אוֹנְנוּת

Although the prohibition against masturbation is considered one of the most severe prohibitions in Judaism, it has no explicit mention in the Bible. The prohibition is based on an interpretation of the act of Onan described in Genesis 38, in which Onan, Judah's son, "spilled it on the ground" to avoid establishing offspring for his deceased brother. Contrary to popular belief, Onan's sin was not masturbation but using coitus interruptus to avoid the obligation of levirate marriage. In the Babylonian Talmud (Niddah 13a), it was established that "whoever emits semen in vain is liable to death," a prohibition that was probably formed under the influence of the Zoroastrian religion, which was the dominant religion in Babylon at that time. The term "ma'aseh Onan" (act of Onan) began to be associated with masturbation only under the influence of European languages, in which Onan's name began to be used as a professional term in the 17th century (in German, English, and French). In traditional rabbinic literature, the common term was "emission of semen in vain." The word "onnut" itself was coined only in 1928 by Alexander Malchi, a native-born physician who completed his studies at the Herzliya Gymnasium in 1913. Malchi collected and coined many medical terms that were published in the first dictionary of Hebrew medical terms in 1928.