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THE TIMES OF ISRAEL: The Blogs
By Rachel Sharansky Danziger | January 27, 2015
When I immersed in the mikveh for the first time, on the eve of my wedding, I was elated. I was excited to enter a whole new realm of Jewish life: Taharat Hamishpacha, the Jewish laws that relate to marriage and sexuality. Here I am, I thought, joining the ranks of married Jewish women throughout history, following in their footsteps of ritual purity and spiritual rebirth.
I never lost that feeling of awe and excitement. But like many other halacha-observing women, I quickly discovered that maintaining taharat hamishpacha was far more challenging than I had expected. The rules seemed simple enough in theory, but in practice they were confusing and difficult to apply. In many cases, I needed guidance and found myself asking rabbis for advice. Talking to men about intimate issues, about my own body, was exceedingly awkward. Running into them the next day was even worse. Some women find this experience so off-putting that they stop keeping the laws altogether, or err on the side of caution and become unnecessarily stringent. I wondered then: Is the actual experience of taharat hamishpacha doomed to be stressful and unpleasant?
