Publication Date
Spring 2025
Abstract
The Amsterdam Jewish Museum’s exhibit “Sex: Jewish Positions” creates a crucial space for modern art to reflect, comment, and expand on ancient Jewish rituals. One such ritual is the ideologically fraught space of the mikvah: a Jewish bath house for spiritual cleansing. This ritual deals with the abject Menstrual Other who is both unclean and infectious, but also spiritually elevated. The Menstrual Other is cleansed by the mikvah and then brought back into society via prescribed but pleasurable sex. Using three pieces of contemporary art on display at the Amsterdam Jewish Museum, Five Plus Seven by Hagit Molgan, Kit for Ritual Bathing by Inbar Erez, and Illustrated Scenes from the Babylonian Talmud by Noa Snir, and an interview with the Mikvah Attendant at an active mikvah in Amsterdam, I seek to understand the rich complexities of the mikvah and how Menstrual Otherness is felt by modern Jewish women.
Disciplines
Arts and Humanities | Social and Behavioral Sciences
Recommended Citation
Greenwold, Molly, "The Mikvah and the Menstrual Other: Shame, Spirituality, Sexuality, and Contradiction in Jewish Ritual and Modern Art" (2025). Netherlands: International Perspectives on Sexuality and Gender. 2.
https://digitalcollections.sit.edu/nlr/2