Digging Up The Daylilies

I was watching yesterday's Colbert Report and he talked about a recent health report regarding fertility and low-fat dairy. Now ordinarily these studies show a positive effect of consuming low-fat dairy. New Scientist has a good article about this  Harvard School of Public Health study. They followed a cohort of nurses for 8 years, and found a strong correlation between ovulation problems and consuming 2+ servings of low-fat dairy per week. The women who ate full-fat dairy "reduced their risk of anovulatory infertility by more than 25% compared with women who consumed up to one serving a week."

Guess I'm buying whole milk for the next few months! It can't hurt, as long as I reduce calories somewhere else.

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?

At the High Holidays this year I decided that one of the next steps in planning our family would be for me to go to the mikvah. I've done this once before, but that was in 2002 when I converted to Judaism. I asked a dear friend to go with me, she cautiously agreed, and that was that for several months.

I've finally reached a point medically where I believe I can get pregnant, and I want to be ready. The mikvah at the Conservative synagogue is closed for repairs. It's a real shame, since there would be no questions there about if my conversion was valid, if I was Jewish enough to use it. On the other hand, this way my friend doesn't have to be my mikvah lady.

So yesterday I screwed up the courage to call Chabad. And got their answering machine. The rebbetzin (that's the rabbi's wife) called me back this morning as I was running out the door. She agreed to schedule me for mikvah next week, but she wants to meet with me tomorrow evening to discuss preparations. On my way to work I realized I hadn't told her I was a convert! I might not be up to her standards, so she would be within her rights to refuse me use of her mikvah. And I certainly don't want to treyf it up for her and her congregants. So I called her back. And she said she'd have to call me back because she didn't know the answer. I assume that she then talked to her husband, because I got a call back within a half an hour. And we're still on for tomorrow evening. I hope that I won't come away from that meeting disappointed.

Now my worries get to be the easy ones. Like, is it appropriate to wear pants to the home of the Chabad Lubavitch rabbi, or should I wear a skirt? If the rebbetzin oks me for the mikvah I could worry about being naked in front of another person, but I'm not going to worry about that. Mikvah ladies are like doctors in my mind; naked is their job.

Wee! To think that this could actually happen. And that may, just maybe then it will be the extra boost I need to get pregnant.

I know this doesn't make much sense to my friends who aren't Jewish. Dipping in the mikvah is something that observant Jewish women do every month after their period. It originates in Temple times in all the Levitical restrictions regarding sacrifices and purity. Not very many Reform women do it at all, and I doubt that many Conservative do either (note to self: make donation to Beth Israel mikvah fund). But I feel that it might be spiritually beneficial to me. So I'll try it. If I like it, I'll keep going back until I'm pregnant. If not, I'll still have gone once.