אוֹנָנוּת (ononut) — masturbation
Etymology
The Jewish prohibition on masturbation — and the Hebrew word for it — both derive from the story of Onan in Genesis 38, though the connection involves significant interpretive reframing. In the biblical narrative, Onan's elder brother Er died, and their father Judah commanded Onan to perform the levirate duty: "Go to your brother's wife and perform the duty of a brother-in-law." Onan lay with Tamar but "wasted his seed on the ground" so that the offspring would not be his brother's. God killed him for this. The plain reading of the text indicates Onan's sin was refusing the levirate obligation, not masturbation — a reading also held by the philosopher Philo in the 1st century CE, who characterized Onan's act as selfishness.
The Talmud itself is not entirely uniform on this. In tractate Yevamot (34a-b), the rabbis argue that Onan and Er's sin was anal intercourse. Elsewhere the Talmud states: "Anyone who causes his semen to be emitted in vain is worthy of death" (Niddah 13a). This stricter prohibition appears only in the Babylonian Talmud (not the Mishnah or Tannaitic literature) and was likely influenced by the dominant Zoroastrian religious culture of Babylonia, which regarded "wasting seed" as a serious transgression — this Zoroastrian belief is documented in 11th-century CE texts, but there is good reason to believe it was held earlier.
The prohibition intensified through the medieval period. The Zohar declared masturbation the only sin without atonement. Throughout medieval rabbinic literature the act is typically called "שכבת זרע לבטלה" (seed emitted in vain) or "מעשה אונן" (the act of Onan), not "אוננות." The coinage of that noun form happened in parallel with a broader European moral panic about masturbation that swept both Christian and Jewish communities in the 18th–19th centuries. The German term "onanitisch" appeared around mid-17th century, entered English in 1710 and French in 1760.
The Hebrew word אוֹנָנוּת was coined in 1928 by Dr. Alexander Malchi, a physician at the British Hospital in Jerusalem. Malchi had been in the first graduating class of the Herzliya Gymnasium in 1913, alongside Moshe Sharett, Eliyahu Golomb, and Dov Hoz. He went on to study medicine and, upon returning to practice, found Hebrew lacking in medical terminology. He compiled and published the first Hebrew medical dictionary in 1928, in which he proposed numerous new terms — including פִּין (penis), פּוֹת (vulva/vagina), and אוֹנָנוּת (masturbation).
Key Quotes
"כל המוציא שכבת זרע לבטלה חייב מיתה" — תלמוד בבלי, נידה י״ג, א׳
"כל המחלות הבאות לרגלי חטאת נעורים (מעשה אונן) כמו חסרון כח המוליד, זוב, חלישת העצבים..." — ד״ר וולנגר, מודעה בעיתון "עברי אנכי", 1871
Timeline
- ~6th–4th century BCE: Genesis 38 written; Onan's sin described as coitus interruptus to avoid levirate duty
- ~1st century CE: Philo interprets Onan's sin as selfishness, not masturbation
- ~200–500 CE: Babylonian Talmud codifies prohibition on "wasting seed," possibly under Zoroastrian influence
- ~13th century CE: Zohar declares masturbation the one unforgivable sin
- Mid-17th century: German term "onanitisch" coined
- 1710: English adopts "onanism"
- 1760: French adopts "onanisme"
- 1871: Hebrew press reports on dangers of "מעשה אונן" in medical advertisements
- 1928: Dr. Alexander Malchi coins "אוֹנָנוּת" in his Hebrew medical dictionary
- Modern Hebrew: אוֹנָנוּת is the standard medical and everyday term
Related Words
- מעשה אונן — "the act of Onan" (older rabbinic euphemism)
- שכבת זרע לבטלה — "seed emitted in vain" (Talmudic formulation)
- פִּין — penis (also coined by Malchi, 1928)
- יִיבּוּם — levirate marriage (the duty Onan refused)