What greater distance is there than the one between religion and pornography? What greater distance can we think of than the one between a life devoted to God and a life consumed by sex? And yet, I would like to suggest, pornography may itself be expressive of religious attitude. Such a combination can be found in the writings of my favorite Israeli playwright and author—Hanoch Levin. The grammar of Levin’s prose is deeply religious, and it is ubiquitously concerned with the finitude of Man. Torn between the unattainability of anything that is higher, and an inability to find any meaning or value in what is low, we can always find in Levin the attitude of the believer, who obsessively runs against the boundaries of his own existence, waiting always. On the other hand, Levin’s prose has a persistent pornographic aspect—which deters many readers. I remember, at seventeen or thereabout, how I was repelled when I first tried to read one of his books of prose. So much so, that I could return to it only half a decade later. At any rate, I would like to suggest that these two aspects in Levin’s writing—the religious and the pornographic—do not only coexist, but belong together. In an early short piece of prose, Small Essay on the Thin, Undrawn, Limit, Levin writes (my translation): "As we all know, the romantic moments of our life take place on the woman’s skin. We do not know her insides, but only her skin deposits. True, volume plays a huge role, but we become acquainted only with its external mantle, not its internal tissues. Thus, for instance, we have no acquaintance or romantic ties with the woman’s bones or intestines. If we saw the intestines of our beloved, we would feel as we would towards the intestines of a beast. The lips of our beloved, on the other hand, would move us deeply."Where the woman has a cavity, or orifice, our familiarity gradually diminishes as we move inside, and with it diminishes our love. Her incisor teeth are very familiar; her molars not so much. In moments of licking or scorn, we frequently see the upper surface of her tongue, that coarse plane; the bottom of her tongue, on the other hand, that viscid muscle-textured lump, all blue from blood, is completely hidden from view. Likewise the ear, the nose, the vaginal cavity, and the anal cavity."Towards the end of the essay, the intellectual tone gives way to alarm: "The passage from one world to the other is swift. A hairline separates between home and jungle. An invisible undrawn limit-line (as an aerial line) is stretched as a membrane, as it were, somewhere in the woman’s anal cavity, a membrane that separates between the world of romantics and the world of anatomy, between ballroom and machine-room. Who will know where exactly this limit lies—where the skin ends and the intestines begin, where the happiness and music dies and the darkness and horror, alienation and revulsion, awake? Oh, that uncharted limit, without a fence, without a sign, without an armed guard who would face us and announce: “Stop! Go no further! From here on—death!”" The point of pornography is missed, I think, if that horrific surprise is missed: how something that is absolutely meaningful and beautiful and good turns without warning into something meaningless and disgusting—disappears into nothingness. This is no ordinary sorites paradox; we are not talking about the simple vagueness of a gradual evolution into something else. The difference between skin and intestines is absolute, metaphysical: It is as great as the difference between body and soul; and the fact that this difference can vanish boggles the mind. The difference is fraught with comedy, as often happens in Levin. And, as also happens in Levin quite often, it prompts obsession. For how could there be no line? How can that difference, that distance, that complete and infinite contrast, appear as non-existent? Pornography is obsessed with this vanishing line. It is obsessed with the disappearance of meaning—in particular, the disappearance of the soul in the body. It explores this incessantly—much like a metaphysical surgeon who looks for the mind by dissecting our internal organs, and much like that believer who tosses himself again and again against the boundaries of his existence, craves being beyond existence; does not know what he craves. It may be said that, even if we grant the idea that pornography can express a religious attitude like that, there are still better ways to express one’s religious attitude. – Surely. Even putting aside (as I have) all the usual moral issues, the interesting and alarming disappearance of meaning can be found elsewhere in life and in many different forms—many of them exalted and sublime, and at any rate less controversial and embarrassing. No doubt, that interesting issue does not have to be looked for in pornography.

The tension and coexistence between the nonsensical and the absolutely meaningful is ubiquitous in our life. And yet, we don’t always choose the ways in which we express our attitude to life; we are not always able to choose. Our attitude may be forced on us. And when it is, this is typically not an addiction. It is a real need.