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person.”
    â€œYou’re plenty spiritual. A saint should have the soul you do. But this Orthodox nonsense isn’t spiritual. It’s superstition.”
    â€œYou sound like Benny.”
    â€œBenny’s no dummy. Orthodox Judaism.” She shook her head. “Ridiculous rules and rituals. Worse than ridiculous, and you know why? Because the point of those rules and rituals is to remind us that men are special and we aren’t. That’s why I told Seymour to forget it.”
    â€œMom, it’s not that simple. For every Orthodox Jewish man there’s an Orthodox Jewish woman, and those women don’t feel oppressed.”
    â€œHow do you know?”
    â€œI know, Mom. Take the rabbi’s wife. Sylvia is brilliant and successful, and she loves every ritual connected with the religion.”
    â€œIncluding this mishagoss she told you about tonight? What’s it called? Nadah ?”
    â€œ Niddah .”
    â€œ Niddah, nadah —whatever. It’s just Jewish men passing rules to make women feel unclean and inferior.”
    For the past five weeks, I’d been spending an hour one night a week in Rabbi Isaac Kalman’s study trying to learn the laws, customs, and traditions of Orthodox Judaism. Although my father had been Orthodox, my sister, Ann, and I were raised as Reform Jews. When my mother told my father that she wasn’t going to do that “crazy stuff” with him, she made sure the ban included her children, too. But now, like my mother before me, I’d fallen in love with a devout Jewish man. Unlike my father, however, Jonathan was a widower with two small girls. And unlike my mother, I was willing to at least give Orthodox Judaism a try.
    Dating an Orthodox Jew was a new experience. In addition to the strict observance of the Sabbath from sundown on Friday to sundown on Saturday—no cars, no telephones, no electric appliances, no work—there were exacting rules about food, prayer, and sex. Although few organized religions celebrate the joys of marital sex more than Orthodox Judaism, the counterweight is a stern prohibition against premarital sex. I suppose it added a touch of nostalgic charm to our relationship, as if we were a pair of high school sweethearts from a 1950s sitcom. It added plenty of frustration, too.
    Tonight, though, had been a real test of faith, because tonight the topic had been the laws of niddah . Due to the subject matter, my teacher tonight had been the rabbi’s wife, Sylvia Kalman. She’d explained that a woman becomes a niddah at the onset of menstruation. The niddah phase lasts almost two weeks, since the woman must have seven consecutive “clean” days after her period ends. She ends the niddah by going to the mikvah , or ritual bath, and immersing herself in the waters. She emerges physically and spiritually cleansed.
    From the onset of menstruation until the ritual bath twelve to fourteen days later, Jewish law strictly forbids not only all sexual activity but all physical contact between husband and wife. Indeed, sexual intercourse with a niddah is punishable by the severest penalty, kahret , the Jewish version of excommunication in which the sinner is spiritually cut off from the destiny of the Jewish people.
    The rabbi’s wife had sensed my resistance. As she no doubt had done for scores of women before me, she explained the various rationales the rabbis offer. The laws of niddah give the woman a special time to herself. They protect a couple from the dangers of overindulgence and over-familiarity, which could lead to monotony and restlessness. The laws of niddah , some say, are designed to increase the love between the man and woman by creating a monthly honeymoon. As the Torah promises, when the wife returns to the marital bed after the end of niddah , “she will be as beloved to her husband as she was when she entered the chupah .”
    â€œIt’s a beautiful mitzvah,” Sylvia