Other Sacred Practices

As a way of life, Judaism seeks to shape every facet of one’s behavior: from the food one eats (or doesn’t eat) to the way husbands and wives relate to one another. To those living within those traditions, these practices provide a sense of meaning and order, endowing all of life’s activities with an aura of holiness.

The Dietary Code Since antiquity, Jews have observed a restricted diet. Although the details have changed over the centuries, the underlying assumptions behind these practices have not. In the Torah, the people of Israel are told, repeatedly, that God wishes them to be in a state of “holiness,” and when that principle is applied to diet, it becomes a discipline of selective food consumption and careful food preparation.

The essentials of the Jewish dietary code are as follows:

1. The only animals that may be eaten are those that have been properly slaughtered; no animal that has been killed by another or that has died a natural death may be consumed.

2. The only quadrupeds that may be eaten are those with split hooves who also chew the cud (like cows or goats), and, once properly slaughtered, their blood must be drained away.

3. No fish may be eaten that does not have both fins and scales.

4. No insects may be consumed at all.

5. No meat dish may be eaten at the same time as a milk dish.

The practical consequences for anyone who observes this diet are obvious: such a person will not dine at a stranger’s home without first inquiring whether the food about to be served is really “kosher” (meaning in conformity to rabbinic standards of food selection and preparation) and whether the plates and cooking utensils are also completely free of contamination from forbidden foods. Within all Orthodox and many Conservative Jewish homes, it is customary to find not only kosher foodstuffs on the table but also duplicate sets of ovens, refrigerators, and dinnerware to make it easier to separate meat dishes from milk dishes.

Family Purity

All Orthodox, and some Conservative and Reform, women, in addition to maintaining kosher homes, are also equally attentive to the practice of ritual “purity,” and as a consequence attend a mikveh (Hebrew, “pool”) at the conclusion of their menstrual periods. In a truly Orthodox Jewish home, husband and wife abstain from sexual intimacy not only during the entire period of menstruation but for seven days thereafter, and only then will the wife attend the mikveh. The purpose of this rite of purification, however, is not merely to bathe. Immersion in a mikveh is, rather, a symbolic act of spiritual preparation, and although it is used primarily by women preparing to resume sexual relations with their husbands, it is also used for conversion ceremonies and by Orthodox males on the afternoon before Yom Kippur.

The origin of these practices can be found in the Hebrew Bible, where men are warned against having intimate relations with a menstruating woman. Nowhere, however, in either the Hebrew Bible or in rabbinic literature does Judaism suggest that women’s bodies are “unclean” in a hygienic sense. As with the dietary code, so with the laws of family purity: the ceremonial discipline of traditional Judaism requires a heightened degree of self-awareness about the routines of everyday life. Among Reform and Reconstructionist Jews, however, such practices are rarely observed, and today rigorous application of the purity laws is only a distinguishing mark of family life within the Orthodox Jewish home.