Yesterday, I got up from the library’s comuter, and a man wearing a yarmuke pulled up another chair, pushed the one I as sitting in out of the way, and sat down in the new chair. I try to respect other people’s religions and did not ask him how he knew his chair hadn’t been used by a woman on her period, nor tell him that my last period was September 2005.
But it got me to wondering: How can anyone avoid contact with everything touched by a menstruating women? You could never take a public seat anywhere outside the men’s room! Are rstaurants, sporting events, theatres and subways off-limits?
It doesn’t seem like having to take a shower and wash your clothes seems like a terribly onerous task in a modern household. Is “even” just short for “evening”, or does it mean some longer period of time?
You can’t avoid it. Orthodox Jews don’t pay much attention to the ritual purity laws nowadays, because their main relevance has to do with the eating sacrifices and other temple-related stuff. Orthodox women still immerse themselves in a mikvah after their period so they can sleep with their husbands, but that’s a slightly separate issue.
So I’m not entirely sure why the guy got a new chair.
Dunno about that - my Orthodox friends (newlywed) have two queen-sized beds - hers and theirs. So at the very least, they aren’t literally sleeping together during her cycles.
That’s correct. There are a number of restrictions like that which are meant to prevent couples from having sex with each other when the woman is ritually impure. Sleeping in separate beds is seen as a good way to prevent that from happening.
My understanding is they do pay attention, but mainly in relation to the issue of ritual sexual purity. Incidental touching of potentially menstuating women does not concern them as far as I know.
I recall (not someplace where I can look it up right now, sorry) that under some circumstances the “impurity” imparted by a menstruating woman expires after a certain amount of time. Specifically, a husband shouldn’t eat from his menstruating wife’s plate immediately after she’s eaten from it. However, he can eat leftovers from her plate several hours after she has finished eating.
Perhaps Orthodox men apply this logic to chairs in public places - it’s not OK to use a chair that has *just *been vacated by a woman (because she might be “unclean”), but it’s OK to sit in a chair that *may have been *sat in by a woman (even a menstruating woman) several hours ago.
I don’t particularly care to sit in a chair which still has another person’s latent body heat in it. So maybe he just wanted a ‘cold’ chair, and it had nothing to do with his religion.
The laws about sharing food are for the same reason I mentioned above: They are all post-Biblical Rabbinic rules which were enacted expressly to provide a sense of separation between husband and wife. They are not due to ritual purity reasons.
I think you hit the nail on the head. As an Orthodox Jew, I have never heard of a prohibition against sitting in a chair that a woman (menstruating or not) has sat on before you. I have never seen this occur, even in ultra-Orthodox communities.
Even though technically it is allowed, some ultra-Orthodox Jews prefer not to sit next to the strangers of the opposite sex while on public transportation to make sure they don’t touch them accidentally. You weren’t sitting right next to him, however, so the point is moot.
Which allows me to tell my story without technically hijacking - I was on a flight on a crappy local eastern european airlines (Malev Air, I think) and the plane was really, really cramped and completely sold out. I was in the very last row in an aisle seat and in the middle seat was a male Orthodox jew. In the window seat was another woman. I’m 5’9" and <mumblemumble> pounds so suffice it to say, I am not a pixie and neither was the woman in the window seat. We couldn’t help but touch him with our shoulders. The poor man was so disconcerted that he rocked and prayed during the entire three hour flight. I felt really badly for him but there was no place for me to move to.
ETA - Of course, he could have just been praying because he was afraid of flying and the plane was a piece of crap…
“Evening”, and it is often rendered that way in other translations. You’ll remember, of course, that the Jewish day ends at sunset, so “the evening” is the beginning of the next day - that is, the uncleanness lasts for the remainder of the current day.
Both of my wive’s sisters are Orthodox as are their husbands and the rest of the extended family. We and her parents are the only pagan Jews. I have been out with them on numerous occassions and while they will actively try not to touch or bump up against women that are not their wives, modern society being what it is, they just deal with it when it happens and don’t freak out about it. I don’t think it matters whether it is a menstrating woman or not. Their wives do use the mikvah when it’s convenient and it’s been that time of the month, but neither one of them sleep in separate beds from their wives, even when they are menstrating.
If he wasn’t nervous before the flight, he’s just a misogynist. Why on earth would you feel bad for him? I’d have rolled my damn eyes till they fell out of my head at the nonsense.
I think it’s likely that he was planning to pray/study for the entire flight, but I agree with lindsaybluth that it was quite charitable of you to feel bad for him.
Well, the whole rocking thing got old pretty fast, I must say. But in my line of work I deal with many different cultures and religions and I try to be tolerant of their beliefs. And in my experience, European Orthodox jews tend to be uber Orthodox. I’ve even met some who refused to speak to me and had their wives speak on their behalf. I knew that being tightly sandwiched between two strange women was probably reallly uncomfortable for him. To each their own - who am I to judge?
ETA - and the upside was that he didn’t try to make annoying small talk with me!