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264: WASTEFUL EMISSION
OF SEMEN IN A
SITUATION OF DANGER

One night close to morning, I received the following urgent question:
a chassan on his wedding night was unable to free himself from an
erection that had continued for a number of hours. He went to the
emergency room of the local hospital, where the physicians told him
that he had to masturbate and emit semen wastefully. The chassan’s
parents came to ask whether halachah permits this, for it says in the
Shulchan Aruch (Even Ha’ezer 23:1), “It is forbidden to emit semen
for naught… and this a more serious sin than all other sins in the
Torah… those who fornicate by hand and emit semen, not only is this
strongly forbidden but whoever does so is under a ban…and it is as
though he has taken life.” I deliberated over two points:

1. Is there any danger if he avoids emitting the semen?
2. Is there any another way to eliminate the erection?

I submitted this question to a specialist, Dr. Y. Chen, from the Urol-
ogy Dept. at Ichilov Hospital in Tel Aviv, and his response follows:

Prolonged erection is one of the genuine emergencies in the
field of urology. The condition is rarely seen in the general
population (less than 0.5%). Its frequency rises to 0.05- 3%
among men being treated for irregularities in function and
climbs to 10%-20% in men suffering from certain systemic
diseases. An erection is considered prolonged when it lasts

Emitting Semen because of Danger 2 147