Reappropriating the Taboo

By Rabbi Elyse Goldstein

Theologian Elizabeth Dodson Gray notes: “Women’s bodies may be the hardest place for women to find sacredness” (Sacred Dimensions of Women’s Experience, 1988, p. 197). Our society sends negative messages to women from earliest childhood about the expected perfection of their physiques and the disappointments of any flaws in the female form. Parashat M’tzora, then, with its focus on menstrual impurity (15:19-24), seems to impart the same kind of unfavorable sense. Rejecting our own received biases and patriarchal assumptions about menstruation, however, can help us form a contemporary view of these so-called taboos.

What the Torah deems as tamei (“impure”) or tahor (“pure”) is not actually attached to cleanliness, even though they are often translated as “unclean” and “clean.” These Hebrew words are ritual terms, meant to designate those in a physical and spiritual state unable to enter the Mishkan (Tabernacle; and in later times, the Temple), or those able to do so. Those who are considered tamei are taboo (which is not what we think of as “bad”), meaning that they cannot enter the sacred space; and the thing that causes them to be ineligible to enter is also understood to be taboo.

Anthropologists note that taboos are the system by which a culture sets aside certain objects or persons as either sacred or accursed. Such objects or persons inspire both fear and respect. Penelope Washbourn writes: “Menstruation symbolizes the advent of a new power that is mana. . . ‘sacred.’ … A taboo expresses this feeling that something special, some holy power, is involved, and our response to it must be very careful” (in Woman Spirit Rising, 1989, p. 251). This mixed message of fear and power, contact and avoidance, actually dominates all the Torah’s passages around blood.

Blood, which is to be avoided in the realm of eating and sex, is the same substance that atones for the community in the sacrificial system, and it binds the individual male child to the Israelite covenant through circumcision. Blood both sustains and endangers; it is the medium of plague or deliverance. Thus blood–like every potent symbol–has the double quality and the twin potential of birth and decay, purity and impurity.

So too with menstrual blood. We who are often uninspired and unaffected by our bodies should reject the negative connotation of taboo–and explore, instead, the positive and sacred aspect. Surely a religion that has a blessing for an activity as mundane as going to the bathroom should have a blessing for the coming and going of menstruation. Since the male composers of the liturgy, living in a world where modesty was central and women’s bodies were a mystery at best, were not able–or more likely, not willing–to imagine such a blessing, we must be the first generation to do so.

More than thirty years ago, I did just this: I wrote a blessing for menstruation and have been writing about it and teaching it ever since. When I crafted my b’rachah, I reappropriated the difficult and offensive morning blessing in the traditional prayer book, which reads: “Blessed are You, Adonai our God, Ruler of the Universe, who has not made me a woman.” (Traditionally, women say instead, “who has made me according to Your will.”) Each month, when I get my period, I say: “Baruch atah Adonai, eloheinu melech haolam, she’asani ishah: Blessed are You, Adonai our God, Ruler of the Universe, who has made me a woman.” Saying the blessing becomes a revolutionary moment, for this slight change in wording–changing the negative “who has not made me a woman” into the positive “who has made me a woman”–affirms my holiness and sanctity within the context of menstruation, not despite it.

I believe it is possible to rescue the aspects of mystery inherent in menstruation. While we reject menstrual huts, a separation from the sancta, and antiquated notions of cleanliness, we can still emerge with a sense of the overwhelming mystery of life and death that is embodied in our corporeal female selves. While many women associate menstruation with physical pain and discomfort, the experience nonetheless involves a degree of power. We should reject the notion that menstruation makes a woman “unclean” and instead think of this time as a period of intense electrical charges-the charge of life and death-pulsing through our bodies. Blu Greenberg urges us to focus more on the positive, “to restore that element of holiness to our bodies, our selves” (On Women and Judaism, 1981, pp. 118-120).

We can also consider a connection between menstruation and covenant. The prophet Zechariah speaks to “daughter Jerusalem” and “daughter Zion” about “your covenant of blood” as that which releases prisoners from the dry pit (9:9-11). It does not say “the covenant of blood,” as most translations render it, but rather emphasizes that blood is the focus of the covenant. The address to the feminine persona suggests that all “daughters of Zion” have that covenant of blood. It is through menstruation–from puberty when we accept our responsibilities as Jews, through the elder years when bleeding stops and deep wisdom starts–that the entire world is saved from the dry pit of death, in which there is no water, no womb, no regeneration, no rebirth.

See menstrual blood, then, as women’s covenantal blood–just as the blood of b’rit milah (ritual circumcision) is men’s. The possibilities for rituals around this abound. For women too have a b’rit (covenant) inscribed in our flesh as an “everlasting covenant” (Genesis 17:19): not just once, at eight days old, but every single month. And M’tzora, in its ancient and perhaps awkward way, attempts to remind us.

Goldstein, Elyse. "Reappropriating the Taboo." MyJewishLearning.com. (Viewed on April 6, 2014). http://www.myjewishlearning.com/texts/Bible/Weekly_Torah_Portion/URJ--metzora.shtml?p=0

Dvar Tzedek

By Sigal Samuel

Parshat Metzora lays out the biblical prescriptions regarding menstruation, a topic more steeped in critique and apology than almost any other area in Jewish law. Contemporary readers seeking to reconcile the Torah’s approach to menstruation with their own sensibilities typically run up against a few uncomfortable facts. First, the text discusses this natural bodily process in the same breath as tzara’at, a skin disease traditionally viewed as punishment for sin, and seminal emissions, a phenomenon that rendered Israelite men ritually impure. Second, the text explains that a menstruating woman is impure for seven days, and that she communicates this impurity to anyone who touches her and anything she sits or lies on.

In addition, women in Israelite society were likely forced to withdraw from the public sphere during their periods, both because of their impure status—which prevented them from entering sacred spaces or eating sacred foods—and because they may have lacked the means to effectively contain menstrual blood.

For millions of girls and women in developing countries today, menstruation still stands as a barrier to women’s inclusion in society. Because feminine hygiene products are not always available or affordable, girls use rags, newspapers, leaves and mud instead. But these are relatively ineffective methods, forcing girls to withdraw while they are menstruating. Girls’ school attendance suffers as a result. According to an Oxford University study, in rural Ghana, many girls miss up to five school days each month because of their periods. Afraid to risk the humiliation of bloodstains on their clothes, they stay at home, often falling behind in class or dropping out entirely.

This reality is especially troubling when we realize that women are critical drivers of community development, which means that girls’ inability to complete their educations constitutes a great loss, not only for them as individuals, but also for their families, communities and countries.

While many organizations are starting to do the important work of providing poor women access to affordable sanitary pads, we must also look at the root of this problem, which is the fact that menstruation is taboo in many developing nations. It is rarely discussed openly, making its deleterious effects on girls’ school attendance difficult to see and address. Without a higher profile and increased visibility, the problem will continue to go largely unacknowledged.

In this regard, Parshat Metzora may provide a helpful model for the international development community. Despite some of the potentially negative aspects described above, there is one remarkably positive aspect to the biblical treatment of menstruation: as far as the Torah is concerned, this bodily process is neither private nor unmentionable. Instead, it is quite public: people often know when a woman has her period, and if she experiences any irregular bleeding, she must bring two birds to the tabernacle for the priest to sacrifice on her behalf. Far from being hidden or ignored, the rites of menstruation are dealt with by the priest: the person in the highest position of all. On an even more basic level, menstruation receives ample attention and acknowledgment in the text, and is treated with surprising frankness.

If families, schools, communities and governments in the Global South would begin acknowledging menstruation and discussing it candidly, we could remove the underlying stigma that prevents women from accessing the sanitary solutions they need to come out of hiding and achieve greater inclusion in society overall.

This destigmatization process needs to be undertaken, not only by people in developing countries, but by us as well. While we may have access to physical amenities like pads and tampons, many of us still view menstruation as private and unmentionable. We should, instead, address this bodily function with a sort of biblical openness, insisting not only that it be public but that the stigma associated with the normal functioning of women’s bodies be removed.

In discussing the priestly rites that accompany menstruation, ourparshah speaks of the sanctuary as the “tabernacle that is betocham.” While betocham is typically translated as “in their midst,” it can also be read quite literally as “in them”—in their bodies. I would like to propose that, this week, we choose to read the verse this way, and to recognize that the Divine sanctuary resides in us: physical, embodied beings. It is only by fully internalizing this notion that we will feel moved to ensure that girls’ and women’s bodies everywhere are freed from stigma and, by extension, that we will succeed in empowering girls and women as agents of change.

Samuel, Sigal. "Dvar Tzedek." American Jewish World Service. (Viewed on April 6, 2014). http://ajws.org/what_we_do/education/publications/dvar_tzedek/5772/tazria-metzora-1.html