Several theories for the causes of eating disorders emerged. One of the most significant relates to the dating culture (shidduchim) of ultra-Orthodox Jews, which deviates greatly from the courtship rituals of the general populace. Orthodox Jewish young people are not allowed to meet together without the assistance of matchmakers. Even touching (negiah) the opposite sex, a potential spouse, is strictly forbidden.
Those who interpret the Law most stringently avoid situations in which they could touch a member of the opposite sex even by accident. This dictates their choice of seats on buses, airplanes, etc. Shaking hands with someone of the opposite sex is also extremely problematic from their perspective.
Because the outside world (such as the business community) frowns upon refusing a handshake and may exact serious penalties on a person who does so (such as rejecting business deals), highly educated rabbis have given instructions for how to handle such situations honorably. The negiah observer’s hand must remain “helpless” and avoid squeezing. If the other party takes a vigorous, firm grip, the Jew’s helpless hand remains an “innocent bystander” and thereby ritually pure.
Some marriage brokers are professionals who charge a fee. These practitioners are called shadkhan. They maintain a database in which the first question pertains to the woman’s dress size and weight. Men tend to look for very slender women to marry.
Slimness is a prized trait emphasized by matchmakers and the mothers of girls of marriageable age. I’m not exaggerating much when I say that you can’t get a date until you hit a size 0 and the magic numbers 32-24-34.
Slimness symbolizes pubescent innocence, incorruption, which in turn ensures that the wife candidate will be one hundred percent under the control of her husband. You’re supposed to marry very young, and the use of birth control is not customary. The primary purpose of sex is the creation of children. A large number of children is a way to spread Jewish values (Jews don’t engage in missionary work).
This is one obvious reason for anorexia among young Orthodox women. If they don’t feel ready for the demands of parenthood, sex, and raising a flock of children, they start to focus on what they do control: their own bodies.
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Girls become potential future spouses at the age of twelve years and six months, which is considered the official beginning of menstruation. For Haredi Jews, even touching a three-year-old member of the opposite sex is a problem. Because menstruation is treated with the same horror in strictly religious Jewish culture as in most ancient tribal societies and because this attitude of shunning exposes those growing into women in the modern world to serious body image issues, I’m going to give you some more specifics about menstruation in the Jewish context.
A menstruating girl or women is niddah; the word means “moved” or “separated”. According to some rabbinical interpretations, niddah comes from the word menaddekem, which means “those who cast you out”.
According to Jewish thought there is normal (niddah) and abnormal (zavah) blood flow. Because it is very difficult to know whether the flow is normal, it is always treated as abnormal. This means that after her period ends, a Jewish woman must wait seven days before ritually immersing herself on the eighth day, after nightfall, in cleansing water (mikvah) and thus metamorphosing back to a state of purity.
Just to be sure, Orthodox Ashkenazi Jews add five more days on top of the seven, so a woman has to wait twelve days before purification.
Ritual immersion belongs to the larger concept of “family purity” (taharat hamishpacha). Immersion is preceded by a complete cleansing of all body orifices. Nails are also trimmed and hair brushed. So as a woman immerses herself, she is not only washing physically, she is becoming spiritually clean.
According to Jewish doctrine, mikvah is an even more important element of the religion than the synagogue and Torah scrolls. Of the 613 commandments and prohibitions that make up the mitsvot, the requirements of the mikvah belong to the third category (chukim), which consists of rules that surpass human understanding and challenge reason, and which are, therefore, beyond all criticism. According to the Jewish view, these commandments are paramount because they have no pragmatic function. They are simply instructions handed down by God and must be accepted as such.
The actual mikvah font must be built in contact with the ground; it cannot, for example, be a discrete bathtub. The font must be divided into two parts, one of which contains at least two hundred gallons of rainwater that has been collected and funneled to the font according to precise requirements. In an emergency, melted snow or ice may be used if rainwater is unavailable.
For practical reasons, the other section of the font is filled with tap water. Between the sections is a dividing wall with a hole of at least two inches in diameter. Because of the flow between the sections, the waters “kiss” each other, which gives the font official mikvah status.
The font symbolizes both the womb and the grave. It is an intermediate space where one moves between life and death. It represents relinquishing oneself and rebirth. In Jewish thought, the source of purity (tahorah) is life itself, while death represents impurity (tumah). According to this logic, a woman’s period is the death of potential life, and so a menstruating woman moves into a state of symbolic impurity from which she must escape month after month through the aid of the mikvah.
This is also one possible additional explanation for why ulta-Orthodox Jews have so many children. Who would want to live constantly unclean?
Purification requires a precise determination of the end of one’s period. Otherwise it would be impossible to count the seven (or twelve) days a woman has to wait. So women check the end of their periods through a ritual called
