Once there was a pious man (or a pietist) who would not lie in his bed on the nights when his wife was niddah [menstrually impure]; rather he would sleep sitting or reclining [in a chair], for he said, “If I lie comfortably in my bed, I would sleep too well and perhaps I might have a nocturnal emission. Rather I should sleep uncomfortably, without a pillow, so I will not see an emission.” [Sometimes] he would stand all night studying Torah.36
In this teaching from Sefer Hasidim, a man who is barred from sexual contact with his wife due to her menstrual impurity fears that he too will become ritually compromised by nocturnal emission; he thereby draws a connection between male and female states of physical impurity.37
This association reflects an imbalance that came to characterize female ritual purity, where menstrual and post-partum blood represented the exception rather than the rule in Jewish praxis. In contrast to all other causes of ritual impurity that had been observed when the Temple existed and were then suspended after its destruction,38 not only did the effect of menstruation continue to have currency, but over time this category of ritual purity became a hallmark of Jewish female identity.39 The laws of menstrual purity cover a category of practices that mainly relate to intimate relations between married couples.40 Despite its personal nature, there is evidence that medieval neighbors and fellow community members were aware of each woman’s niddah status according to her apparel since all women wore bigdei niddut, special clothes for menstruation,41 which differed from their regular attire.42 This practice is echoed in a teaching in Sefer Hasidim that, when relevant, men should emphasize their own state of purity by wearing white, following the verse “At all times your clothes should be white” (Eccles. 9:7). However, his comments suggest that this custom was limited to especially pious men.43 Later sources also discuss men wearing white as a demonstration of purity, but those instructions are often in the context of Yom Kippur, when everyone would wear white.44
Observance of the laws of menstruation had numerous public implications beyond the realm of attire, including questions regarding women’s synagogue attendance, as the quotation ascribed to Rashi above suggests. According to this source, some women absented themselves from the synagogue during their menstrual cycles because they understood that, as with the Temple, they were excluded from it during times of ritual impurity.45 In their analyses of this passage, a number of scholars have attributed this custom to an esoteric text, known as Baraita deNiddah, which was written during the early centuries of the first millennium and contains many strict regulations concerning menstruants and their impurity,46 such as “And she shall not come to the Temple” (Lev. 12:4). She is not permitted to enter places of learning or synagogues.”47 This teaching is not widely quoted. For example, sources from early medieval Babylonia discuss the applicability of this verse in the absence of the Temple, and draw the opposite conclusion of Baraita deNiddah, declaring women’s avoidance of settings for prayer and study to be excessive.48
Whether Rashi and his students were familiar with Baraita deNiddah remains a question of scholarly debate; however, it is likely they did not. None of the writings from Rashi or his school refer to Baraita deNiddah and it is notably absent from the passage cited above.49 Moreover, our citation from Rashi indicates that the custom of distancing oneself from the synagogue was not widespread among menstruants in the late eleventh and early twelfth centuries and was an exception rather than the rule.50
This practice is mentioned again in several texts from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Its next appearance, about a century after Rashi, is in Sefer Ra’aviah by Eliezer b. Joel haLevi (1160–1235, known as Ra’aviah). In a discussion concerning men who were impure as a result of seminal emissions, Ra’aviah reports:
Women exercise stringency and piety (nahagu silsul be’atzman u’perishut) when they are impure (niddah) by not entering the synagogue. Moreover, when praying, they do not stand behind women who are impure. I have also seen this written in the words of our Ge’onim, in the language of a baraita that is not found in our tosefta. This custom is indeed valid, just as I have heard of men who behave more and less stringently when they are impure due to nocturnal emissions: those who are more stringent live longer days and years.51
This passage demonstrates that Ra’aviah was familiar with Baraita deNiddah via a ge’onic source, albeit an unnamed one.52 One outstanding aspect of this text, as with the selection from Rashi,53 is Ra’aviah’s statement that women initiated this practice, unprompted by rabbinic authorities, even if this custom received formal approval post-factum. Ra’aviah discusses two restrictions that women took upon themselves: the first reflects the observance noted by Rashi, linking ritual purity to entering the synagogue; the second relates to how women positioned themselves during public prayers. This further constraint regarding location in services does not appear in the versions of Baraita deNiddah that have reached us, but similar limitations appear in thirteenth-century sources (as discussed below).
Both of these texts raise a theme that has received negligible attention to date:54 Rashi and Ra’aviah compare the actions of these women to the practices of men who were ritually impure.55 Although the text attributed to Rashi does not report any special customs related to men, it comments on male and female impurity, noting that men, who were also impure by definition, attended synagogue seemingly without reservation.56 In contrast, Ra’aviah remarks that particularly pious men took care to wash before entering the synagogue after experiencing nocturnal emissions. This male observance is repeated in other twelfth- and thirteenth-century medieval texts as well, usually in connection to preparations for Yom Kippur, when many men immersed57 Although most sources state unequivocally that men participated in prayers in all states of purity and impurity, texts such as Ra’aviah’s acknowledge the existence of stricter approaches. More exacting standards are also articulated in Sefer Hasidim, where men are instructed to wash58 after sexual relations before praying.59
In sum, irrespective of their status with regard to purity, men participated fully in communal prayers throughout the medieval period, as textual evidence from northern France and Germany demonstrates with a few suggestions of singular exceptions. In the case of women, the sources attributed to Rashi and Ra’aviah indicate that a segment of especially pious women placed a self-imposed exclusion on synagogue participation during their menstrual cycles, and that this stringency could extend to physically distancing themselves during public prayers from their peers who were menstrually impure.
This idea is further developed by Eleazar b. Judah of Worms (d. 1230), who notes: “[A menstruant] is not permitted to enter the synagogue until she immerses in water because [even] her saliva [has the power to] contaminate.”60 This statement represents a major shift: Eleazar is not referring to a cohort of pious women who chose this custom; rather, he describes a prohibition that could keep all menstruants from entering the synagogue. Eleazar attributes this exclusion to Ma’aseh haGe’onim, an early Ashkenazic composition, but no such ruling appears in that book as we know it today.61
Sefer Likutei haPardes (attributed to the Rashi school, dated to thirteenth-century Italy) reports an intensification of this restriction that mirrors the language of Sefer Ra’aviah: “And there are women who abstain from entering the synagogue when they are menstruants and from seeing the Torah, and from touching the book (the Torah scroll). This is an unnecessary stringency … but it is a holy place and they are acting appropriately. May they be blessed in this world and in the World to Come.”62
Isaac b. Moses (d. ca. 1250), the author of Sefer Or Zaru’a and a student of Ra’aviah and Eleazar of Worms, also writes about this practice. He paraphrases Ra’aviah almost verbatim.63 His son, Haim b. Isaac, wrote: “She should not say the name of God when she is menstrually impure; furthermore,
