GEN1475 Especially given the high hormonal levels of teenagers and young adults, refraining from non-marital sex will almost inevitably mean that they, and, for that matter, older people, will masturbate. This is especially true in our own time, when people commonly marry some fifteen years after they become sexually mature. The Mishnah, by contrast, mandates that men marry by the age of eighteen, M. Avot 5:21 and the Talmud records how Rabbi Hisda boasted that he was superior to his colleagues because he is married by sixteen, “and had I married at fourteen, I would have said to Satan, ‘An arrow in your eye.’” B. Kiddushin 29b-30a. In other words, had he married at an even younger age, his sexual needs would never have led him to do anything wrong. Men in their middle to late teenage years presumably married women who are somewhat younger. Even then, we must presume that nature took its course and that people masturbated at least until marriage. The Torah is silent about masturbation; the story of Onan [this verse] that is often cited in this regard is about interrupted coitus, not masturbation. The Talmudic Rabbis and the medieval Jewish tradition, however, roundly condemned masturbation, especially by males. Much of that, though, was due to earlier medical beliefs that masturbation would lead to insanity, impotence, loss of hair, and a host of other maladies. See, for example, M.T. Laws of Ethics (De’ot) 4:19 We now know that such beliefs are not true. Therefore, even though the tradition was not happy about masturbation, it is preferable that people masturbate than that they engage in non-marital sex, because masturbation does not involve any of the moral commitments or physical risks of sexual intercourse. Masturbation should be done in private, of course, just as all genital activities should be. In that context, men and women who masturbate rather than engaging non-marital sex should feel no guilt about it: They are making the morally and Jewishly preferable choice.  DORFFLOV 120