Provocative essays address women’s menstrual rituals in Jewish law, history, and culture.

Twelve essays by historians and ethnographers examine the meaning and practices of Niddah (ritual separation) across time and place, showing how Jewish women’s interpretations were often at odds with the views of husbands, doctors, and rabbis. As a group, these essays also speak to contemporary feminist concerns: the shaping of women’s identity, gender relations, and the role of women in the sacred.

Rahel R. Wasserfall, a French-born Israeli anthropologist, is a resident scholar at the Women’s Studies Research Center at Brandeis University. She received her doctoral degree from Hebrew University and was a post-doctoral Fulbright fellow at Duke University. She has taught women’s studies and sociology at Eotvos Lorand University (Budapest) and CUNY.

“The book’s most striking contribution is its presentation of first-class summaries and analyses of biblical and rabbinic sources side-by-side with contemporary ethnographic participant observations and interviews with diverse Jewish populations from the United States, Israel, and other societies. The result is admirably comprehensive, immensely scholarly, and fascinating.”
–Gelya Frank, University of Southern California