Mayim Rabim

The other day I was talking with someone about publishing a guide to synagogues, comparable to the Zagat guide for restaurants. That sounds fine, I said, but what the Jewish community really needs is a Zagat guide to mikvahs.

What would you want it to cover, he asked? So many things, at first my brain was working too fast for anything out to come out of my mouth. The number one question, if you ask me: is the bathroom inside the prep room, or do you have to drip down the hall in your bathrobe to get to it. How crowded is it / is there usually a wait. How much do they charge, and is tipping expected. Which prep items they provide and which they don't. Where can your husband wait to pick you up.

Is the mikvah lady nice, he volunteered. YES!! I can't believe I forgot that one. How many questions will she ask. How much will she poke and prod your fingernails. And does she have a meshugas [crazy idea in her head] about not touching the wall.

Obviously there would be some controversy about negative ratings; no one wants to embarrass people who give their time and energy to serve the community. On the other hand, we all know of cases where the mikvah staff could benefit from answering to the public, where the reluctance to talk about bad experiences is doing no one any good.

It could also be the first branding opportunity for Mayim Rabim. T-shirts, anyone?

Sometimes the amount of rabbi-juggling in my life seems both inevitable and normal. Sometimes it works out to my benefit, sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes it just seems entirely out of control. And that's when I take a step back and wonder: how on earth did this happen?

The course of our association with a rabbi did not, let's just say, run smooth. I had a rabbi before I got married. But I took kallah classes with another (or more precisely, with his wife). So although the first couple of questions I asked after I got married were to my former rabbi, it seemed to make more sense -- for consistency's sake (ha! yes, in retrospect that's ironic) -- to switch to the kallah class rabbi. After all, there should be fewer surprises that way: I had a pretty good idea of his stance on major issues already, based on what his wife presented in class.

Unfortunately things with this rabbi did not work out (I won't get into the details of why, because some of you may know who he is). Did not work out, in fact, so spectacularly that my husband called HIS old rabbi in desperation for help. And thus we moved on to our third rabbi, with whom we stuck for years. He had a slightly different stance on many points than either of the first two, which meant I spent a little while frantically re-asking every question I could think of to make sure I was doing things consistently (ha!! again). But on the whole it was a wonderful, wonderful move and I'm more grateful to that third rabbi than I can say for bailing us out.

All was smooth sailing (except for the fact that I didn't want to send bedikah cloths to any of these people, since none of them lived in town, and thus found myself calling on whichever of 2-3 local rabbis was home, along with their varying opinions) until we realized we were dealing with infertility. We were one of the lucky couples whose rabbi told THEM he was not qualified to deal with infertility questions. He referred us to... guess who?

Rabbi Number 1.

So all of this might go part of the way to explaining why, when I called our new (yet old) rabbi to ask whether there was any leeway after a bad bedikah, he said to me "Why did you even do a bedikah that day? In my opinion you didn't need to."

I've been married for almost a decade. How can something as big as this be news to me???

Arrrggggghhh!

You know, I thought I had something specific to say about this topic, but the more I read about it the less coherent I get. All I can say is, I'm struggling with it.

For those unfamiliar with the term, a "ben niddah" is a child conceived while the mother was a niddah. I don't have access to a Bar Ilan CD right now, so I can't give you a comprehensive list of sources. I'll quote an excerpt from an article by Rabbi Weinberger (that appeared in the Journal of Halacha and Contemporary Society) instead:

all the Rishonim agree that a ben-niddah is more likely than another person to diverge from the path of Torah observance and acceptable ethical behavior because of the qualities inherited from his parents.88 They, therefore, concur that it is preferable to avoid marrying an individual who is known to be the child of a niddah.

In fact, it should be much less upsetting. The majority of gedolim in my circle have dismissed the ben niddah concern nowadays. But the reasons they have come up with for doing so seem so strained. To paraphrase some examples from the same article:

The Steipler Gaon: The concern regarding a ben niddah's character is merely statistical. If an individual shows good character, he is obviously an exception and the warning can be ignored.

Another opinion cited by the Steipler Gaon: The blemish of ben niddah is hereditary for an infinite number of generations, not just one, and in fact all of us are likely to have it (or some other blemish) somewhere back in our lineage. So we're all on equal ground and have no reason not to marry each other.

Rav Moshe Feinstein: In many cases we can't be certain the mother was truly a niddah mide'oraita, because maybe she went swimming after her period in a body of water that qualifies as a mikvah, and thereby became tehorah. (Rav Moshe does not discuss the fact that she would most likely have been wearing a tight-fitting bathing suit at the time.)

In the case of a firm halachic concern, these kinds of apologetics would impress me; it would show how far rabbis will stretch credibility in order to find a way to be lenient. But the thing is, this ISN'T a question of halacha. It's a question of "pagum" (taint):

What is the definition of pagum? The Beit Shmuel quotes the Oarchei [sic] Moshe:

He is tainted and his family is not meyuchas  [genealogically pure] and it is proper to keep a distance from them [in terms of marriage]. Nevertheless, he is not pagum in terms of any actual issur and [if it is a girl] she can marry a kohen.

I do think his or her family background is important insofar as it may affect your own marriage, and there's certainly statistical evidence for some of these effects: for instance, that abused children can be more likely to become abusive parents, or that being the child of a bitter divorce can set a negative example for conflict resolution in a future marriage. Maybe the concept of ben niddah is just the ancient equivalent of that kind of research? It seems to me more like saying that someone is fated to display certain traits, but then again, fate used to be considered more of a science, too.

But I still can't help noticing how much this reminds me of everything we go to such lengths to deny about niddah status: That it is not derived from a superstitious fear of women's blood. That it is not a state which reflects negatively on anyone, but a natural, normal, and expected part of the life cycle.

And I guess maybe I'm a little extra touchy about ben niddah now that I've learned some rabbis cite it as an additional reason (besides the primary issue of obtaining sperm via masturbation) to forbid artificial insemination or in vitro fertilization while a woman is a niddah. Gee, that rules out a whole line of treatment for early ovulation, right there.

None of the rabbis I follow, obviously. And again, this shouldn't bother me any more than the fact that some communities consider yichus of paramount importance. In fact there's probably some overlap: bias against marrying a ba'al teshuva, for example, might be based partly on the fact that he is most likely a ben niddah.

But it does bother me. Maybe because this is a belief that affects not just how those people view me and my husband, which I could care less about, but how they will view my future children. That's personal. That's very personal.

This post by Renegade Rebbetzin (a sequel to this post) is quite eye-opening as to what it might be like to be the recipient of all those bedikah cloths.

It's also -- much as I feel bad for the Rebbetzin -- probably the funniest post about bedikahs ever. For the full giggle, be sure to read the comments too.

I know these are not the things to focus on. Taharat hamishpacha is not about the picky details; there's a grander drama going on, of separation and reunion, of longing and anticipation. It can be a pain, but it can also be high romance. As my kallah teacher memorably said (this will probably identify her to some of you), "If you come home from mikvah upset by the hairs the woman before you left on the tub, you've really missed the boat."

But the details can make a difference, at least for me. Being at an unfamiliar mikvah last month threw some of them into higher relief for me.

- All-white bathrobes, towels, and wash cloths. Why? Why??? Am I the only one who never sits down on anything white, from the moment my 7th day is over? Am I the only one who sometimes makes it to mikvah by the skin of my teeth, and worries until I'm actually under the water that I'll look down and see fresh blood? I don't need any more anxiety at the mikvah, thank you, I can manufacture enough of that on my own.

- The lack of consistency about how much of my backside the mikvah attendant wants to check. It's not a big deal to me, either way; check just under my hair, or check the whole thing -- I don't care. What I don't like is trying to feel out which it is, dropping the top of my robe first, then guessing from her hands whether she's trying to pull the rest of it off. What I especially don't like is shrugging out of the entire thing, then realizing she didn't want to see that much of me, at all. (But thanks for sharing!)

And here's one that made a difference in a good way: my home mikvah has recently switched from frumpy beige, never entirely clean, healthcare worker-looking slippers -- or paper slippers which fall apart at the first drop of moisture -- to embroidered plastic mesh slippers in girly colors: blueberry, lime green, hot pink. Does it matter that they obviously got them at the dollar store down the block? Not a bit. They make me feel pretty.

I don't know about you, but by the time I'm ready to immerse my hair is half sopping and half faster drying frizz, I'm wearing my never-leave-the-house glasses instead of my contacts, and my skin is splotched red from the steam and scrubbing. And of course I'm about to be naked in front of someone who has no reason to overlook my figure flaws out of love. I'm vulnerable, I guess. And I'm supposed to go home in fifteen minutes and feel like a love goddess?

Every bit of pretty helps, that's all I'm saying.

I'm feeling a little bit better about this phenomenon. Well, not about having to wait till Day 8 - that still seems excessive to me, in the absence of something actually happening in my uterus, like pregnancy, surgery, or (chas veshalom) miscarriage. And I still wish it could be Day 6 more often than Day 7.

But I'm trying to stop wishing for the elusive Day 5 Hefsek. As Desde pointed out, she's never had one, and it hasn't been a barrier to her fertility. And then I found this on the Yoatzot website: "If you can get a good hefsek on day 5, that's great, but many women bleed for at least five full days."

It all goes to show how important an open exchange of information about taharat hamishpacha is. Why was I struggling for Day 5 with so much anger and desperation? Well, in part because that's what infertility often does: it makes you angry with your body, for not doing what it was made to do. There is so much about infertility you can't control, the scheduling, the costs, the risks, the failures, and you seize on the only thing it seems like you should be able to control: yourself. Except of course you can't.

But it was also because the first couple of women I mentioned my early ovulation to, said "Oh, is that the problem? Just call a rabbi who specializes in infertility! He'll give you a heter to make a hefsek on Day 4, instead of Day 5."

Day 4?? I thought. Are you kidding?! I've never even gotten clean by Day 5! I didn't realize how non-representative those two women might be. And that began to seem like yet another way my body was cheating me, another thing I needed to fix if I was ever going to be normal. Let me be fertile with a long period, or infertile with a short period: it seemed so unfair to be cut off from escape in both directions.

I know intellectually that it does me no good to fight my own body, but it's hard. And I won't give up trying for a hefsek on Day 5 altogether: it might still happen, once in a blue moon, and it feels wrong to give up on any chance however remote. But maybe I don't have to be angry when it doesn't work. It will be a relief if this is one struggle I can let go.

Unbe-freaking-lievable. My hefsek tahara from DAY SEVEN was no good.

I suppose I should consider myself lucky the one from Day Eight was ok, right? I mean, they could have gone on being red forever. And all the people who helped make it happen: my husband who made the phone calls and drove me over to the rabbi's, the rabbi who made time to see me at 11 PM on a Saturday night, my agent, the Academy, you know, all of that. I am certainly grateful: I do thank all those people.

But I'm also ticked off. This after I got to mikvah a day late last month, and then my cycle ended abruptly on Day 26, leaving me only about 10 days to be with my husband. And the upcoming month is probably our last chance to be together for a good long time, because from what I hear, sex pretty much goes out the window once you're doing IVF. I had a lot riding this month on getting to mikvah as early as possible.

Maybe it was the progesterone I was taking after my last treatment? I don't know. I've been told your period can be heavier afterward, because the progesterone's function is to support your uterine lining building up, so the result is there's more lining to shed than usual. But I'm not sure heavier is supposed to translate into longer. And it's not like this doesn't happen sometimes on a completely unmedicated cycle, too. In fact this period was a lot like the one on Pesach - I chalked that one up to my polyp, but the polyp has been removed.

I don't know what the lesson is supposed to be: learning that it's not under my control? I would think that lesson has been pretty well hammered in through years of infertility. I don't think there is a lesson here, only a challenge. A series of challenges. And right now the challenge is: keeping a lid on my blood pressure.

Well. That was a first, and hopefully a last.

I had to miss mikvah night in order to make a shiva call.

We actually got home before the mikvah closed, but only by about half an hour. If I had run straight from the car to the mikvah, I think they might still have felt compelled to let me in.

But I remembered learning that if you haven't been able to start preparing before dark, it's especially important to take a full hour to prepare thoroughly, because there might be an added temptation to rush. It didn't seem right to impose on the mikvah staff to stay late when summer hours are already so late, and especially not this month, when there was no issue of fertility for us.

But I was also not sure it was right to give up when there was a remote chance I could be with my husband that night. I compromised and ran a bath while we tried to call the mikvah. The line was busy until 1 minute before closing time. When I got through, the attendant said they were closed.

I was lucky in that, as I said, it was not an issue of fertility this month. And I was lucky too, although very sad, that there was not a doubt in my mind where I was meant to be that night: at the shiva house, not at the mikvah.

But it was still a little antsy, sitting out the evening, wondering if we would somehow get home in time after all. And even after I knew that wasn't going to happen, and let it go -- it was hard to take seriously the fact that harchakot had to remain in place until tomorrow night. Why can't we just sleep in the same bed tonight? Look, I counted my seven days. I made my last bedikah. I'm an hour away from tehorah.

Except not.

It made me realize that for all I've gotten used to T"H, even found meaning in it, maybe there's some element of it that I still don't buy. Tehorah status normally coincides with my visit to the mikvah, so I've never had to tease the two things apart. I apparently take mikvah night seriously enough to obsess about it. But on a visceral level, do I feel any different after I get out of the water than I did before I got in? Do I really believe that dip in the water is what makes me transformed?

It's still a mystery.

OK, I know this shouldn't bother me as much as it does -- misconceptions about the "biological" reasons for many mitzvot have floated around, it's not unique to taharat hamishpacha -- but if I have to see this particular misconception one more time I may scream:

Two weeks after a woman has begun to menstruate, she is most fertile and likely to conceive. At the same time, a man who has abstained from sex for two weeks will have an increased sperm count. Thus, observing this period of separation can increase the likelihood of conception.

Worst of all was this explanation:

The fertility benefits of this practice are obvious and undeniable. In fact, it is remarkable how closely these laws parallel the advice given by medical professionals today. When couples are having trouble conceiving, modern medical professionals routinely advise them to abstain from sex during the two weeks around a woman's period (to increase the man's sperm count at a time when conception is not possible), and to have sex on alternate nights during the remaining two weeks.

All the doctors my husband and I have seen recommend that men abstain only 3 days before trying to conceive, and certainly not more than 5. A recent study suggests that perhaps that recommendation should be reduced to 2 days.

Likewise, as you probably know because I've mentioned it so many times, for a sizable minority of women, mikvah night is too late to conceive.

Now, there is probably a way to formulate this idea which is true. Namely: if a woman is able to go to mikvah on Day 12, and if she doesn't ovulate until Day 14, by the time she has intercourse the second time, the husband's sperm should have had a chance to replenish themselves before her ovulation window is over. It still would probably not be true that this "maximizes" fertility -- ideally, healthy sperm should be there a day before ovulation, not the same day -- but it should work fine in most cases.

However, the cycles of some women simply don't fit this picture. From a biological point of view, they would be more likely to get pregnant if they were allowed to have relations starting at about Day 7 of their cycle. Maybe this explanation would have held more water back in the days when women kept only 7 days of niddut.

The only other thing I can think of is that perhaps, in its original form, this explanation was meant to highlight the fact that at least couples who practice taharat hamishpacha are likely to have relations sometime around ovulation; otherwise they might go for months accidentally (or deliberately) having relations only at times when conception is not possible.

But I hope it's clear why I think this sort of explanation for T"H, and for mitzvot in general, is so dangerous. It's not enough that infertile women like me are denied what are popularly considered the relationship benefits of T"H; we're denied the "obvious and undeniable" fertility benefits as well. Hearing these explanations over and over is enough to make me quite angry. And if I wasn't clear on the fact that the halacha is simply because it is, regardless of whether it works out to our harm or benefit, it might be enough to cause a serious crisis of faith as well.

I appreciate the desire to find understandable reasons for keeping the mitzvot; it's a very old and respected endeavor. I also know that, especially in this age of kiruv (religious outreach), apologetics are everywhere. I've been moved and enriched by many of them myself. But when the "reasons" are vulnerable to being disproved by science -- such as alleged health benefits for keeping kashrut, or even brit milah -- then in my firm opinion, they're doing more harm than good.

I can't believe this happened.

I would link to this post and point out the amusing irony, except that it's not funny and I'm shaking, not laughing.

I sat down and figured out the days we needed to separate this month, then put away the calendar. We went to my parents for Shabbat. When we got home on Sunday afternoon I didn't check the calendar, thinking I was sure I remembered we didn't have to separate until Monday morning; it couldn't have been Sunday morning, or I would have packed my bedikah cloths. Right? Right. Knowing that it was probably our last chance for this month, we made love on Sunday night.

Monday morning I checked the notebook, just to confirm it was the day I should do a bedikah. It was.

But so was Sunday.

Both were daytime onot, so they expired after sunset (we do not keep the onah-before custom), and technically we would have been allowed to have relations on the night in between, if my bedikot from during the day were clean. But I never made a bedikah before we went to bed.

I had a vague memory that the Yoatzot site said something about it not being a problem if you forgot the bedikot on one kind of onah, so I looked it up, hoping it's the onah beinonit because that's what Sunday was. But of course, it's the other two kinds.

I was a wreck before I did the bedikah Monday morning, afraid it would show I was bleeding and could very well have been Sunday night too. But it was clear. Thank Gd.

My kallah teacher promised us that hilchot niddah had so many protective stringencies, we would never even come close to violating an issur karet. I found it immensely reassuring. What happened to that?

My goodness, look at all the rebukes to this old request for an online niddah posek! Four in a row, with increasingly admonitory tone. It just goes to show you, I think, that many men have no idea how uncomfortable asking questions can be for a woman.

Yes, we do what we need to do for the sake of keeping the halacha, and yes, the rabbis are only in this l'sheym shamayim (for the sake of Heaven), and ok, in the end we get over it and it's fine. But it's not like it comes naturally! There's no need to lecture us about it.

It took a little while for others to pipe up that an online system for asking niddah questions already existed. It has one of the limitations the naysayers pointed out, namely, a stain does have to be physically seen by someone. But the concept on the whole is quite workable, the value should be obvious to anyone browsing the site, and there was no need to scoff so much.

And it's no coincidence it was created with female consultants, not male. Presumably, many of the same women who are uncomfortable asking a rabbi face to face, would also be more comfortable asking a woman than a man. Whoever came up with the concept, clearly gets it.

Besides, even if such a thing didn't exist, I think they've misunderstood as well as misjudged the question. It's one thing if you know your rabbi in a rabbi-congregant sort of way; it's another altogether if you socialize with him regularly. Or how about if you've married into his family? I wouldn't want to send someone my underwear and then have dinner with him that evening. There are certainly arguments for going to someone you don't know quite that well.

Grrrrr. I assume they meant well, but it ticks me off.

(for part one of this misadventure, see stupid bedikah tricks)

It turns out my usual rabbi did get my bedikah, look at it, and pronounce it okay; he just forgot to call me and say so.

Or at least that's what I think happened. The fill-in rabbi (hereafter FIR) was tracked down by my husband's chosson teacher before I even got through, so he already knew the details. When I called FIR, he said the usual rabbi (hereafter UR) had assured him all the shaylahs from the day he left were okay, but he might have also said there could be someone he forgot to call back. I pointed out that I had not dropped off my shaylah the day UR left, but two days before that. FIR said he would check whether UR had been talking about me. I gave FIR the phone number I'd written on the envelope for UR, in case that made it any easier to check.

When I called FIR back, all he said was "It's okay." And where normally I would have obsessively double-checked, "Both of the things in the envelope were okay?" believe me, I did not ask aaaaaaaany follow-up questions after that.

The anonymous shaylah system is a little crazy in terms of its potential for things (or people) to fall through the cracks, but I must say, I am rather impressed at how quickly everyone swung into action when they realized it had gone wrong. FIR apologized several times for the trouble, too, when it wasn't his fault at all.

I just wish there hadn't needed to be quite so many everyones...

I don't know why I do this but once in a rare while I forget to call the rabbi before I bring a shaylah over. You can't tell whether he's there or not once you get there, you just put the envelope through his mail slot. He calls you whenever he comes home and picks it up.

Invariably the one time I forget to call, he's out of town for a week. Because it sometimes takes a day even under normal circumstances, I don't know this for sure until at least 2 days go by and I haven't heard from him.

The first time this happened we had to call my husband's chosson teacher and ask him for help, and he had to get the keys to the rabbi's house, retrieve the bedikah, and give it back to us, so we could then bring it over to the OTHER dayan's house and he could rule on it. Oy. It was several years ago and I sort of hope everyone concerned has forgotten by now, but I doubt it.

The second time I wasn't even sure my rabbi was away until the other rabbi called me instead. It turns out my rabbi had asked the other one to pick up any shaylahs while he was away. Handy solution, right? Maybe that's why I stopped worrying about whether anyone was going to be home.

So this time a few days go by, and we start to think maybe the rabbi has gone away again. Summertime, that would make sense. My husband calls his chosson teacher: yep, he's away... but the other rabbi is filling in for him. Eh?? Further conversation elicits the fact that when I dropped off my shaylah, my own rabbi was actually still in town. Wha????

No one knows where my shaylah is. The second rabbi is supposedly on call, but his phone just rings. The chosson teacher has been called at all the numbers we could find for him. And I still don't know what we're going to do when we reach somebody; what happens if they just can't find it?

And of course it was my hefsek tahara, not one of the dispensable ones...

Several of the discussions here lately have me thinking about when and why people believe it's proper to ask for heterim (leniencies) -- not just in matters of taharat hamishpacha, but birth control, and all the other things that come up in a relationship between husband and wife.

On the one hand, the fact that it's sometimes hard to keep the halacha -- sometimes very, very hard -- is sort of the point. It might seem wrong to onlookers that we follow halacha even when it denies what seem like basic human needs, even when it conflicts with what seems like basic human kindness. It might even seem wrong to us, sometimes. And yet, what would be the value of observing halacha only when it coincides with what you felt like doing anyway?

This is how I always thought of taharat hamishpacha. I knew it was going to be hard. I never thought of that as an excuse to ask for personal leniency; after all, it's hard for everyone.

But being married has drastically changed my perspective on this. Shalom bayit (peace in the home) is a powerful halachic factor in many decisions to grant leniency, and I think that's so for good reason. It's one thing to be hard on yourself. But being more strict than necessary on someone else -- that's a different story, isn't it.

The hard part, of course, is figuring out what's more than necessary. Should we be trying to keep every harchaka to the letter of the law, even if it takes a toll on our marriage? Or should we be asking for help much earlier than that? Personally, my threshhold for asking for leniency has moved up greatly now that what I do has the potential to make my husband unhappy. Even if it's not horribly unhappy, even if it's a level of unhappiness I might try to tolerate myself, I couldn't live with myself for inflicting that on him. It goes against everything I'm trying to do as his wife.

If you're reading this and thinking "oh, but even though it seems like you're hurting him, it's actually to his benefit, because you're helping him to keep the halacha in the ideal way," to me that all depends: on whether both of you want to keep taharat hamishpacha the same way. If you both want to shoulder the burden no matter how hard it gets, then you're helping each other towards a mutually valued goal. But if one of you wants a heter and the other doesn't -- to me being too devout to ask for the heter is no longer one helping the other. I can't reconcile an element of coercion with helping. At least not between me and my husband; we are not each other's parents, but equal partners.

Obviously this is a decision only a couple themselves can make. I'm certainly not telling anyone else what to do. Just laying out my thoughts in writing.

The other reason I think is a "right" reason for asking for a heter is when manageable sadness verges on clinical anxiety or depression. Mental health issues can be independent of halacha, of course, and they might need to be treated independently too, but I think it's clear that some aspects of the halachic lifestyle can contribute to them as well. I had my own experience with anxiety around mikvah preparations. Others might struggle with having children too close together, and so on.

It can be hard to know when you're not just having normal difficulty but slipping over the edge, but I think deep down, we know. And if we don't know, the loved ones around us do. If someone in your life is telling you that you need help, please, don't assume that you will not be religious enough if you ask for it -- whether it's with taharat hamishpacha, birth control, or anything else. (In this case I guess I feel strongly enough to be pushy!)

And keep in mind what I said above: even if you don't want to do this for yourself, please, think about what it might be doing to your husband to watch you suffer. And what a gift you'd be giving him if you could find a way to stop.

Here's another thing I didn't anticipate about mikvah night falling on Shabbos, three months in a row: not getting to stock up on bedikah cloths! I was down to the hard scratchy ones I had never even opened, once they started selling the "extra soft" kind. (I guess this is the equivalent of that pair of underwear you wouldn't be caught dead in, except you forgot to do the laundry again?)

Actually, with the heter I have to do only three bedikot (hefsek tahara, one on the first day, and one on the last) it's probably been an even longer time than I realize since I bought a new package. It ends up being more than three, because it takes me a few tries to get a clean hefsek tahara, but still.

This month mikvah night was, thankfully, on a Thursday. I came home with a package of the T-shirt cloths that I raised my eyebrows at a couple of years ago like a suspicious old lady. (What is this newfangled nonsense you want me to try? Are you sure they work?) And they are SO SOFT. They make my "extra soft" ones seem like a joke. Why was I denying myself, all this time?

Well, I know why. I've put off buying new ones until the last possible moment in the semi-unconscious hope that I wouldn't need to buy more. Because I'd be pregnant.

And psychologically, it's been worth it. But at this point, I have to, and I'm going to take my creature comforts and enjoy them. Actually, I'm considering upgrading my mikvah prep tools to really nice things too. Spa quality. I want to think happy thoughts when I take out that little bag.

It's time for some retail therapy.

It's not the first time I've come across something like this, of course. Offensive readings of taharat hamishpacha are probably more common than positive ones.

Although this is the first time it's been so hilariously jumbled up with inaccuracies. Did you know you can't prepare food during your menses? Hee hee. Funny how I never noticed my husband taking over the cooking for two weeks every month. The misconception that a niddah can't touch the Torah is a prevalent one even among observant Jews, but I've never heard it extended to not going to synagogue at all! And personally my husband and I switch beds all the time when we're separate, each taking a turn in the big and the small bed. The idea that I'm contaminating him, the bed, the food is so alien it makes me giggle.

But is it? How much of this reflects my experience of observing taharat hamishpacha in the days when most ritual impurity is ignored? If there was still a Temple, would we be carefully refraining from touching anything but our own plates for half the month, lest we make it impure?

Anyone know?

So, anyone else have mikvah nightmares?

Last night I had the most insane one, in which the mikvah was the bathtub in my house growing up, and the mikvah-, er, bath-room had an inordinate number of women passing in and out. I thought it was my turn, but the mikvah attendant said no, I had to wait. So I put my jeans back on (?? I don't wear jeans, and ouch, not wearing anything underneath!) and tried not to get anything dirty or messed up. Except I somehow got the impression I wasn't going to make my turn at all, so I gave up and put gel in my wet hair, and then when the mikvah lady called me I said oh no!! How am I going to wash this out on Shabbos?

I know, what?? Exactly.

When I have these the night before I go to mikvah, they're pretty easy to figure out. And usually they're made even more transparent by plot devices such as Blood Found Right Before Immersion. But this one is a week after. I should have at least another two weeks before mikvah anxiety hits.

Armchair psychologists, feel free to have at it. But know that if your translation involves Freudian symbolism I will laugh long and heartily.

I had such a hard time this month.

Most of the time consulting with rabbis is uncomfortable, but not overly so, right? The rabbis go out of their way to make it as painless as they can: you can drop off a bedikah cloth in an envelope, leave your phone number instead of a name, and never have to make face-to-face contact. When you talk to them on the phone, they make sure to respond seriously to your questions no matter how silly, to be matter-of-fact no matter how embarrassed you are. As much as such an invasive thing can be, it's usually a pleasure.

But then there are the encounters that leave you shaking and upset, the ones that make you never want to do this again. Sometimes it's extreme, like the rabbi who failed to recognize that I was developing an anxiety disorder about taharat hamishpacha, and instead got annoyed and abandoned me in the middle of mikvah night. Sometimes it's as trifling as a rabbi who presumes more than he knows, and tells you more than you asked.

As you already know, I was still bleeding bright red on Day 5. I had tried a hefsek tahara that morning, which was pronounced kosher by my own rabbi (much good that did me.) Of course I had to start over the next day. I think I made two hefseks, one in the morning and one in the afternoon; both still had some red in them. The next morning was Friday, Day 7, and we were going out of town for Yom Tov. I decided to wait as long as possible to increase the chances that I would have stopped bleeding by then. But I was seeing brown streaks when I wiped, and was getting increasingly nervous. The last thing I wanted to do was have a shaylah over Yom Tov, without having contacted anyone in advance that I could ask.

I psyched myself up to call the local rabbi when I got there. Wanting to impress upon him that I was probably going to miss my ovulation day if this kept up, I started by saying "This is the second or third day that I've been trying, and-" He interrupted, "Let me stop you right there.

If you've been trying for two or three days, the best thing is probably to stop. More bedikot are only going to irritate you and aggravate whatever's going on. Just wait until it stops."

Huh?

I knew what he was referring to; I have certainly irritated myself towards the end of shiva neki'im, what with doing so many bedikot, and for that reason (among others) I've been given a heter to do fewer of them. But that wasn't what was going on here at all. This wasn't a scratch, it was a period that just wasn't over yet. "I really think it's stopping," I said. "I'm only going to try once today. If it doesn't work, it doesn't work."

"Oh. In that case, if it's old blood that's coming out, the best thing to do is try a douche. Of course you're cutting it close, it's almost yom tov and you need to wait a couple of hours after douching before you make another hefsek..." I tuned the rest of this out because I was too busy thinking, Huh? and No way!!

First of all, running out to the store to find a douche right before Yom Tov, then figuring out how to use it for the first time? No thank you. But more importantly, there's a reason it would be my first time. Some rabbis recommend douching, but others (including my own rabbi) warn that you can disturb the chemical balance in the vagina. This part of the body is designed to clean itself, and it doesn't particularly like artificial cleansing. I'm sure other people have good luck with this method, but me, I haven't had a yeast infection or any other in all the time I've been married, and I'd just as soon leave well enough alone.

I tried to bring things back on track. "OK, but if I do try a hefsek and I have a shaylah, can I bring it to show you on Yom Tov?" He said yes. All right. Phew. That was all I wanted to know, you know?

I respect this rabbi's vast knowledge and his many years of experience very much. But I am not a newlywed or a child, and I know my own body better than someone who has never met me before. And yet it took a great deal of effort to remind myself of this, to resist the impulse to bow to his guidance and get off the phone. Why would it possibly be a good idea to cut someone off the very first time they talk to you, and assume you already know what they're talking about?

Things went from bad to worse the next day, when somehow "any time is good" turned into knocking on his door in vain every two hours all afternoon, finally culminating in just desperately waiting on his porch in the hopes that he was either out or asleep, and would have to come in/out of the house on his way to mincha. By the time I caught him I was in a complete state. Not to mention that this encounter had to be in person, given that there was no way for him to call me, and I somehow ended up touching his hand while trying to show him which was the hefsek and which was the first bedikah, and... did I mention ugh?

He was trying to be so nice. Even his wife was trying to be so nice. I don't mean to blame him; I suppose it was just a mismatch of personalities. And I'm sure he wasn't at his best on the phone, rushing around two hours before Yom Tov; it was kind of him even to speak to me then. But these things matter, and even for someone committed like me, they color my experience of taharat hamishpacha and how I feel about the whole month so much - I can only imagine what effect it would have on someone who was trying to decide whether she wanted to keep these laws.

So far the one good thing that's happened this month is that I remembered to make an appointment in advance for my Friday night tevilah. (My third time in a row! I learn slow, but I do learn!) But despite the rabbi pronouncing my hefsek kosher that day, I'm almost surely going to ovulate before mikvah; in fact, judging by my usual symptoms I bet it's happening tomorrow. And as you also already know, I find Friday night tevilot especially difficult.

Who was it who said the month of their worst mikvah experience, they got pregnant? I don't normally put stock in things like that. But if any of you can make that come true? I will GLADLY accept. :)

It's Day Five, and I'm gushing.

Although I'm pretty confident it's going to take more serious medical intervention, I've tried not to become resigned to missing my ovulation date, not to throw out my hefsek tahara on Day 5 as hopeless, or worse, not even to attempt one. I do one this morning, in case I don't have time later. It looks faintly pink to me, but I set it aside to dry, then bring it over to the rabbi's house. Often he says something is fine when I think it's no good. Especially when the color is as light as this. I put on black underwear for the rest of the day; I'll change to white tonight after dark.

Later in the day I try to ignore the sensation of wetness, knowing that I often feel a little discharge at various times of the month, knowing that a small spot or two is still fine. But this isn't a momentary sensation. It persists longer than a spot should take to dry, though I am still not thinking it could be a real flow. Finally I can't stand the suspense any longer and go to look.

Bright red. It has soaked through my underwear, my slip, even making a small damp spot on the back of my (fortunately dark brown) skirt. My body is taunting me. Pointing at me and my fragile hopes, and laughing.

I flash on the second night of Pesach: I am sitting at the seder miserable in the knowledge that I'm not pregnant again, that I'm bleeding this very minute, and I stumble across this verse -

'I shall pass over you and see you wallowing in your blood, and I say to you, 'In your blood shall you live,' and I say to you, 'In your blood shall you live.' "

Reading the familiar words in this new juxtaposition, I think not of circumcision or the Passover lamb, or even the Holocaust, but of my own blood. Suddenly I think maybe I'm experiencing a paradigm shift: I hear the message of the blood leaving my body each month as death, as a call for mourning. But in Judaism blood is life. We do not consume the blood of any animal, for the blood is its life. Life. Why am I grieving so? Am I meant to be comforted?

But it all comes to the same, for I'm losing the gift of life, life is leaving my body, and the revelation I'm after swirls out of reach and is gone, carried away on the powerful current of blood.

More than once, as I'm about to be seduced, I've looked down and seen the first few drops of blood.

Only a few times, but definitely more than once.

Even more often, I've looked at my calendar, counted the days, set my heart on one last time for the month, and then something has come up. One of us is too tired, one of us doesn't feel well, a delay or distraction or deadline comes up that night... somehow we're prevented. Each time something different; I never see the pattern while it's happening. Inevitably I storm and cry about it. Partly because I'm especially shaky about separation just before it happens, partly because I'm hormonally off balance from the approaching period.

But a couple of hours later, wouldn't you know it: I'm bleeding early.

I've wondered why this happens to me every so often, and whether it happens to others. I think it's partly because I'm irregular by up to a week, so that sometimes my halachic separation days are spread a day or three or five apart. And maybe I push my luck, planning to be intimate with my husband on those intervening days, when really I might get my period at any time.

When I was first married I called the rabbi in a panic one night because my separation time had been during the day, and my last bedikah before nightfall was questionable. He said, I can't look at it now. We have to wait until tomorrow morning when it's light out. I wailed, but I thought we had one more night, I told my husband we would! He said, gently, this is what I advise all couples to do: sit down with the calendar together. Not right after you come home from mikvah, make it a few days later. Figure out what is your last completely safe day, before any of your separation days start. Make sure to be together on that day. After that, give up on the rest of the month, until you know whether you've gotten your period or you're pregnant. It will save you a lot of emotional turmoil in the end.

I was horrified, and did my best to forget I'd ever heard that. But I've been married a lot longer, and while I could see the wisdom even then, I am better able to tolerate the idea now. I try to do this a lot of the time. And still, even when I do, I sometimes get caught short. So incredibly short.

Each time it happens, I think to myself: what if all the frustrating delays, the obstacles, the inexplicable urge to glance down at the pajamas or sheets at the last instant, is really Gd trying to protect you from something far worse?

Good grief.

OK, I will write a proper entry soon, bli neder, but I just realized it's Thursday night and I forgot to make an appointment for my Friday night tevilah AGAIN. Two months ago when I forgot the first time, I called the mikvah lady Friday morning in a flurry of apologies, my words tumbling over each other to convey how foolish I felt, how unlike me this was, how bewildered I was that it had slipped my mind. What do I say to her this time??

It's not like I haven't known about this for the past 6 days. OK, it's true I was waiting from Friday till Sunday to hear whether my hefsek tahara was good, and I couldn't be sure what day I would go to mikvah until I got an answer. But still. Since Sunday, then. Together with this little oversight, you'd be quite justified in starting to wonder: what's WRONG with me?

Um, hi. Woman who separated from her husband for the past day (in anticipation of her period) when really it was supposed to be tomorrow? Right here.

I guess I have a little too much on my mind, huh? It's a good thing my husband is so good-natured.

Please, somebody, tell me you've done something this stupid too. :)

Tall Latte's experience and the attached comments reminded me of something that's been bothering me for a long time. Whose business is it, exactly, why you use the mikvah?

If you've been to more than one mikvah, you've probably run into a range of degrees of intrusiveness on the part of the mikvah staff. At some places, they're trained to do nothing more than ask if you want them to look at your hands, feet, & back of the neck; they don't want to scare anyone away. At some places they ask if you've read the preparation checklist on the wall. At some places they actually READ you every item on the checklist, and you have to answer yes, I did that. None of these surprise me, although I think the last one is excessive - it still might be helpful to hear the items out loud, maybe you'll remember one you missed.

But then it starts to get hairy. At some places they ask you when you made your hefsek tahara. Now they're not just helping you prepare on mikvah night, they're checking up on what you did for the entire past week. Again, maybe this is meant to be helpful - perhaps once out of every hundred or thousand women, they hit one who doesn't realize she did the math wrong.

But to me it's a lot more like peeking into your bedroom. What if you have some kind of unusual heter to make a hefsek on an earlier day, do you have to explain that to some stranger now? What if she doesn't believe you? Do you have to give her your rabbi's phone number so she can check up on you? What if he's not home, or you asked the shaylah anonymously because you didn't want him to know your name?

And what if you're deliberately not making your hefsek on the right day: is that any of her business?

Which brings me to the next examples. I know of one mikvah attendant who was told that if she realized a woman had been sent to the mikvah by the nearby Kabbalah center, she should call the rabbi, and he would as diplomatically as he could turn the woman away. I don't even know what his issue was: whether he suspected they were not keeping T"H correctly, or maybe they were doing some kind of non-traditional rituals at the mikvah, or maybe these women weren't Jewish altogether.

That's probably a unique geographical issue, but here's a more universal one: I had the experience of going to an unfamiliar mikvah during Rosh Hashana, and when I called to make the appointment the mikvah lady asked me if I was single. I was flabbergasted. Was she wondering, just because she didn't know me, if I was going to the mikvah because I wanted to have premarital sex? When she insisted that I come by on Erev Yom Tov (the eve of the holiday) to pay her, even though most mikvaot just ask you to mail the check later, I was sure it was because she wanted to see if I looked religious and married.

Months later it occurs to me that maybe she was just asking because of the custom for single women to immerse in preparation for the High Holidays - if I said I was single, she would have explained that I should make my appointment before the holiday rather than on it. But I don't know. This was an area with a large single Jewish population; it seems just as possible that the mikvaot there are rumored to be unwittingly helping single people to sleep together, and maybe in defense they've decided to be aggressive about questioning everyone new.

Most likely none of this is the mikvah attendant's idea. In every case I've listed, it's almost certainly a policy decision by the rabbi, who has told the mikvah attendants that they must ask such-and-such question. And I can see why a rabbi would feel the responsibility to take action based on what he sees as a communal concern - whether it's asking too many questions, for fear of encouraging single women to become tehorah so they can sleep with men they're not married to; or not asking too many questions, for fear of women deciding to give up mikvah altogether and sleep with their husbands while niddah.

But I can't help feeling this is not what a mikvah should be. What business is it of theirs who comes, or what their story is? Why can't the mikvah just be a place that makes it possible for those who want to observe the halacha, to do so, and not worry about the rest? When I go to mikvah, I expect the attendant to tell me my tevilah was kosher. That's it. What I did beforehand, what I do afterward, I don't think of her as pronouncing "kosher" on any of that. Why does she think she is? If I volunteered something I was doing wrong, maybe then I can see her feeling she couldn't knowingly help me commit a sin. But why go asking?

Frankly I think this would be a problem for me, if I was asked to work at the mikvah; I don't think I could enforce such a policy. When it comes down to it, taharat hamishpacha is a private responsibility. What goes on in your bedroom, it seems to me, is your business.

From the crowd here I tend to expect at least some agreement. Not all of you are Orthodox, and I assume you'd be upset - as Tall Latte was - if you were turned away because your practice did not conform to the rules of the mikvah. But I don't think we're representative of the thinking of traditional mikvah staff, or the rabbis who supervise them.

What do you think the rationale is: concerns about communal behavior? A belief that they are somehow responsible, if they aid & abet you in sleeping with someone against halacha? Do they think you might taint the mikvah water? What?

If you ran the mikvah, what would you do?

Well that's it; the mikvah lady has officially run out of things to chitchat with me about, as she checks my hands and feet. We were reduced to reminiscing about the renovations last summer. Reminiscing. Did you catch that? Not too many people she can do that with, most likely, because no one else has been there every month before and since.

Here's the thing about taharat hamishpacha and infertility.

OK, one of the many things.

If you came to this practice by one of the standard routes - if you took a kallah class, or studied the sources "inside" - you probably came across the Gemara that asks why we do this, and answers, "to keep a wife as beloved unto her husband as the day they were married." Absence makes the heart grow fonder, observant Jewish couples have active sex lives much longer than the average couple, T"H keeps the excitement alive, blah blah blah blah blah. Right?

When I heard this as a new bride, it didn't mean much to me. I don't need anything to keep the excitement alive right now, thankyouverymuch, I thought to myself; what I could use is more time to explore this new intimacy with my husband, more time to grow secure in it rather than having the ground pulled out from under me every two weeks. I was willing to concede there might be benefits by the time I was in my forties or fifties, but I didn't see them kicking in anytime soon.

But my older sister assured me, "You'll see. You're going to be very glad of this when you have a couple of kids. Raising them takes so much of your time and energy; if you didn't know there were certain times set aside just for you to be with each other, it might never happen. "

Enter half a decade without children (THUD).

So no, I don't have the hubbub of family life distracting me from being with my husband. Instead, we already struggle with added pressure on sex at that time of the month, as our only chance to conceive looms and once again passes us by. T"H certainly doesn't help us enjoy that time more; if anything, it adds more stress and unwanted focus on the whole thing. And we couldn't be further from complacency about physical touch. We need it so badly, both as communication and comfort, as we endure the toll that repeated stress and disappointment takes on a relationship.

To make it as an infertile couple is to cling to each other as hard as you can, to do everything in your power to keep your relationship strong. I don't see T'H as something that makes a marriage stronger, I don't think I ever did. I saw it as a challenge: to keep your marriage strong despite not being able to touch. But infertile couples already have more challenges in that regard than anyone needs. I can't see what good T'H is doing us. It's more than a little isolating to find yourself shut out of a statement that is used so widely to teach couples about the good life that comes with T"H.

I was never doing it for the benefits, though; from the very beginning I took this on as an act of faith, something that tied me to generations of women in the past, present and future. For that same reason, I don't contemplate giving it up now. But I've gone beyond finding it unnecessary, to wondering sometimes if it's unfair to ask this of a couple going through infertility. Isn't it enough that people like us cry with every negative pregnancy test, with every miscarriage? Do we have to also cry because we can't hold each other as we fall asleep?

Do you all know about the Mikvah Project? When I first saw the photographs I was in love. Although the idea of looking at images of other women using the mikvah was jarring, considering the degree of tzniut we usually try to preserve, for me the photos really do capture something of the poetry I feel in those moments under the water -- which is part of what made me want to write about mikvah, too. But I must say, I'm a lot less excited about it now that I find out they used models!

I suppose I should have realized, right? Orthodox women, for example, would never agree to pose nude, whether or not their faces were showing. And it's not that I object -- I'm all for people using the mikvah once even if they never plan to go again; I don't mind people making up their own "purifying" rituals that may have nothing to do with normative Judaism; I don't even have a problem with non-believers using the mikvah. But still, for me, it takes something away from the viewing to know that many of these people probably didn't really get what mikvah was about. It's not just about being naked underwater, although that can be profoundly affecting. It's not just about the mystery of something larger than yourself; there are plenty of mystical rituals in other religions, and I don't consider them interchangeable. It's about Gd -- our Gd -- isn't it? Or at least, about connection to the centuries of Jews who did this because they believed in Gd... and if you don't believe that Gd commanded this, or even leave a question in your mind open to that belief, are we even having the same experience?

So to be clear, I don't object to their using models, or to the models using the mikvah. And it's clear from the rest of the project that they wanted it to be as authentic as possible, but for the photo part that was just an impossibility. Still, I see myself in those photographs less than I did before I found out. I'm wistful about that, because mikvah is such a private, maybe even isolating practice. I know intellectually that I share it with many other women, but it was nice for a moment to feel it was shared.

I guess it goes back to the whole nature of this observance, and the question of what we're trying to accomplish by writing about it here. Can an experience so private really ever be conveyed or understood? Should it be?

I've gotten so much better about my obsessive/compulsive relationship with taharat hamishpacha. Partly thanks to my therapist, who convinced me that Gd would actually approve of my becoming less afraid of making a mistake. Partly thanks to our (second) rabbi, who finally - when all else failed - told me, "once you get home to your husband, don't ask any questions NO MATTER WHAT you notice." It still takes some effort on my part, though, to get through mikvah day without a knot of tension in my stomach.

I give myself twice as much time to get ready as it should normally take, both so that I'm not rushing around (because that physically feels like I'm nervous, even if I'm not), and so that later I won't be as likely to say to myself "How do you know you didn't miss that? After all, you were rushing around." I used to even put on soothing music during my bath, but I've gotten so I don't need to do that anymore. I still spend a long, long, long time on my nails, because ragged cuticles are the one thing I can't convince myself that I don't care about... and not surprisingly, they were almost always the thing I used to find after I got home. Or on the way home. Or even, agonizingly, on the way from the mikvah room back to my prep room. So if I know I've been completely thorough with them, I can more easily tell myself that anything I notice as I'm getting dressed must be new. I couldn't have missed it before.

But although I'm better able to sit through the anxiety when it does hit me, I'm still susceptible to it hitting in the first place. Friday nights and Yom Tov, as you can imagine, are the worst. What if I notice something tiny after candle lighting, when I can no longer do anything about it? Will I ask a shayla, with all the stress that would entail, or will I attempt to ignore it - tell myself I'm just obsessing - and instead be eaten up by guilt later? This last time, I davened Kabbalat Shabbat almost primarily as a way to keep myself from checking my hands. I figured Gd wouldn't mind me using Him a little. For a good cause.

All's well that ends well, I thought as I headed for the mikvah, or it's about to anyway. Only to find (as almost never happens, in my tiny neighborhood) that there was a line of people ahead of me. OK, maybe it does happen, but if it's a weeknight I can do something while I wait: I just keep going over my nails, or if even *I* get sick of that, I can read something from my backpack. This was Shabbos. There was nothing I was allowed to do; there was nothing I had brought with me. I sat in my robe, trying not to look at anything or touch anything, trying not to let even a stirring of nervousness begin.

Add that to the fact that - as much as I love and miss my husband - mikvah night has by now become synonymous, for me, with Yet Another Futile Effort to Conceive. And suddenly for a second I was Angela from My So Called Life, forced to wait for a room so she could reluctantly lose her virginity to Jordan Catalano.

"It was *exactly* like when I was waiting to get my flu shot, only I didn't even have a magazine to read."