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there is a more lax attitude to niddah which can be detected in the “Priestly” layer of Tanakh – a layer which was superseded by a later rabbinic interpretation itself influenced by Zoroastrianism and its strict approach to menstruation.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.