JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
‘Any chance you can meet this afternoon? Molly got her first period, and we were thinking it would be nice to have a ritual,” Molly’s mother texts one fall Sunday. For months, Molly and I have been meeting weekly to prepare for her bat mitzvah. We meet in the Torah Hut, a small cabin in…
Activists are pushing to bring periods into the mainstream — to strip pads and tampons of their sales taxes, to bring the products into public restrooms and to kill the stigma surrounding menstruation talks. Four states — California, Florida, Illinois and New York — have passed sales tax exemptions for the products, and more may…
TEL AVIV (JTA) – In a grove in northern Israel, several dozen sweaty, shirtless Israeli men circle one another other on all fours, growling like bears. They are acting out the occasionally surly stage of the menstrual cycle, just before menstruation begins. The bear is one of four “power animals” the men emulate in an…
The tragic story of Tulasi Shahi reads as if it belongs in the Dark Ages. As is the custom in her community in Nepal, the 18-year-old had been sent to stay in her uncle’s hut while she menstruated, forced to sleep on wooden boards in a rough structure normally housing cows. She died last Friday,…
A new debate is playing out in New York City’s Orthodox community over the halachic status of an online app designed for women who wish to better observe the religious prohibition on intimacy during menstruation. The application, Tahor, allows for women to anonymously send photos of their bedikah cloths, used to check the vagina for…
Donald Trump is a “failed, fraudulent businessman.” He has given “explicit endorsement to anti-Semitic imagery.” He is “dangerous, offensive, and grossly uninformed.” So says the elected official emerging as among the most strident Jewish voices opposing Donald Trump: New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman. Schneiderman’s new criticisms of the Republican nominee, which he made…
There is a heartbreaking story by journalist Rose George in Mosaic Science (h/t to Jezebel, who republished it) about menstrual taboos in Nepal and Bangladesh. Among families who observe chhaupadi, a tradition among some Hindus in the region which prohibits any contact with a menstruating woman, daughters and wives are sent to sleep in sheds…
A new advertising campaign by U for Kotex has done what no menstrual product company has done before: create an ad that is not only straightforward about menstruation, but also pokes fun at its own history of vague and sanitized ads. Both reasons make this ad campaign groundbreaking, but for some reason, you still can’t…
