Blood, margins, and danger: Menstrual purity laws and Spanish Crypto-Jewish women in early modern Spain

Abstract

Similarly to the women discussed in this paper, we live in an era where many observant Jewish women have the previously rare opportunity to define the rituals that shape their lives in new and sometimes unprecedented ways. In our attempts to understand the rituals and lend them our voices, we tend to look to classical Jewish texts to see how our ancestors understood these laws. All too often women are nearly absent from theses texts, their existence only mentioned when the male authors deign to discuss them. How, then, can Jewish [women] hope to discover what these rituals mean to the hundreds of generations of women before them and to help them understand what these rituals can mean for contemporary Jewish women in turn? I believe that part of the answer, at least, may be found by using other sources of historical evidence to reconstruct how these women practiced and understood the religious laws that shaped their lives. Analysis of historical sources aided by the application of contemporary anthropological theory may allow us to, tentatively, at least, reconstruct the relationship that our forebears had to religious ritual. It is my hope that in doing so, observant Jewish women can discover new ways to understand and related to that ritual themselves. (from Conclusion)

Related subjects: Jewish women--Spain--16th century • Inquisition--Spain--16th century • Crypto-Jews--Spain--16th • Christians--Spain--History--16th century •Mikveh--Spain--History--16th century •Purity, Ritual--Judaism--Spain--History--16th century