Does the Torah require a niddah to immerse in a mikveh?

By Daniel Abraham and Shmuli Phillips

This week’s parashah concludes a series of passages through Vayikra which focus on various forms of ritual impurity and their respective purification processes. One surprising feature which was brought to our attention this year concerns the purification processes for niddah and zavah (Vayikra chap. 15). The Torah simply states that women who have menstruated cause various objects with which they touch to become impure. No explicit mention, however, is made of what is traditionally considered to be a basic biblical requirement: that a woman immerse in a mikveh at the end of seven days in order to purify herself.

How does one approach such a phenomenon? Several scholarly articles (linked below) vividly demonstrate the extent to which this depends on one’s starting point and broader attitude towards the Torah.

Regular TheTorah.com contributors, Zev Farber and Isaac Sassoon, who promote a critical approach to interpreting the Torah’s text, seek to advance explanations based on the notion that the Torah evolved historically from multiple original sources. Their response to the Torah’s omission of an explicit command for a niddah to immerse in order to achieve purification is to suppose that this requirement is a later addition by the rabbis. According to Sassoon, there is a more lax attitude to niddah which can be detected in the “Priestly” layer of Tanakh – a layer which was superseded by a later rabbinic interpretation itself influenced by Zoroastrianism and its strict approach to menstruation. (The power and scope of rabbinic courts to amend and add to biblical law is a subject that is thoroughly examined in the upcoming sequel to Judaism Reclaimed).

While such interpretations may appear attractive to those who are convinced of the Torah’s gradual formation and multiple authorship, how seriously should it be taken by traditional students of the Torah?

A number of substantial arguments can be made in favour of the traditional position, some of which appear in the series of articles (linked below).

First, a number of powerful a fortiori arguments can be made to show the need for a niddah to wash despite the absence of a direct command. Such arguments emerge not just from comparisons with other, less severe forms of impurity, which all require washing – but even from within the laws of niddah. Most potently, the verse (15:22) requires that “anyone who touches any object upon which she will sit, shall immerse his garments and immerse himself in water...”. Does it not therefore go without saying that a niddah, who is the initial cause of this impurity, must also immerse in water to achieve purification? Furthermore, if a person touches the bed that a niddah lay upon, they are required to wash themselves for purification. Are we to imagine that a niddah who touches her own bed is exempt from this washing?

Given these strong indications from the text itself that a niddah requires washing as part of her process of purification, it is likely that this law was considered so obvious that it did not need an explicit mention. Alternatively, as Ramban appears to explain, the niddah’s need for purification is to be found regarding zava a few verses later, with the Torah waiting until it has concluded the laws of both categories of menstruating women before disclosing their requirement for purification.

In considering these possibilities, it is particularly significant to note that even the Karaites – who firmly rejected rabbinic oral tradition – accepted the niddah’s immersion as a basic biblical requirement.

Secondly, Yitzhaq Feder points out in his article on the subject (below) that the Torah's ritual laws can often be seen to have been built upon the practices of surrounding ancient cultures. Against this backdrop it is highly relevant that practically all of these ancient cultures had a requirement to wash after menstruation. Based on our current knowledge, none of these cultures allowed for menstrual impurity to be removed automatically.

Thirdly, the episode of David and Bathsheva (Shmuel 2:11) contains a clear early reference to the practice of women washing in order to purify from menstrual impurity: “and he saw a woman bathing… and she was purified from her uncleanliness”.

While it is clear that traditionalists such as ourselves are likely to be persuaded by these arguments, we are left to wonder about how scholars from thetorah.com balance such weighty considerations in their quest to furnish us with “Torah study informed and enriched by contemporary scholarship”. Our strong impression from many of the articles which they have published is that speculative interpretations which presume late and multiple authorship of the Torah are regularly preferred to seemingly simpler alternatives which seek answers in the context of surrounding verses, laws and the realities of ancient society.

First posted to Facebook 8 May 2022, here, with links to articles cited above.

Was ritual immersion practiced in the First Temple era?

By Daniel Abraham and Shmuli Phillips

In last week’s post, we discussed the arguments for and against the requirement of washing in the case of a menstruant according to biblical law. This week’s follow-up post will explore the requirement of full immersion in cases of impurity that require washing – and respond to the claim that the practice of full-body immersion was a far later addition to Jewish law.

An article on theTorah. com by Hayah Katz (linked at the end) argues that ancient cultures which had plenty of water nonetheless often cleansed themselves from impurity through pouring water on their bodies. Katz concludes that, other than the few instances in which mayim chayim is specifically required

“In all other cases of defilement, purification is accomplished by washing in water, without any requirement that it be running water. It is reasonable to assume that the form taken by ritual washing for the purpose of purifying the body was directly derived from the forms of washing that were possible in the various regions of Judah.”

In Isaac Sassoon’s article (discussed in last week’s post), he also questions how the Israelites in the Sinai would have had enough water to cleanse themselves through immersion. Yonatan Adler goes as far as to suggest that the practice of immersion and building mikva’ot was influenced by and a response to the Hellenistic hip-bath practice that eventually somehow evolved into full immersion for the Jews.

These claims can be challenged from several different angles:

First off, it should be recognized that there were a number of ancient cultures that had large pools and required immersion in water for ritual purposes. For starters, Yiğit Erbil and Alice Mouton describe water cults that existed among the ancient Hittites. All sorts of large pools were built near temples for ritual purification. They even describe how animals required full immersion before sacrifice (see here). In a similar vein, Professor David Shapira describes a number of purification rituals involving water which were uncovered from excavations in the proximity of ancient Egyptian temples (The “Molten Sea” Revisited David Shapira 2020).” Professor Hector Avalos in discussing the ancient magical texts known as Namburbi writes "In one medical Namburbi a man must immerse himself in the river seven times."

Clearly then, bathing in large pools and immersion was a practice in ancient times and this cannot be simply dismissed.

Secondly, the availability of water for bathing purposes in ancient Israel must be looked at more closely. There were lakes, rivers, streams, wells, cisterns, and reservoirs that could easily serve as a mikvah.

Whereas reservoirs were much larger, unroofed, and for public use, cisterns were often built for private use. In the words of Sennacherib in 2 Kings 18:31 “Don’t listen to Hezekiah. For thus said the king of Assyria: Make your peace with me and come out to me, i.e., to my representative the Rabshakeh. so that each man may eat of his vine, and each man may eat of his fig tree, and each man may drink from his cistern."

James Kugel describes how new technologies aided the early settlement in the highlands of Israel, writing “…the introduction of a new type of waterproof plaster to line these cisterns allowed rainwater to be collected and preserved far more efficiently.” Kugel adds that “Before these innovations, permanent settlements had been located mostly in places of abundant water; now a village could survive solely on rainwater collected in the new cisterns.” (p. 384)

Some of the earliest plastered cisterns have been discovered in Hazor and Gezer, around 1800 BCE. Even in areas such as the Negev where rainfall is much less, archaeologists have nonetheless discovered advanced rain collecting techniques in cisterns that date to the Bronze age. 

Thus even as early as possibly 4,000 years ago, there is the very real possibility that the inhabitants of the region had developed highly advanced water storing techniques.

In the Temple itself, Chronicles 4:6 states, “…But [Solomon’s] Sea was for the Cohanim to wash in it.” The Jerusalem Talmud suggests that the Molten Sea that Solomon built was one big mikveh that the Priests used to immerse themselves in. The Temple – and Jerusalem more generally – would have required a significant reservoir of stored water in order to purify arriving priests and pilgrims.

In 2012, the Israeli Antiquities Authority discovered a cistern in the Jerusalem that they say likely dates to the first Temple and could have held 66,000 gallons of water. Tvika Tsuk, chief archaeologist of Israel's Nature and Parks Authority, said: 'Presumably the large water reservoir, which is situated near the Temple Mount, was used for the everyday activities of the Temple Mount itself and also by the pilgrims who went up to the Temple and required water for bathing and drinking.” While there is some disagreement about the dating of these reservoirs, the fact remains that there is ample evidence that the means for immersion were quite available.

But what of the claims that the Israelites did not have enough water in the desert? For one, there are some oases in the Sinai desert that the Israelites could have used for all their ritual needs. The Israelites would naturally be led from water source to water source as need be. The ocean could have served this purpose whenever they were near one. We also read in Psalm 68:9-10 that generous rain poured down on Israel in the desert – as well accounts of God miraculously producing water when required.

Yonatan Adler’s article claims that it would be unlikely that Bathsheba would have a roof that could support a full mikveh. However, the verse in question may be saying only that David was on his own roof while Batsheva was bathing somewhere below on the ground level.

Turning now to an analysis of the biblical laws and specifically the claim that the Torah did not require immersion.

When dealing with the Torah, one must be very careful when making argument from silence. The Torah, like any book, was given to a specific audience and its wording and instruction therefore took into account the background knowledge of its initial recipients. There are many instances in which the Torah will give us a law that is not fully explained. The Torah forbids work on the Sabbath, but never spells out exactly what work is. The reader is expected to know what the Sabbath labors are.

The laws of immersion may be no different. When it was first commanded, the Torah may have expected its readership to know that “washing” referred to immersion because that is what everyone did.

The most powerful argument in favour of interpreting biblical “washing” as full-body immersion emerges from an episode in Kings, in which the Aramean general, Na’aman, is smitten with leprosy and seeks a cure from the prophet, Elisha. When Elisha tells Na’aman to wash in the Jordan - "וְרָחַצְתָּ֚", Naaman understood that to mean immersion - " וַיִּטְבֹּ֚ל." “So he went down and immersed himself in the Jordan seven times, as the man of God had bidden”. (II Kings 5).

In conclusion, we have found that ancient near-eastern cultures did require full-body immersion to purify, and that the First Temple conditions did potentially allow for an abundance of stored natural water to be used for ritual baths. Most significantly, we also saw how the terms “wash” and “immerse” were used interchangeably. This phenomenon suggests that modern scholars who construct theories based on an attempt to distinguish “wash” from “immerse” might be displaying insufficient sensitivity to the realities of the ancient world and how the Torah’s first recipients are likely to have interpreted its terms.

https://www.thetorah.com/.../biblical-purification-was-it...

https://www.thetorah.com/.../the-purification-of-a-niddah...

https://www.thetorah.com/.../on-the-origins-of-tevilah...

First posted on Facebook on 18 May 2022, here.