Current Conference
Registration
Schedule
Speakers
Coming to the Conference

Sponsors:







LGBT
Religious Archive Network

Union Theological Seminary

The Other-ing Discourse of the Jewish Menstrual Laws

The Discourse of Jewish Menstrual Laws:
The Biblical and Rabbinic Projection of Woman as Other &
The Feminist Reclaiming of Sexuality & Identity Devoid of Otherness

The biblical and rabbinic constructions of woman, in defining her with reference to man, posit her as the incidental, the inessential, objectified Other.  This is evidenced by the legal definitions of purity and impurity, particular to women by way of the Jewish menstrual laws of niddah for their concomitant ritual and social restrictions.  Though some scholars attempt to make sense of the
biblical and rabbinic definitions in loyalist terms; that is, accepting the traditional conceptions of woman and sexuality as legitimate and non-Other-ing, this paper is an attempt to show otherwise.  In fleshing out the meanings and implications of niddah, purity and impurity, through an abbreviated history of the development of the Jewish menstrual laws, this paper seeks to use the niddah laws
as a case study for the biblical and rabbinic projection of woman as Other.

While some scholars emphacize the ritual of niddah purification as what is problematic, this paper is an attempt to show the rituals to be merely microcosmic, revealing the macrocosmic androcentrism and its construction of woman as Other.  The paradigm shifts in meaning and symbolic power – from the biblical Temple Period sacrificial rites to the Rabbinic normative laws relating to sexual prohibitions – will be explored.  These notions of purity and impurity will be analyzed as reflections of "the relation between perceptions of the body and of society at large, upon gender relations and power structures."

This paper, then, is first analytic, analyzing the androcentric origin of woman's constructed Otherness.  Second, it is forward-thinking in presenting the corresponding feminist project: to show how sexuality, like gender, is socially constructed.  In adopting a social constructionist model of sexuality, androcentric definitions can be deconstructed and replaced by feminist ones.  Redefining sexuality, and therefore, redefining woman enable feminist frameworks for understanding and appropriation of embodied, sexual life which in turn engender identity devoid of Otherness.

Back to the Schedule