I’m writing now to put forth my position on the topic of mikvah immersion for unmarried women. I’m certainly not the first to speak about this topic. I’ve heard that Rabbi Irving (Yitz) Greenberg suggested, as early as forty years ago, that unmarried women be permitted to go to the mikvah, so as to avoid incurring the penalty of karet (lit. cutting off – the meaning is not entirely certain, but is usually understood as being spiritually eviscerated from the Jewish people) when engaging in premarital sex. Rabbi Greenberg’s position was not welcomed, to say the least.I think Rabbi Greenberg’s position simply didn’t go far enough. It is my belief that all Jewish women, from Bat Mitzvah until menopause, should immerse in the mikvah monthly. From a purely halachic perspective there is no true ban on unmarried women going to the mikvah, and unmarried women did go to the mikvah in the past, prior to participating in the Paschal sacrifice, or prior to touching consecrated goods, priestly tithes and so forth. However, given that premarital sex is forbidden (even if only rabbinically), over the last two thousand years there has been no reason to allow unmarried women to go to the mikvah.
Until today. Based on various studies of American sexuality, Jewish women remain abstinent longer and have fewer sexual partners than their non-Jewish counterparts. However, it is clear that most Jewish women do not come to their marriage beds in virgin white. Interestingly, no Jewish denomination supports or condones premarital sex. The Conservative movement has crept towards an acceptance of premarital sex in monogamous, committed relationships, but I haven’t found any official responsa permitting it. In other words, Jewish denominations have taken the Nancy Reagan approach to premarital sex – just say no.
That approach has proven as ineffectual for premarital sex as it was for drugs. Just as today, US citizens regularly flout inane and draconian drug laws and pay no regard to the dictates of their own legal system, Jews have premarital sex, not even paying lip service to the rabbis and teachers who preach against it. Today, rabbis of every denomination have simply been cut out of the conversation. I personally know of quite a few non-Orthodox parents who have urged their adult children to have premarital sex. Many of them would consider it a mistake to marry while still a virgin, and advise their children to ‘get to know’ their bodies and their sexuality prior to marriage. With the age of marriage climbing in every Jewish denomination, it becomes unreasonable and in some ways even perverse to insist on virginity for the first thirty years of life.
We need to find a way for religious teachings about sex to be heard again. It is true and immutable that Jewish history and halacha speaks out against premarital sex, but it is also true that the Jewish community of today lives in times never before lived, and in societies never before imagined. As other rituals fade or lose their hold over the Jewish imagination, the ritual of Mikvah has found new life. Non-traditional mikvah ceremonies to mark life transitions have become increasingly popular, and even traditional mikvah observance has gained new adherents outside of the Orthodox community. Aside from the pressing halachic concern of the need to prevent issurei karet, there is a more desperate need to bring sexuality back into the religious domain. We need something better than ‘just say no’.
I believe that Jewish women would serve well, and be well-served by, the monthly purification ritual. The cyclical separation from sex would grant couples space and freedom from the throbbing claims of the sexual instinct, and give them new insights into their relationships. I believe it will reduce the instances of premarital sex, and certainly of casual sex outside the framework of a committed relationship. I believe that it will provide another door into Jewish observance and relevance, and that it will strengthen the commitment of Jewish women to express their Judaism in concrete ways. And of course, a woman who goes to the mikvah before she weds will almost surely go after she weds.
jeremy said:
Whilst I commend your honesty and intention, the issue of Mikvah is really secondary to the real challenge of premarital sex.
Practically speaking no Rav is going to get up and say it is allowed but a significant number do indeed recognize the reality to my personal knowledge. At worst they turn a blind eye and at best counsel accordingly. I suspect that is as much as one can hope for within thinking Orthodoxy. And if then they advise Mikvah so be it. I am actually not certain that this isn’t the best approach either.
A similar issue is when a Rav will over fertility issues be lenient in regard to the Seven Clear Days but would never in public say the tradition should be ignored or annulled.
rejewvenator said:
I’m not suggesting that the Orthodox, or any other denomination, for that matter, come out and permit that which is prohibited.
What I’m saying is that erecting barriers to the mikvah is a poor way to prevent premarital sex on a practical level, and it leads to many issurei karet. I agree that simply opening the mikvah to unmarried women turns the mikvah into a place where women prepare themselves for sin, not purity, and I oppose that approach. Rather, by requiring the ritual of all women, we create an opportunity for a greater appreciation of sex and sexual relationships, educational moments across the denominations for discussions of sex, purity, and holiness, and we likely increase observance of family purity across the board. Certainly, we get fewer issurei karet. And we do all this without saying once that premarital sex is ok.
Jen said:
Very eloquent. I applaud you. I am a young woman who has wrestled with this issue for a long time. I ultimately came to the conclusion that following the niddah laws while not married is too much of a hassle if it doesn’t help matters from a religious standpoint. But I do agree that the “just so no” attitude doesn’t work. I am in my early 20s and I can’t imagine being celibate even though I am religious in every other respect. I realized that my sexuality just doesn’t fit in with the rabbis’ demands and I’m not the only one. Something has to change or there will be no way of helping non marrieds fit their sex lives into Judaism at all.
Yehudah Menasheh Goldstein said:
Oh, just get married already, for G-d’s sake!
Michael Makovi said:
Personally, I’m not prepared to cede one millimeter on the insistence of abstinence.
However, my issue with the banning of mikva’ot to unmarried women is that it is both sexist and shortsighted.
Sexist, because all the pressure is used on women, and her bodily nature is used for the leverage, and nothing is said or done to men.
Shortsighted, because everyone agrees that when we have the Temple again, and (im)purity is an issue, unmarried women will have a right to the mikvah; what will the rabbis do then? They seem to have predicated their entire defense against premarital sex, on Mashiah’s not coming. Any religious policy that functions properly only so long as the Jewish people are dysfunctional and lacking, is a dangerous policy. It’s like when Orthodox Jews tout the “four cubits” of halacha as their self-definition; the Talmud explicitly says that the halacha was reduced to “four cubits” (the personal space of his body; the four cubits of halacha would thus be individual personal law, such as Shabbat and kashrut and taharat haMishpaha) only due to the Temple’s destruction; before that, the halacha included politics, government, economy, etc. So when Orthodoxy Jews pride themselves on their identity being “the four cubits of halacha”, they are explicitly celebrating the Temple’s destruction. Obviously, this is deplorable.
Michael Makovi said:
Rejewvenate, if I may summarize your perspective on one foot:
Regardless of what the rabbis insist on, and regardless of the mikvah’s availability to unmarried women, Jewish women *are* engaging in premarital sex, even if at lower rates than the population at large. Given this, they *will* incur karet, unless we permit the mikvah to unmarried women. Moreover, if we open the mikvah to unmarried women, even before marriage, we can set a habit and trend they will continue into marriage, and thus, we will also save the many non-Orthodox women who engage in marital sex without having gone to the mikvah. If more women engage in premarital sex as a result, it is small price to pay for the loss of karet for the women who presently engage in premarital sex already and the loss of karet for non-Orthodox married women.
Is this an accurate summation? If so, I find it a compelling argument that I will have to muse over.
Michael Makovi said:
Let me elaborate on the sexism:
Many unmarried men go to the mikvah, for the supposed spiritual benefits it offers.
Now, I’m more of an empirical rationalist than a kabbalistic mystic; I’ll take a Maimonidean interpretation of halakhah as convention over a Kuzari-ic interpretation of halakhah as representing ontological reality, so I’ll reject the idea that ritual ablutions have any spiritual benefit, save for the fact that conventionally, they allow sexual intercourse and certain ritual acts.
But, for those who do believe in the spiritual benefits of immersion, I find it utterly appalling and disgusting that they forbid unmarried women access to the mikvah, even as unmarried men partake of these supposed spiritual benefits. If the benefits exist, men and women should be equally availed (or not availed, but equally in any case); if unmarried women are to be forbidden access to the mikvah, so should unmarried men.
If only women are forbidden, it is one-sided exploitation of the unique nature of a woman’s body; by virtue of her being the one in niddah, her body is exploited as offering leverage, and men are left unaccounted for in the proceedings. This I find absolutely putrid.
rejewvenator said:
Michael, your second comment is exactly the core of my argument. Premarital sex is a relatively minor rabbinic infraction. Sex with a woman in Nidah status is a major infraction resulting in Karet. We should optimize our halachic strategies to reduce issurei karet, even at the expense of increasing other issurim. That would no doubt happen – there are surely Orthodox men and women who would engage in premarital sex if the Nidah barrier did not exist. This would further lead to a need for sex education and a review of permissible birth control and so forth. I think that the implications of acknowledging, and to some extent even abetting, premarital sex on a practical level are what prevents rabbinic action.
As to sexism, all outside the Orthodox community, and many within it, acknowledge that rabbinic Judaism is a sexist religion. Many of the Orthodox condone it because they reject equality of the sexes in favor of the Plessy v Ferguson ‘Separate but Equal’ conception. In fairness to them, it may well be that separate but equal, in the absence of any malice, is in fact a valid approach towards equality, but no society or community I’m aware of has yet implemented any such doctrine with fairness. In issues of sexuality the differences are most profound. Women have few rights and many obligations in the marital and sexual spheres. While the protections that they do have were once well ahead of their times, they are quite regressive today, and nobody seems to mind. The ontological approach has trumped the conventional one, such that rituals, rights, and roles have become frozen in time, and viewed as sacred and immutable.
MichelleByTheSea said:
When I was single, another woman taught me about immersing in the ocean.
Michael said:
In reading this, many things come to mind… for instance when a woman’s hymen is broken during intercourse, it would seem to me that a spiritual “blood covenant” is made between the two parties and they are married more than through just vows (achad). Then often (esp. here in America) the two separate without a “get” (no get without a ketubah) thereby leaving the woman in a state of spiritual “agunah” and the man who is not providing for her must certainly have judgements against himself. And what of the pain of subsequent unions with others, are we so hard that we don’t feel the pain associated with another’s previous unions? Do we not all yearn for purity and emunah? And of course the the question of Niddah; it seems that mikvah or no, the union would still constitute marriage and oneness just as with Adam and Chava in the beginning. O, pull us out of the net that the nations have laid. We should distinguish between clean and unclean and yes, “karet” should be guarded against, yet all other associated problems should also be guarded against as well. Should we not also consider that a clandestine marriage is a marriage (even if unacceptable), and where does this leave the potentially resulting offspring? It seems that birth control is more permissive than the mikvah. It would also seem that Yehuda Goldstein’s comment above would be more than appropriate!
rejewvenator said:
Michael, I really appreciate your sensitivity to the spiritual impacts of sex. There is no doubt that the sexual union is a powerful thing not to be treated lightly. On the other hand, both written and oral law agree that the act of sex does not lead to betrothal or marriage unless that is the specific intention of the couple. As such, there is no agunah issue for a woman who has engaged in premarital sex.
Michael said:
I am new to New York. Have heard that some unmarried women here frequent the mikva. It relieves pain and suffering, and also all the reasons above.
Is there an online forum where religious guys can meet religious girls (who go to the mikva)? When I tried to intimate on frumster that I was interested in such women, I got thrown off.
Where can I chat with such women?
thanks,
Michael
Abigayil said:
Michael, you should be thrown off. I don’t think anybody here is pushing the idea that you should go looking for opportunities to have premarital sex. As far as I know, no such forum exists, nor should it. IMHO, that is NOT Religious, NOT Orthodox, nor orthoprax, just plain sinful. I’m not at all negating the above comments or ideas, but I’m certainly not going to encourage you to go out looking for opportunities to sin. You should repent of this need to have sex out of wedlock and just get married already!*
Really, I don’t know what you expect, people are not going to be THAT open about their dirty deeds, but people do blog about it and the certainly the Hipster Jewish internet sphere is chock full of such discussion and article writing.
Abigayil
*Obviously in a serious, loving, committed relationship, not a marriage of convenience.
The Single Dip (@thesingledip) said:
Thanks for your post! I love this article! I’ve been going to the mikvah as a single woman for 4 years and I started a blog about my different mikvah experiences. You can check it out at http://thesingledip.com