If the cloth is stained red or pink, menstruation is considered to be ongoing. If some other color comes back on the cloth, for example brown, the matter requires closer inspection. In this case the woman has to consult with her rabbi.
To be on the safe side, an Orthodox woman who has completed her period will also place a piece of cloth called a mokh dahuk (nowadays a tampon is often used) in her vagina for eighteen minutes to an hour each morning and evening for seven days. The fabric must be placed carefully in order to avoid irritating the dry vagina in an undesirable way and causing bleeding that will interfere with the result of the examination. Women looking for convenience or who suffer from spotting may at this point use colorful toilet paper and colorful underwear so any possible stains won’t stand out and no further action will be required.
Of course the married couple are not allowed to interact amorously (harchakot) during menstruation. Anything that could arouse sexual desire must be avoided. In some communities, sisterly touch is allowed.
Those who celebrate the good tidings of Judaism claim that menstrual periods actually invigorate married life. It is as if the couple enjoys repeated honeymoons fed by longing and separation since one of them is temporarily unattainable and forbidden. In addition they claim that women benefit at a personal level from their time in niddah. They can devote themselves to study and completely control their own bodies, unlike during the rest of the month.
A woman also becomes niddah after losing her virginity, after her hymen is torn (regardless of whether she bleeds or not). The wedding night is followed by the same morning and evening examination of bleeding as at the end of menstruation, with the difference that there are four days instead of seven (or twelve). Weddings are planned according to brides’ periods, because a woman must cleanse herself in a mikvah font just before the great celebration.
I believe that routines and rituals can bring order and joy to a woman’s life. However, I am also certain that the repellent, even demonizing attitude of ultra-Orthodox Jews to menstruation, to what is one of the most natural events in the world, is one of the elements that leads to anorexia in this culture. This situation is not changed at all by the fact that some modern Kabbalistic trends attempt to glorify this madness by using the euphemistic name “Spa for the Soul”.
Sufficiently advanced anorexia is an effective method for producing secondary amenorrhea, an endocrine disorder caused by hormonal disturbances of the hypothalamus, pituitary gland, and gonads, which results in an interruption of the menstrual cycle. And, I hardly have to spell this out, a woman who is free of her period is also free of the above-mentioned menstrual circus.
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Jewish celebrations are well known for centering around large meals. In the Jewish home, the weekly Shabbat is just as lavish as the yearly Thanksgiving dinner is for other Americans. The late supper on the Friday preceding Shabbat also contains numerous carefully prepared dishes. It’s no surprise that a focus on food has been proven to increase eating disorders among Jews.14
The days preceding a weekend are largely consumed by food preparations for the tradition-conscious Jewish woman. It’s also good to remember that cook isn’t a Jewish woman’s only role by any means. In the Haredi community, the woman is also responsible for supporting the family because the man has to focus his attention on spending all day cramming the tenets of the faith into his brain.
The festival of Yom Kippur each autumn centers on fasting, and other twenty-five-hour periods of fasting from food and water are also found in the Jewish calendar. The fast either ends with a large meal or is preceded by one. A food culture like this that alternates between abstinence and gluttony is also tailor-made for triggering eating disorders.
Jews who closely follow halakha eat according to so much regulation that an anorexic attitude toward food is almost a foregone conclusion. It isn’t just the orthodoxy of food defined by the kosher rules, but also the numerous rituals related to the actual act of eating, that ensure that one’s thoughts will constantly revolve around food. Blessings are uttered before and after meals, and a ritual handwashing must precede partaking of bread.
Most kosher rules are based on a prohibition on mixing, which is based on the belief that according to God, each individual thing (whether person, object, or dish of food) must have its own recognizable singularity, its very own created nature.
Nowadays kosher requirements for food feel just as arbitrary as the prohibition of shatnez: any mixture of wool and linen in the same garment. This rule probably originated from the fact that linen was imported from estuarine areas such as the Nile Valley in Egypt, while the production of wool is connected with the pastoral economy that the Jewish tribes wandering in the desert practiced. At a symbolic level, combining wool and linen therefore means mixing Egypt and Judaism.
Naturally kosher foods, fruits and vegetables, are low-calorie and thus they also often form the basis for the anorexic’s diet. You can eat them without any complicated arrangements. Almost everything else is difficult. Ruminants are allowed, but only if their hooves are entirely cloven. Cows and sheep are kosher, while horses with their cornified hoof capsules belong to the odd-toed ungulates (perissodactyla), and also aren’t ruminants. Rabbits chew cud but have paws. Pigs have cloven hooves but don’t ruminate.
In order for a water animal to be kosher, it has to have fins and visible scales. For example, clams, crabs, lobsters, eels, sturgeon, and lampreys are prohibited (trefa). Insects are also not allowed.
