Every time I go to a fancy coffee place, I am faced with a dilemma. I often order a latte or cappuccino, in which the upscale coffee places tend to make a fancy design in the coffee. I, like a true American, like a little sugar or splenda in my drink to take the bitterness out–but I hate the idea of mixing in the sugar and thereby ruining the design of the foam.
What to do, what to do??
This month, I only menstruated from Saturday afternoon until Tuesday evening–3 1/2 days. I sort of feel gipped out of my Niddah time. Last month, by the end of the week, the Niddah observance had created this incredibly powerful sexual tension between us. This month, sure, there were moments when I really wanted to hug or kiss him, but I held myself back. There weren’t ever any moments when I really, really considered breaking the rules (once, I was sitting on the couch next to him and forgot I wasn’t supposed to touch, so I jokingly jabbed him in the elbow after making a bad pun. I immediately realized my mistake, pulled away and said, “well I guess that’s the most action you’re going to get all week”)
Our arrangement did create some logistical problems. We were planning to spend Shabbat together in my community. I had arranged for him to stay in the apartment of a friend that was going to be away. I did this for two reasons. First, when I was making the plans, I wasn’t 100% sure if my roomates were going to be home. They prefer that guys not sleep over in the apartment, so I’m respectful of that. The second reason is because he didn’t want to be parading to the community that he was sleeping at my place, even if that is what would end up happening.
My roomates ended up going away, and Friday night he did sleep at my place. Saturday I got my period, so Saturday night he stayed at my friend’s apartment. This was just annoying. We spent all day Saturday together, and all day Sunday together, but he had to go back to a different apartment in between. Instead of just waking up together, eating breakfast, and then heading out for the day’s activities, we had to mutually agree upon a time to get up, call each other on the phone to see if the other was awake at the agreed upon time, have him walk over to my apartment, while I spent that time drinking coffee and getting myself ready.
This sexual tension thing is tricky. Like most things in life, it requires a happy medium. Just as the sexual tension will be lost if a couple spends every moment together in bed, it can also be lost if a couple separates themselves to the extent that they have completely removed all possibilities of tension. I think of it like a magnetic field. If you hold the opposite poles of the magnets too close to each other, they’ll attach together, but if you hold them too far apart, they’ll be completely outside each other’s magnetic field and have no acknowledgement of the other magnet whatsoever. If, however, you hold the magnets near each other but not to the point of attachment, you’ll have this excellent magnetic tension that can deeply improve the magnets’ desire for each other.
Menstruation is dirty. Period. Blood spitting out of your vagina is dirty. For that matter, so is blood coming out of your nose when it bleeds, blood from your veins when you give blood, and that gross blood and dirt combination that happens when you skin your knees.
“(19) And if a woman shall have an issue of menstrual blood, she shall be niddah for seven days, and whoever touches her shall be niddah until the evening. (20) And everything that she lies upon in her niddah shall be impure, and all that she sits upon shall be impure. (21) And whoever touches her bed shall was his clothes and bathe himself in water, and be impure until the evening. (22) And whoever touches anything that she sits upon shall wash his clothes, and bathe himself in water, and be unclean until the evening. (23) And if he is on her bed or any place that she sits, when he touches it he shall be impure until the evening. (24) And if a man lies with her and her niddah is upon him, he shall be unclean for seven days, and every bed that he lies upon shall be impure.-Leviticus 15:19-24
I don’t feel like a “dirty person” when I am menstruating, but I sure don’t feel clean. I’ve got blood coming all out of me, I have to constantly make sure I’ve got enough diaper-like contraptions with me to make sure my clothing stays clean, I feel groggy and tired…Of course I don’t want to be intimate right now. But do I feel that that the halachik sources stigmatize women as a gender for the act of menstruation? No. They’re just using the true fact that blood is dirty.
Days 7-9
I was with him and his parents for shabbat, so even though we touched a little, we didn’t really do too much. I spent all of shabat thinking about how much I wanted to be alone with him. Finally, FINALLY he took me home Sunday and we spent the entire day together in bed and it was more than perfect.
As I mentioned, I’ve been together with the bf for 2 months now. We started dating shortly after I finished my period, a month later I was out of town for a week when I next got my period, and so, this is the first time that I have been menstruating while in the same place as him.
We had plans to go out Saturday night. We had spent Saturday in different cities, and that’s when I got my period. I was a little nervous in telling him that I got it. I mean, we’ve only known each other for two months. I’ve been pretty open with him about everything in my life, but still, talking about menstruating and bleeding and all that is just not something I’m used to.
Call me a bad feminist, call me a prude, but I don’t like talking about the blood that comes out of my vagina. It makes me uncomfortable. It’s dirty. I know, feminists aren’t supposed to think like that, but I do.
I debated telling him on the phone about my new status, but I couldn’t figure out a way to discreetly say it, and I was still too uncomortable with the words to just come straight out and tell him directly. So I let it go.
He came over to pick me up, and immediately gave me a hug. I hugged him back, but apparently then made an uncomfortable face. He asked what was up. I said, “remember that niddah thing we were talking about…?” and he got it. I was extremely thankful that I didn’t have to go into more detail than that, but also immediately began thinking about next month, and if I could use the same line, or if I’m going to have to come up with a new euphemism every time, or if I’m just going to have to suck it up and get comfortable with talking about my body.
The date was both wonderful and frustrating. Wonderful because I really like him. I enjoy spending time with him, just talking. He’s really funny, and witty, and smart. We spoke about a lot of important topics.
Frustrating because, the whole night, all I wanted to do was lean over and kiss him. And I couldn’t. I could come close. I stood extremely close to him, looked up at his face when I was talking so that our faces were only inches away from each other, but I did not touch him. I wanted to so, so badly. And I’m pretty sure he felt the same way. There was a lot of body heat and chemistry between us. I started to understand this idea of “separation makes the heart grow fonder”, because all I wanted to do that night was take him back to my place and get busy with him.
But I didn’t. And I’m glad. I am glad that we had a great time without any physical touch, and I am glad that the lack of touch made our physical chemistry stronger. I just hope this feeling lasts.
This is a very personal topic to be writing about, which is why I have chosen to share it via an anonymous public blog.
As those of you following me may know, I broke up with the old bf about 4 months ago. I have started dating a new guy, and we have been together about 2 months.
We are not having sex. Due to both mine and his negative experiences with introducing sex early on in a relationship, we have decided to wait. However, we are still somewhat physical with each other.
He and I are both marriage-minded. If this relationship goes well, we would both like it to end in marriage. We are also both Orthodox Jews, and believe in keeping the Jewish sexual laws known as niddah.
Niddah, in it’s strictest biblical interpretation, forbids a husband and wife from having sex while the woman is menstruating. Rabbinic decrees have stretched this to include 7 days after the woman stops menstruating, and to prohibit all types of touch, including hugs, kisses, etc. During the middle ages, under the influence of Islamic neighbors, these rabbinic decrees were even further stretched to prohibit such activities as passing an object directly to one another, sleeping in the same bed, and eating off the same plate.
Additionally, as part of these laws, many believe that since an unmarried woman is considered a “niddah” (menstruant) until she purifies herself in the mikveh, which only happens after she is married, an unmarried woman and man may not touch each other at all.
Needless to say, we don’t keep all of these restrictions. We touch, sometimes. However, it is important to him that, since eventually he does plan to keep the niddah laws in marriage, some form of niddah should be observed before marriage as well.
We decided that, while I am menstruating, we will not have any physical contant. No hand holding, no hugging, no soft arm stroking, and certainly no kissing. I told him I’ll try. I’ll see how I feel about it.
I have always been ambivalent about niddah. On the one hand, it seems so restrictive. Why can’t I have sex with my husband when I want to? Particularly in marriage context, when kids are involved and the couple is often tired and exhausted at night, if there happens to be one day where both spouses are up and ready for it, why should the fact that the woman only stopped menstruating 3 days ago be a hinderance? And what if one spouse had a particularly trying day? The other can’t come home and offer a hug of support?
On the other hand, long term monogamy is scary. Am I really expected to have sex with the same person year after year after year and still have that same spark of intimacy and excitement and arousal? Niddah, supposedly, is a way to combat that. By creating a distance between spouses for a certain amount of time each month, there is a certain excitement that, supposedly, returns when the couple can reunite physically.
I have heard vehement arguments from both sides of the spectrum. I haven’t yet decided how I feel about it.
And that’s where this project comes in. I have decided that, in order to sort through my feeling on niddah during this experimental time, I will write my thoughts and feelings down on this blog. I welcome your comments and input, particularly those of you that have some experience with keeping-or not keeping-niddah.
Ok. I guess since this blog is all about the interactions between feminism and Orthodox Judaism, I really have no other choice but to comment on the recent YU Beacon controversy.
For those of you not in the know, the Beacon, an online newspaper at Yeshiva University run jointly between the men at Yeshiva College and the women at Stern College, recently published a work of fiction in their creative writing section which discussed one young female student’s first time having sex, and the ambiguity and regret she felt afterwards. You can read all about it at Fox News, The New York Times, and the Wall Street Journal. Basically, there was a brouhaha* between the editors of the paper and the school administration which resulted in the student council pulling their funding from the paper, after the editors refused to remove the article from the site.
As you can sense by my tone, I really didn’t want to write about this topic. Look, I chose not to go to Stern College for a reason, and this is exactly why. I wanted a place where I was free to discuss my opinions, thoughts, and personal life without censorship. (By contrast, when I was at UMD, the big controversy surrounding free speech was the showing of a high budget hard core pornographic film, first intended to discuss safe sex in the porn industry but then mushroomed into a discussion on free speech and censorship after the MD Senate threatened to remove all funding from the University of Maryland-$424 million, a far cry from the $500 that was pulled from the Beacon-if the film was shown. In the end, the movie was shown and the free speech discussion occurred, but was not paid for by the university, nor were any university resources used for the showing of the film.)
As a law student, I feel I have to clarify a big inaccuracy that has been circulating around the internet. YU did not remove the article, but even if they had, this is not a violation of free speech. The law surrounding free speech is pretty darn clear that only government censorship is inappropriate, but rights between private parties are absolutely not protected by the free speech clause. The University of Maryland is a public university, and therefore can not infringe on freedom of speech. Yeshiva University, on the other hand, is a private university and can censor whatever the hell they want.
A nuanced point, but an important one nonetheless. Students do not choose to go to Yeshiva University so that they can write about sex. Sure, college is a time of personal growth and development, and many students may have wanted one type of environment when they were 18 but would have chosen a different one had they made the decision at age 22. However, they made their [chaste] bed and now it’s time to sleep [alone] in it.
Another, not so important, point. The article featured a whole lot of name dropping (“My newly purchased Longchamp bag”, “I hear that familiar Blackberry ping”, and “wanting nothing more than a lifetime subscription to the New Yorker and an endless supply of blueberry smoothies” to cite just a few.) A woman named Shani Tzoref commented on Heshy Fried’s (of FrumSatire fame) facebook status with this to say about the extensive namedropping:
“I wish it would be reasonable to interpret this as a literary attempt to show that the protagonist’s view of life was shallow and superficial, and to take this as a commentary on the misguided oversimplifications about sexual encounters reflected in her immature conceptions both before and after “the act”…. not much chance, huh?”
Those were my thoughts exactly. Except, I think I was nicer to the author. I actually thought think that this was her intention. The author, so it seemed, was trying explain how this Stern woman thought that she was just like “any other twenty year old woman”, because she rides the subway and has a blackberry. However, after her rendezvous at the hotel, she realized she didn’t want to be a normal twenty year old woman, she wanted to be a good Stern student, and immediately regretted her decision to have sex with her boyfriend.
The truth is, while I’m tired about hearing of these ridiculous stories that pass for scandals at YU, I actually think the controversy is important. It helps raise awareness in the Jewish community about issues that are affecting the Jewish community. If I wrote here in my blog about frum people having premarital sex (which I have), it wouldn’t raise nearly the amount of commotion that a YU story would, because people don’t have any sort of expectations for an anonymous blogger. Even though Simi Lampert, the Beacon’s editor-in-chief, claims that she had absolutely no idea that this would blow up the way it did, I highly doubt that’s accurate. Either she’s completely oblivious to the closed mindedness of the Orthodox community (in which case perhaps she is not qualified to be an editor-in-chief of a Yeshiva University newspaper), or she was, and she chose to publish the article specifically in order to start a controversy. Some might give her flak about that, but I respect it. Controversy is what creates change in Orthodoxy, and obviously, that is what we need right now.
Regarding the cut funding, I completely, 100% support it. Not because I support censorship or blackmail, but because I support journalistic integrity. When a newspaper is funded by any source, their information becomes exponentially more biased, because they must adhere to the restrictions placed on that source, and will not feel free to critique it. For that reason, most University papers are independently operated, which is a good think, since they frequently run criticisms of the University policies. It is time for the Beacon (and the rest of YU’s plethora of student newspapers) to cut themselves off from the yoke of the university and become a real voice of the people, rather than a voice of the University’s administrative board.
*I love it when I have the opportunity to use the word “brouhaha” in a written work. It’s arguably my favorite word in the English language.
