Menstrual Purity

Perhaps more than any other aspect of rabbinic literature, the laws about and discussions of menstruation have polarized contemporary discussions of gender relations in Jewish culture. Is the designated impurity of menstruation sexist? Or does ritual abstinence from sex during menstruation encourage a rhythmic reaffirmation of conjugal intimacy? This text offers a new perspective on rabbinic discussions of menstrual impurity, female physiology, and anatomy, and on the social and religious institutions those discussions engendered. It analyzes the functions of these discussions within the larger textual world of rabbinic literature and in the context of Jewish and Christian culture in late antiquity. How did gender work - how was it made towork - in rabbinic literature? How did that literature dictate the place of women in Jewish culture? In search of answers tothese questions, the author analyzes the architectural metaphors deployed to describe female anatomy, arguing that this discursive construction operated culturally to associate women with the home and exclude them fromrabbinic study halls. The author shows that abbinic discourse is not completely controlled by rabbinic ideology, however. She analyzes talmudic discussions that allow alternative gender perspectives to emerge, indicating that women and their bodies were not completely objectified. The book concludes with a study of early Christian texts that relate to the same biblical laws on menstrual impurity as rabbinic texts.