Mayim Rabim

It's not the first time I've come across something like this, of course. Offensive readings of taharat hamishpacha are probably more common than positive ones. Although this is the first time it's been so hilariously jumbled up with inaccuracies. Did you know you can't prepare food during your menses? Hee hee. Funny how I never noticed my husband taking over the cooking for two weeks every month. The misconception that a niddah can't touch the...

This month when it was time for me to go to the mikvah, I couldn’t do it. Just couldn’t make the phone call. Not that I didn’t want to be with my husband, that wasn’t it at all. I just couldn’t face yet another month of making an appointment, going to that place, making small talk, having some relative stranger stand over me, declare me kosher, then pay money we don’t have because every stinkin’...

All this aside, I'm finding myself in a weird place after having this surgery. I confirmed with my doctor repeatedly (actually my husband did since I was still "out of it"), that absolutely no uterine blood was shed during my surgery. So the blood that I am seeing is from other areas, and is not blood that will make me a niddah. The doctor said no intimate contact until the next visit, so I am finding myself in the position of being "allowed" to my husband via taharat hamishpacha, but "forbidden via doctors."

another motzei shabbos mikveh visit.. since it's erev [day before] shavous there was an extra buzz in the air. everyone seemed relieved that they were going before yom tov. there was wait for a room and i was warmed by the diversity of women waiting. I don't normally see such variety in my day-to-day existence, and it made me really happy that so many are keeping t"h. shavuah tov v'chag sameach!...

Michal mentioned getting pregnant after her worst mikvah experience and others had noticed a similar correlation. Funny, for me it was the opposite... I tended to conceive after my most comfortable mikvah experiences. But then, for me, going to mikvah was always uncomfortable, since I needed to face the water. Still, the years passed, and as I didn't spend them all pregnant, and didn't nurse clean for very long, there were multiple mikvah visits to...

If you affiliate with a modern Orthodox community (or ever have), you've probably heard of "tefilin dates." For the uninformed: these are occasions on which the gentleman brings his tefilin (phylacteries, if that helps) along on a date, because he does not plan to return before the time for the morning service, when Jewish law requires that he put them on. I remember discussing this phenomenon with a friend early in my college years. She...

Here's another thing I didn't anticipate about mikvah night falling on Shabbos, three months in a row: not getting to stock up on bedikah cloths! I was down to the hard scratchy ones I had never even opened, once they started selling the "extra soft" kind. (I guess this is the equivalent of that pair of underwear you wouldn't be caught dead in, except you forgot to do the laundry again?) Actually, with the heter...

Modern Orthodox Woman recently posted a link to an article in Science and Technology News discussing a study on Orthodox women and sexual satisfaction. According to the article, Orthodox Jewish women are very sexually active in their marriages, but fewer than 75 percent are emotionally and physically satisfied, according to the results of a survey released May 5 at the annual American Psychiatric Association meeting in New York. . . . The results were compared...

I like to visit the Yoatzot website once or twice a week to read through the recently posted questions and answers. Today I came across this one regarding T"H and mourning, and read this bit about being in niddah when one partner is dying: In the autobiography of Glueckel of Hameln (17th-18th c.), there is a moving account of her husband on his deathbed when she was in niddah. He tells her that they had...

It finally happened. I got my tri-annual hair-buzzing. About three times a year, and at least always in the beginning of the summer. I buzz my hair off with men's clippers. Or rather, my husband does the buzzing. Now, I don't do it for minhag/historical reasons (that's another post) and I don't do it neccessarily for the mikvah. I do it mostly for tsnius and for comfort. For some reason, the hair at the back...