Cover
Title Page
Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Menstrual Blood into Jewish Blood by Rahel Wasserfall
I | The Historical Context
An Abbreviated History of the Development of the Jewish Menstrual Laws by Tirzah Meacham (leBeit Yoreh)
Body Language: Women’s Rituals of Purification in the Bible and Mishnah by Leslie A. Cook
Yalta’s Ruse: Resistance against Rabbinic Menstrual Authority in Talmudic Literature by Charlotte Elisheva Fonrobert
Purity, Piety, and Polemic: Medieval Rabbinic Denunciations of “Incorrect” Purification Practices by Shaye J. D. Cohen
Mystical Rationales for the Laws of Niddah by Sharon Koren
Rabbis, Physicians, and the Woman’s/Female Body: The Appropriate Distance by Danielle Storper Perez and Florence Heymann
II | The Ethnographic andAnthropological Tradition
Talking about Miqveh Parties, or Discourses of Gender, Hierarchy, and Social Control by Susan Starr Sered with Romi Kaplan and Samuel Cooper
“There’s Blood in the House”: Negotiating Female Rituals of Purity among Ethiopian Jews in Israel by Lisa Anteby
Community, Fertility, and Sexuality: Identity Formation among Moroccan Jewish Immigrants by Rahel Wasserfall
The Rites of Water for the Jewish Women of Algeria: Representations and Meanings by Joëlle Allouche-Benayoun
The Return to the Sacred: Ritual Purification Among Crypto-Jews in the Diaspora by Janet Liebman Jacobs
Reflections on Contemporary Miqveh Practice by Naomi Marmon
A. The Elimination of Niddah in Favor of Ziva
B. Retroactive and Internal Impurity and the Varieties of Blood
Glossary
Contributors
Index