The Religious Couples Who Say That Niddah Ruined Their Sex Lives
Adhering to the stringent religious laws of family purity has caused some to question their relationships and their lives.
Shachar Kidron
Dec 22, 2016 6:09 AM
“Imagine you’re with your wife at some official dinner, and you’re arguing in a whisper about something. And you say to her, ‘It’s not the time now. Let’s talk about it in a few hours, when we get home.’ Then imagine that this situation lasts for two weeks. That it’s impossible to bring it to an end in a nice way. Yes, you can talk, but it’s all done in a cold, serious way. When there’s no possibility of a soothing touch – in any way, shape or form – everything becomes harder. Think about it, even when two men argue and make up, they embrace at the end.”
That’s how David (not his real name) describes the frustration of living according to niddah, the stringent religious laws of family purity. David was 17 when he married; his wife was just fourteen and a half. He complains that their physical intimacy, which got off to a bad start with a traumatic wedding night, has been adversely affected by observing niddah. The Torah says that a menstruating woman is “unclean” for seven days, and is only permitted to be with her husband after waiting, immersing and purifying herself.
The halakha, Jewish religious law, expanded on this prohibition, extending the period of separation to about two weeks per month (the exact time varies from woman to woman). During this time, the couple must completely abstain from physical contact and cannot even pass an object directly to one another. When the woman has stopped menstruating, and counted seven “clean” days that must be scrupulously checked, she immerses in the mikveh, and that night sex is obligatory. “Sometimes it can be a magical moment, because it comes after this period of separation, but sometimes it’s the total opposite,” says David. “It wrecks everything, when you have to do it even when you don’t feel like it. In halakha there are no special adaptations. You can find some lovely interpretations, and you can spruce it up with midrashim [a genre of rabbinic literature] and different ideas, but bottom line – even if it doesn’t suit you, what’s obligatory is obligatory.”
Four years ago, David and his wife stopped observing some of the mitzvot and left the Hasidic world. “In terms of the laws of niddah, we stopped keeping anything, because nothing was good there. We still keep Shabbat, more or less. I wear a kippah and our kids go to a religious public school. But niddah? I don’t miss that at all. Whenever we talk about it, we end up saying what a nightmare it was, and how could we have lived that way? It ruined a lot more than our love life. It caused tremendous problems. A lot of people say that it strengthens your love life, but I think they’re just saying that. They can’t mean it. The feeling now – when I touch my wife and hold her every night – it’s a whole other world.”
http://www.haaretz.com/jewish/news/.premium-1.760572
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