The Intimacy Experiment

Forgive me for showing up to the party a little late on this one. I first read Rosie Danan’s The Intimacy Experiment a year ago, with full intentions to review it immediately after, but this story so completely shattered my expectations that I was afraid I wouldn’t do it justice. Today, I put on my big girl panties and reviewed it anyway. Because that’s what I think Naomi, the ex-porn star turned sex educator featured in the book, would tell me to do.

Naomi has turned her background in sex work into a full fledged career, running a website that focuses on making intimacy satisfying for all involved – especially women – through open communication and sex tutorials. The business has taken off, but Naomi still yearns for a more personal venue in which to teach about modern intimacy in a live setting. She attends a conference for educators, but the only one willing to take her seriously is Ethan, the Rabbi of a dying reform Synagogue. He is hoping that Naomi’s classes will bring new members to the congregation.

The unlikely duo prove to be an entertaining teaching team and the class does indeed bring new blood into the Synagogue. Somewhere along the way Naomi and Ethan put their lessons to good use by dating each other and Naomi discovers a renewed interest in her Jewish background. The hitch? As with all things Jewish, it is Synagogue politics. There are those on the board that don’t deem it appropriate for their Rabbi to be dating a former sex-worker, no matter how many new members she brings to the Synagogue and how popular she and the Rabbi are.

A small side note for those who think a Rabbi love interest makes for boring stuff – Ethan will lay it out fully in the book way better than I can, but reform Rabbi’s do not all abstain from sex prior to marriage. This is a high heat book. There is explicit sex on the page. You probably don’t want to be reading it on the train or in your office.

Many wonderful Jewish writers have been putting out stunning romances for years. I have reviewed some of them here! But to see any observant Jewish character, much less a Rabbi, as a main character in a romance book from a big five (or four, I keep losing count) publisher was groundbreaking for me. So was the book itself, in the ways it tackles prejudices against sex workers, Rabbi’s, and women who enjoy sex in general. I hope I have done it justice, and more importantly that it paves the way for many more books to come and for Jewish writers to get more recognition for the work they have been doing all along.

---

E Broderick is a writer and speculative fiction enthusiast. When not writing she enjoys epic games of trivial pursuit and baking. She currently lives in the U.S. but is eagerly awaiting the day a sentient spaceship offers to take her traveling around the galaxy.