This thesis examines contemporary interpretations of Jewish ritual purity practices surrounding female menstruation, focusing on niddah, the period of bleeding during menstruation, and mikvah, the ritual process of immersion in a body of water used for cleansing. These practices, rooted in biblical purity laws and subsequently codified through rabbinic authority, have historically served to regulate the female body within a patriarchal religious framework. By utilizing a feminist historical anthropology framework, this study explores how modern Jewish communities, including Orthodox, Conservative, and Reform, engage with classical sources such as the Torah, Talmud, and Halakhic commentaries to renegotiate the gendered dimensions of religious observance. The argument presented in this paper examines the shifting meanings and lived experiences of observant women adhering to niddah and mikvah. Throughout the paper, attention is given to these women's interpretive strategies and ritual adaptations to illuminate how they reconfigure or resist rabbinically constructed frameworks. These practices are actively being reimagined with evolving theological and feminist discourses. In doing so, women see ritual purity not only as a site of constraint but as an empowering practice they can manipulate to find sources of agency. This thesis challenges prevailing scholarly narratives that characterize ritual purity traditions as inherently oppressive, arguing that the locus of oppression lies not in the practices themselves but in the structures enforcing them. Niddah and mikvah, therefore, function as contested spaces of religious meaning-making, where observance is reframed as a dynamic process of negotiation. These rituals become sites of theological innovation, where tradition and transformation intersect in ways that reflect broader tensions within contemporary Judaism, particularly those involving modernity, gender, and religious authority. Ultimately, this study aims to contribute to a growing body of scholarship that reconsiders the relationship between ritual practices and Jewish law while also emphasizing the fluidity of ritual practices and the transformative potential of lived religion.
Taylor Hershorin (Sun,) studied this question.