From a “Pot of Filth” to a “Hedge of Roses” (And Back): Changing Theorizations of Menstruation in Judaism

Abstract

Concerning the Jewish laws of purity and impurity, including hilkhot niddah, the laws pertaining to the menstruating Jewish woman, the twelfth-century rabbi, philosopher, and physician Moses ben Maimon (Maimonides, also Ram-bam) wrote the following in his legal magnum opus, the Mishneh Torah: “It is clear and manifest that the laws of purity and impurity are Scriptural decrees, and they are not among the matters which human understanding can judge; for lo they are included among the ḥukkim [inscrutable God-given laws].”1 Closer to our own day, the Orthodox Jewish writer Kaiman Kahana introduced the manual Taharat BatYisroel (The Purity of Israel’s Daughter)—a summary of hilkhot niddah aimed at the Jewish married couple—with a similar remark: Man cannot fully understand the reasons for these restrictions, just as he cannot fathom completely the reason for any of the divine commandments. Indeed, the motivation for the observance of mitzvoth [commandments] is never the knowledge of their full meaning, even if this were attainable. The basis for mitzvoth is, rather, the realization that they are the manifest will of the creator. Man’s only goal on earth is to fulfill, for as long as he breathes, the will of the creator of the whole universe.2