GEN348 For the last millennium Ashkenazi Jews have seen monogamous marriage as the primary locus for sexual activity. While divorce has always existed within the Jewish community, it has been relatively infrequent.  However, in recent years changing financial and social circumstances have led to increased rates of divorce and remarriage – a shift from monogamy to serial monogamy.  Monogamous marriage has remained a dominant social form because at best it provides emotional intimacy, companionship, stability for raising children and a relatively efficient economic unit, while avoiding the complexity and jealousy that can plague other sexual arrangements.  Monogamy has long been the dominant social form in Christian societies, and Jews tend to confirm to such external structures when they are not in tension with Jewish values and practice.  The sanctity of monogamous marriage (kidushin) has long been appreciated in the Jewish community. … The idea of monogamy is expressed in [this verse].  … Monogamy – a committed, lifelong, binary relationship between adults – is a basic metaphor in Jewish life.  Mystically, the intimate joining of a loving couple expresses the covenant between G- d and Israel, the bond between the Creator and creation, and the possibility of moving beyond this world of separation to the world of unity.  Mythically, humanity was created as a couple, emerging at the same time and bound together as one flesh.  The intimate bond between a committed couple recreates this sense of primal unity and equality. AGTJL 217-8