CANDIDA MOSS:
Weak Men Like Trump Have Always Feared Menstruation (
The Daily Beast). Mr. Trump obligingly continues to provide fodder for PaleoJudaica
posts. His recent comment about Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly, whatever its original authorial intent may have been, has brought menstruation some media attention. Professor Moss now provides us with one of her informative essays on attitudes toward it in world religious traditions, including ancient Judaism. Excerpt:
In the Jewish religious imagination, blame for what is actually the primordial “curse” is often placed squarely on Eve. Eve is seen as responsible for all of the unpleasantness of the reproductive process: menstruation and childbirth included.
Is this really true? Eve is not mentioned outside of Genesis in the Hebrew Bible. Christianity certainly makes much of this curse and Eve's part in it in Christian interpretation of the "Fall" of humanity (see already
1 Timothy 2:11-15), but I am not familiar with ancient Jewish texts that explicitly blame Eve for the unpleasantness of things like menstruation and childbirth. There is, of course
Life of Adam and Eve 33-35 and
Apocalypse of Moses 25, but I do not accept these Adam and Eve pseudepigrapha to be Jewish works and in this I am in good company. I am not saying that Professor Moss is wrong, but I know of no such ancient and persuasively Jewish texts and I would like to see specifics. Anyhow, to continue:
In the ritual regulations that make up the book of Leviticus, menstrual blood turns out to be something of a problem. According to the book’s priestly author, menstruation is a cause of ritual impurity. Not only is a menstruating woman impure for seven days, but anyone who touches her is unclean “until the evening” (Lev. 15:19). Sex is squarely out of the question (unless you want to bring seven days of impurity on yourself) and, in the meantime, everything she sits or lies on also becomes unclean. The impurity associated with menstruation—much like the impurity associated with skin diseases or emissions of semen—was communicable through touch.
The prohibition on contact with menstruating women is not found only in Judaism. The Koran prohibits intercourse during menses (2:222) and the Hindu Laws of Manu indicate that a woman becomes purified from menstruation when she bathes at the conclusion of her period (6:66). Bathing post-period appears to have been the cross-cultural cure-all, but until menses were over women were contagious. Until 2005, Hindu women in Nepal were forced to live in cow-sheds during their period. To this day some traditional members of Orthodox Christianity abstain from receiving Holy Communion during menstruation.
But this is about more than either cleanliness or ritual purity. The idea that menstrual blood poses a health risk is evident in a variety of cultures. The ancient Jewish collection of rabbinic opinions known as the Talmud reads, “If a menstruant woman passes between two [men], if it is at the beginning of her menses, she will slay one of them, and if it is at the end of her menses, she will cause strife between them” (b. Pesaḥ. 111a). Watch out, Chris Wallace and Brett Baier.