By Hana Nobel, News Correspondent

To borrow a phrase from Weird Al Yankovic, Shmuley Boteach is pretty fly for a rabbi.
Rabbis often preach about ethical issues, the Torah and the Ten Commandments, but Tuesday night, about 300 students lined up outside the Curry Student Center (CSC) Ballroom to hear Boteach discuss something else:’ sex.
The lecture, co-sponsored by Resident Student Association (RSA), Center of University Programming (CUP) and the fraternity Kappa Sigma, was the night’s featured Sex Week event.
‘All of the events have had lines for an hour before [the event starts],’ said RSA Vice President of Housing Services Matt Soleyn.
Ultimately, Soleyn said he thinks Ron Jeremy will draw the largest crowd of the week. He will appear tonight at Blackman Auditorium for a debate with pastor Craig Gross about pornography. It starts at 7 p.m.
‘Last time they [hosted Jeremy] they had to turn people away,’ he said, adding that the venue was intentionally changed from the ballroom last year to Blackman this year because of the high turnout.
The talk Tuesday from Boteach, who hosts The Learning Channel (TLC) show ‘Shalom in the Home,’ began later than scheduled, but members of RSA appeased the waiting crowd by handing out free condoms.
On Boteach’s hour-long show every week, he helps families overcome their problems, according to its TLC website.
Dr. Ruth, an infamous 80-year-old psychosexual therapist, was originally locked in to lecture but canceled all spring engagements, said junior Michael Rockland, a member of Kappa Sigma. The groups continued to look for a guest and decided on Boteach.
Alexis Tashjian, CUP lectures and showcases chair, said the group thought hosting a rabbi could offer a different perspective about sex for students. As Boteach said, ‘Jews have a very sexual religion,’ and he has nine children to prove it.
Boteach discussed a range of topics involving sex, love and lust.
The rabbi said the main problem with today’s married couples is that ‘they [are] deeply in love, but they are not deeply in lust.’
Boteach said sex is everywhere ‘hellip; except in the bedroom. He said the average married couple has sex only once a week ‘- an event lasting about seven minutes. Boteach added that the seven minutes ‘includes the time [the husband] spends begging.’
‘I was surprised by the fact that one-third of marriages are platonic,’ said Brian Dorfman, a middler computer science major, after the event.
Boteach recognized the skepticism among the young men in the audience that a platonic marriage could ever happen to them.
‘The guys in the room don’t think they’ll turn out to be like this,’ he said. ‘I am superman. My wife is going to need crutches. I don’t know how I’m going to hold a job unless they let me do it from the bedroom.’
Boteach also discussed the difference between something being sexy and erotic. He said the ‘Sinsational Sex Week’ magazine put out by RSA was sexy.
‘We didn’t have this in rabbinical college,’ he said.
The rabbi did not condemn pre-marital sex during his lecture. Instead he focused on the future of sex and marriage and discussed the ‘hook up culture’ that college has become.
He said that the expression ‘hooking up’ is ‘almost like a construction term.’ He said that in this culture students are in lust, but they are not in love, leading to great sex but short relationships.
‘If we do things the way we have been doing things, you’ll be out of lust in five years,’ he said.
Dorfman said he found some of what the rabbi said, ‘super depressing, like him saying, ‘you can look forward in five years to having no sex at all.” Dorfman said that despite what he called, ‘a bleak outlook,’ he found it interesting to hear about sex from the point of view of a religious figure.
Boteach ended by saying that humans have only one need:’ to feel special, and that sex has the power to make people feel special.
‘Sex is the most exciting thing you’ll ever do,’ he said. ‘It’s the only time you’ll ever be free.’
The rabbi’s newest book, ‘The Kosher Sutra’ was available for sale after the lecture during a book signing in the CSC.