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Mikvah, Halachah, and Me
As I mentioned in an earlier post, the Chabad rebbetzin who is responsible for our city's only working mikvah told me that because I did not have a sufficiently halachic conversion, the usual rules do not apply to me. So I've been doing some research regarding mikvah and what's commonly referred to as Taharat Hamishpachah (Family purity). I figure this is the way I determined my level of kosher observance, so it makes sense to do the same for my mikvah use.
I got out my trusty copy of The Mitzvot: The Commandments and Their Rationale by Abraham Chill and my favorite Torah commentary, Etz Hayim. Chill says that the laws regarding a menstruating woman originate in Leviticus 15:19.
Niddah is often translated as menstrual impurity or menstrual condition. The impurity is primarily a reflection of a woman in niddah's unsuitability for making sacrifices at the Temple, if such a place existed today. As Chill says, the common rule is for a woman to wait until the end of her period and then count seven days. At the end of the seventh day she goes to the mikvah and immerses, ending her ritual impurity. In the meantime she is not to have any sexual contact with her husband, lest he become ritually impure as well.
However, a strict reading of the verse indicates a total time of 7 days. Common practice has built a fence around the law to ensure that the law is not broken. But if the halacha (law) does not apply to me then I am free to interpret it as I see fit. A total time of seven days from the beginning of my cycle. And on day eight I can go to the mikvah and immerse. One week of no sex is doable, especially when I have my period for half of it. Also it would then "allow" us to have sex in the second week of my cycle, exactly when we need to in order to fertilize the egg that should arrive at the end of the second week.
This month I have counted seven white days, as is common practice. In the future I think I will schedule mikvah based on this new interpretation. Opinions?
I got out my trusty copy of The Mitzvot: The Commandments and Their Rationale by Abraham Chill and my favorite Torah commentary, Etz Hayim. Chill says that the laws regarding a menstruating woman originate in Leviticus 15:19.
When a woman has a discharge, her discharge being blood from her body, she shall remain in niddah seven days.
Niddah is often translated as menstrual impurity or menstrual condition. The impurity is primarily a reflection of a woman in niddah's unsuitability for making sacrifices at the Temple, if such a place existed today. As Chill says, the common rule is for a woman to wait until the end of her period and then count seven days. At the end of the seventh day she goes to the mikvah and immerses, ending her ritual impurity. In the meantime she is not to have any sexual contact with her husband, lest he become ritually impure as well.
However, a strict reading of the verse indicates a total time of 7 days. Common practice has built a fence around the law to ensure that the law is not broken. But if the halacha (law) does not apply to me then I am free to interpret it as I see fit. A total time of seven days from the beginning of my cycle. And on day eight I can go to the mikvah and immerse. One week of no sex is doable, especially when I have my period for half of it. Also it would then "allow" us to have sex in the second week of my cycle, exactly when we need to in order to fertilize the egg that should arrive at the end of the second week.
This month I have counted seven white days, as is common practice. In the future I think I will schedule mikvah based on this new interpretation. Opinions?
no subject
My Hebrew is pretty nonexistent, but Leviticus tends to be pretty translatable. Looking at the chapter, are they using the same Hebrew word for "discharge" throughout? If yes, then what's the usual commentary like for the sections having to do with men's discharges and sexual discharges? The general vibe of the chapter is that the uncleanliness lasts the shortest possible amount of time for those, not the longest. I'd also look closely at the commentary on the second section, the one that covers women with irregular bleeding.
The general vibe of the chapter seems to be very much dealing with literal "uncleanliness". If you might be sick, or if you've got a condition where it's especially easy to spread disease, you're ritually unclean. You can't go to the Temple (where there are crowds), thus protecting the whole community from the risk of disease. That's why there's the emphasis on WASH DAMNIT! If you're going with the Catholic view, this would be a section where you go "huh, I think the author and God kinda got their wires crossed". The author clearly got the message that washing is to prevent disease, and that diseased people should be ritually unclean for the good of the community. He just got very confused about what is and isn't a disease, and about when washing will do any good in terms of preventing the spread of disease.
So the purpose is to prevent the spread of disease. It's very clear that for an irregular discharge, you *must* count seven days with no bleeding. And since those do tend to correlate with disease, that makes sense. And a man who has intercourse with a woman who is bleeding must have seven days of clean. I suspect what's going on with the traditional seven white days is "go above and beyond", like you see with the kosher rules. Partially it's ostentation (we're wealthy enough that we can be this overobservant), partially it's sexism (women don't matter enough to worry about losing their work). It might be interesting to see what the oldest commentaries on this section you can find are like.
no subject
Love,
--Beth
Wiki actually had something to add!
no subject
1) Yes I do ovulate at the end of the second week of my cycle. I know many women do not, and for much of my life I did not. But right now I'm very very lunar. New moon comes and so does my period. Full moon? Very good chance I'll ovulate. Which is one reason I'm reluctant to remain chaste for the first 12 days of my cycle. If I'm going to conceive, I've got to go to the mikveh by day 11. Especially as we're talking sunset-sunset days!
2) I disagree with your general interpretation of Leviticus 15. I do not believe that the purpose is to prevent the spread of disease. The word that is translated as "unclean" does not mean "dirty"; a closer translation might be "ritually impure".
3) The additional 7 white days stems from the non-menstrual bleeding mentioned in a later verse. I suspect that the rabbis wanted to make the rules as clear as possible, so lumped all vaginal bleeding into one category.
no subject
After all, one of God's stated goals is for the children of Abraham to be a vast multitude, so God is not down on sex. God is also not down on eating. God *is* down on eating things that might make you sick. Those shellfish prohibitions are not "because God said so". They're very specifically aimed at preventing the Hebrews from eating animals that can cause disease in humans, even if the animal looks healthy. Visual inspection of shellfish isn't enough to identify whether it's safe to eat or not. So eating shellfish is forbidden. Many of the other specifically forbidden foods have the same issue. The fish that Jews are allowed to eat are the kinds of fish where visual inspection allows you to detect whether it's safe to eat.
In this chapter, God is declaring people ritually unclean for common occurences. In fact, sex and menstruation are ones God wants them to have regularly (no babies without sex and fertile women). The penalties are not sacrifices at the Temple (which tends to go with sin). The penalties are to stay away from the Temple for a certain period of time, and engage in ritual washing. IIRC staying away from the Temple also tends to mean stay at home, and don't go out in public a lot.
So why is God saying people in these states are ritually unclean? We'll presume they're not sinning. So let's look at the states people are in. We've got guys who have "discharges" that aren't sexual. We've got guys having sexual discharges. We've got women involved in a guy's sexual discharge. We've got women having their period. And lastly, we've got women bleeding when they shouldn't.
Looking at it with historical eyes, it's a confusing list. I can see no historical reason why those things would be grouped in that way. (If you can think of a historical reason for this grouping, that'd be fun. Then I can try to wrap my head around a new way of looking at the world)
If I look at it with my modern self, I see one blindingly obvious reason why these conditions are grouped together. Disease. A guy who has "discharges" that aren't semen or urine needs to get to a doctor post haste. He's seriously ill. A woman who bleeds when it's not her period is also seriously ill. If you're dealing with early Israeli level technology, staying clean enough while menstruating that you don't risk spreading disease is tough. Same thing with men ejaculating. And blood and semen are two excellent enviroments for disease spread. So what does God tell people to do here? Wash, and don't expose yourself to the public, complete with quarantine periods. Further, the quarantine periods are most severe for things a modern person would recognize as disease, and least severe for ordinary and encouraged behavior.
This part of Leviticus really pretty sound medically. I think it's fair to argue that the ritual uncleanliness is linked to disease risk here. And it's very interesting that the literal instructions for menstruation are set up to allow for concieving children, even if the woman has an unusual cycle. There's also a hidden directive, that the woman needs to keep good track of her cycle so that she knows which rule to apply. The ruling in the commentaries can actually be seen as taking the easy way out, since it lets the woman ignore the state of her health.
Now I see why this bothers me...
But I believe that kashrut serves to strengthen my Jewish identity, as well as making me aware of what I put in my mouth. I don't want to declare it obsolete just because modern food safety makes shellfish safe to eat.
There is a category of mitzvot which are basically the "Because God said so, that's why". We don't know why it might be important to observe them, they just exist. The Orthodox believe we should observe all 613 mitzvot in the Torah. As a progressive Jew I feel that if a mitzvah improves me spritually, then I should do it. That's where I'm coming at mikvah from.
Re: Now I see why this bothers me...
But until then, the Law is the Law.
The thing is, just because one understands a reason why God gave a law originally, that doesn't mean one understands why it's still in effect. It also doesn't mean one understands *all* the reasons for a given law. But like I said, I'm Catholic. I'm ok with mysteries in my religon :). I'm also enough of a scientist and a historian that I enjoy finding some of the whys. To me, it's a miracle that God loved His people so much that he came up with the Law. And it's a pretty sensible set of laws even today. Even the bits that may seem "obsolete".
To go and pick on my religion some, as a Catholic, I'm not supposed to eat meat on Fridays during Lent, but I can eat fish. Why? Because the Church says so. Why does the Church say so? Best guess historically is that a Medieval pope was helping to prop up the fishing industry. And from a Medieval Christian point of view, meat and fish were two entirely different things. This rule doesn't make any sense today. But it's good spiritual discipline for me to follow it. Maybe someday I'll get strong enough that I can follow the Buddhist rules on fasting from meat (tho I may not in the interests of household harmony. Bill *really* doesn't like tofu). There have been periods where my entire family kept to the traditional rule of no meat on Fridays, year round.
At least the laws you're wrestling with have some basis beyond the fishing lobby wanted money :).