Includes bibliographical references and index.

An abbreviated history of the development of the Jewish menstrual laws / Tirẓah Meacham (le Beit Yoreh) -- Body language: women's rituals of purification in the Bible and Mishnah / Leslie A. Cook -- Yalta's ruse: resistance against Rabbinic menstrual authority in Talmudic literature / Charlotte Elisheva Fonrobert -- Purity, piety, and polemic: Medieval Rabbinic denunciations of "incorrect": purification practices / Shaye J.D. Chohen -- Mystical rationales for the laws of Niddah / Sharon Koren -- Rabbis, physicians, and the women's/female body: the approprate distance / Danielle Storper Perez and Florence Heymann -- Talking about Miqveh parties, or discourses of gender, hierarchy, and social control / Susan Starr Sered with Romi Kaplan and Samuel Cooper -- "There's blood in the house": negotiating female rituals of purity among Ethiopian Jews in Israel / Lisa Anteby -- Community, fertility, and sexuality: identity formation among Moroccan Jewish immigrants / Rahel Wasswerfall -- The rites of water for the Jewish women of Algeria: representations and meanings / Joëlle Allouche-Benayoun -- The return to the sacred: ritual purification among crypto-Jews in the diaspora / Janet Liebman Jacobs -- Reflections on contemporary Miqveh practice / Naomi Marmon.

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