abstract: Since the 1960’s and 1970’s, ethnographic research on Jewish menstrual rituals known as niddah, Taharat HaMishpacha, or Family Purity has associated their practices with religious behavior. Much of this research organizes around questions of women’s agency within ostensibly patriarchally constructed religious practices that carry the potential to oppress its women practitioners. This premise is built upon a number of implicit assumptions about the history of today’s niddah practices: that niddah is observed exclusively by Orthodox Jews; that increasing rates of niddah observance correlate exclusively with the trend toward stricter observance levels among the Orthodox since the 1960s; and that this increasingly strict observance itself reflects a reactionary trend among the Orthodox community (a.k.a. tradition versus modernity). All these assumptions currently circulate, in various degrees, among the American Jewish lay community and are shared by a significant number of congregational rabbis. Until the 1990s, no history of niddah existed to either support or refute these assumptions. I initially intended that this project would provide future ethnographers with a comprehensive history of niddah in America during the past one and a half centuries. I engaged Victor Turner’s theory of Social Drama as a framework for understanding this history as a socio-cultural process, rather than as a series of less than related events. However, this study h*as resulted in the identification of many more specific assumptions about the decline and revival of niddah observance in the twentieth century, which are not supported by the scant evidence available. These challenged assumptions beg new directions for research; a thorough reworking of the history of niddah in America; and a fresh look at the literature advocating niddah produced in the 1990’s and early 2000’s. This genealogy as Social Drama presents niddah in twentieth century America as undergoing periods of crisis, negotiation, and reintegration. This drama was triggered by late nineteenth century concepts of religion, body, and ritual that undermined and ruptured the integrity of niddah as a bodily religious ritual practice. Niddah’s twentieth century social drama culminated in fresh articulations of a unique Jewish sexuality and Jewish marital ethic. / Dissertation/Thesis / Masters Thesis Religious Studies 2015

abstract: Maintaining sexual desire as the marriage endures is a challenge, especially as it involves the interplay of seemingly opposing tensions of novelty, autonomy, and closeness. Difficulties can arise when autonomy, which requires spousal distancing, is perceived as a martial threat and therefore suppressed. This dissertation investigates whether prosocial marital distancing can nurture autonomy and promote sexual desire. Torah-observant Jewish married couples practice family purity, a Jewish law forbidding sexual relations during menstruation and shortly thereafter. During this time couples often avoid sleeping in the same bed, physical touch, and behaviors that can instigate a sexual encounter. These distancing restrictions are lifted when the wife immerses in a ritual bath. The process repeats at the next menstruation. This research examined the effects of family purity’s marital distancing through two studies. The first involved qualitative interviews of family purity wives (N = 10) guided by relational dialectics theory (Baxter & Montgomery, 1996). Study one findings suggest that family purity wives navigate the three tensions of integration, expression, and certainty. Study one also revealed a new tension, the dialect of restraint. The dialectic of restraint appears to enhance marital communication, heighten the appreciation for the mundane, and help sustain sexual desire. Study two, the quantitative phase of the research, applied self-expansion theory (Aron & Aron, 1986) to investigate differences between family purity and non-family purity couples. A sample of 90 married Jewish dyads (N = 180) participated in a cross-sectional online questionnaire. Findings suggest that while non-practicing couples report greater self-expansion, family purity couples report greater sexual closeness. Family purity couples also report the same closeness and sexual closeness ideals, whereas non-practicing couples reported divergent ideals. Non-practicing family purity husbands had the greatest reported discrepancy between ideal and actual sexual closeness. The combined findings suggest that sanctioned prosocial distancing as practiced by family purity couples enables the integration of cognitive growth and mitigates the threat of autonomy. Prosocial distancing within the family purity marriage appears to provide the wife space for autonomy that in turn provokes novelty and sexual desire. Findings are discussed in relation to theoretical contributions, study limitations, and future directions. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Communication Studies 2020

Baal teshuvas are traditionally observant Orthodox Jewish individuals who were previously not religiously observant and chose to become observant at a later juncture in their lives. This population is at risk of psychosocial dysfunction, particularly in the area of marriage, but little or no research has been conducted with this population. The purpose of this study was to study how 1 factor, the laws of family purity, an ancient set of Jewish laws governing sexual behavior between husbands and wives, may have an effect on marital satisfaction among baal teshuvas. Areas of marital satisfaction were measured by the Revised Dyadic Adjustment Scale, Triangular Love Scale, and New Sexual Satisfaction Survey. Relational-cultural theory and relational spirituality were used to describe how spirituality affects individual well-being and the quality of one's relationships with others. A sample of 44 male and 59 female baal teshuvas completed the surveys. MANOVAs and 2-factor ANOVAs were conducted to compare the effects of gender and level of observance of family purity laws on marital satisfaction survey results. Results indicated a significant difference only by gender on the sexual satisfaction measure, although it is not known how much of a difference there was between the genders. This study reinforces indications from past research that studying sexual satisfaction in marriages is an increasingly important area of study and clinical practice. This study may lead to positive social change by identifying methods to improve marital satisfaction in the newly religious population. In addition, the results may provide further evidence supporting the already known positive psychological benefits of the laws of family purity.