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Keri
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Keri is a Hebrew term which literally means "happenstance," "frivolity" or "contrariness" and has come to mean "seminal emission." The term is generally used in Jewish law to refer specifically to the regulations and rituals concerning the emission of semen, whether by nocturnal emission, or by sexual activity. By extension, a man is said to be a ba'al keri ("one who has had a seminal emission") after he has ejaculated without yet completing the associated ritual requirements.
Biblical regulations
The biblical regulations of the Priestly Code specify that a man who had experienced an emission of semen would become ritually impure, until the evening came and the man had washed himself in water; any clothes or bits of skin which the semen came into contact with would also become ritually impure, until they had been washed in water and the evening had come.
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Encyclopedia
Keri is a Hebrew term which literally means "happenstance," "frivolity" or "contrariness" and has come to mean "seminal emission." The term is generally used in Jewish law to refer specifically to the regulations and rituals concerning the emission of semen, whether by nocturnal emission, or by sexual activity. By extension, a man is said to be a ba'al keri ("one who has had a seminal emission") after he has ejaculated without yet completing the associated ritual requirements.
Biblical regulations
The biblical regulations of the Priestly Code specify that a man who had experienced an emission of semen would become ritually impure, until the evening came and the man had washed himself in water; any clothes or bits of skin which the semen came into contact with would also become ritually impure, until they had been washed in water and the evening had come. The code adds that if the emission of semen occurred during sexual intercourse with a woman, then the woman would also become ritually impure, until the evening had come and she had washed herself in water.
Although the regulations clearly have some sanitary benefit in the light of modern medical knowledge, Biblical scholars see these regulations as having originally derived from taboo against contact with semen, because it was considered to house life itself, and was thus thought of as sacred.
Classical and Medieval Rabbinic literature
The Talmud adds prohibitions designed to avoid keri in cases that don't involve sexual intercourse. It was forbidden for a man to investigate himself to determine whether an emission of semen had occurred, on the basis that the sensation of touch causes keri (an oblique reference to masturbation); the Talmud goes on to address the concern that preventing any contact with the penis would make urination more awkward for males, with some Talmudic rabbis arguing that men should urinate from a high place or above dirt so that they don't have to touch the penis to avoid making a mess.
Deliberate erections were considered by some of the Talmudic writers to be an excommunicable offense, and Talmudic sources even prohibit men from witnessing sexually arousing scenes; according to these sources, the memory of arousing images would be at the whim of unholy forces during later sleep, risking nocturnal keri, because, in the Talmudic opinion, the soul leaves the body during sleep, leaving it at the mercy of these unholy forces.
According to Maimonides, Ezra had instituted a prohibition against men studying the Torah while they were ba'al keri, and this was later extended to also prohibit prayer while in the state; Maimonides argues that these restrictions had been found to be unsustainable, and that they could therefore be permitted to lapse.
Modern Judaism
Although the biblical regulations differentiate between the emission of semen and abnormal bodily discharges - Zav - rabbinical tradition increasingly differentiated less and less between the regulations of zav and those for keri; consequently modern Orthodox Judaism treats multiple cases of nocturnal emission, or of any other non-sexual semen-discharge, as zav, requiring washing in a mikvah one week later (rather than on the following night).
Footnotes
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