. The Gemara raises another question: Nevertheless, there is the mitzva of the enjoyment of conjugal rights. One of a husband’s marital obligations is to engage in sexual intercourse with his wife at regular intervals (see Exodus 21:10), and this is considered a mitzva. The Gemara answers that we are talking about a case where it is not the time of her conjugal rights.The Gemara asks further: Even so, didn’t Rava say that a man is obligated to please his wife through a mitzva? That is to say, he must engage in sexual intercourse with her when she so desires, even if it is not the time of her conjugal rights.

To gladden his wife – even not at the time of her ona, if he sees that she desires him.

…[When] she desires him, and he recognizes that she is making an effort to please him and adorning herself before him in order that he pay attention to her. And similarly, when he leaves for a trip, when certainly she desires him. For this as well he receives reward, and this itself is the mitzva of ona that the Torah stated, similar to her food and her clothing that he not decrease, for they are a woman’s needs and her pleasures.

Marital intimacy is one of the expressions of Shabbos pleasure...

And Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi said: A man is obligated to visit his wife for the purpose of having intercourse when he is about to depart on a journey, as it is stated: ...“And your desire shall be to your husband” (Genesis 3:16), which teaches that a wife desires her husband when he is about to depart on a journey.

(4) Each person is obligated to visit his wife on the night of her dipping [into the mikvah], and at the time that he goes on the way.

Rami bar Ḥama said that Rav Asi said: It is prohibited for a man to force his wife in the conjugal mitzva, i.e., sexual relations

In order that Torah scholars would not be with their wives like roosters.

(4) Although a man's wife is permitted to him at all times, it is fitting that a wise man behave with holiness. He should not frequent his wife like a rooster. Rather, [he should limit his relations to once a week] from Sabbath evening to Sabbath evening, if he has the physical stamina.

So that Jews should not be like chickens, that one would have sex: mount, descend, and eat.

(18) If a man lies with a woman during her menstrual condition and uncovers her nakedness, he has laid bare her flow and she has exposed her blood flow; both of them shall be cut off from among their people.

Rabbi Meir would say: For what reason does the Torah say that a menstruating woman is prohibited from engaging in intercourse with her husband for seven days? It is because if a woman were permitted to engage in intercourse with her husband all the time, her husband would be too accustomed to her, and would eventually be repulsed by her. Therefore, the Torah says that a menstruating woman shall be ritually impure for seven days, during which she is prohibited from engaging in intercourse with her husband, so that when she becomes pure again she will be dear to her husband as at the time when she entered the wedding canopy with him.

As a certain heretic said to Rav Kahana: You say that it is permitted for a menstruating woman to seclude herself with a man, i.e., her husband. Is it possible to set fire to chips of kindling and not have them blaze and burn? How can the couple be relied upon not to engage in sexual intercourse? Rav Kahana said to him: The Torah testifies concerning us that we are “set about with lilies,” as the Jewish people do not breach even a fence made of lilies.

Rav Yitzḥak bar Ḥananya also said that Rav Huna said a similar halakha: All tasks that a wife performs for her husband, a menstruating woman may similarly perform for her husband, except for: Pouring his cup; and making his bed; and washing his face, hands, and feet. As explained above, these are acts of affection. If she is menstruating she should not perform them, so as not to lead to forbidden intercourse. And with regard to the prohibition against making the husband’s bed, Rava said: We said this only if she made the bed in front of him, but if it was not in front of him, we have no problem with it. With regard to the prohibition against pouring his cup, the Gemara comments: Shmuel’s wife would change her practice toward him during her menstruation period and pour with her left hand, since if she made some change in the manner of pouring, this would serve as a reminder of her status and mitigate the concern that it might lead to intimacy. Abaye’s wife would place his cup on top of a barrel, Rava’s wife would place it on his pillow, and Rav Pappa’s wife would place it on the bench to create a change.

So she is prohibited to turn down his bed in his presence, and specifically spreading the sheets and covers, which is affectionate, and all the more so that he is prohibited to do this for her…and how much more so that he should not pour water for her [to wash]…

(4) It is permitted for a man to look at his wife, even if she is menstrually impure and is an erva to him. Even though he has pleasure in looking at her, he will not come to sin, since she is permissible after a time. But he may not be playful or frivolous with her.

A season is set for everything, a time for every experience under heaven:

A time for throwing stones and a time for gathering stones,A time for embracing and a time for shunning embraces;