“Mazel tov!” and a quick hug was the first thing said to me when I, at ten years old, told my non-Jewish teacher that I had gotten my period, the first girl of my class to get it. She seemed so genuinely happy for me but I didn’t understand why. I then spent the next year and half in primary school navigating my cycle whilst using the teachers’ bathrooms so as to not be embarrassed by bringing my little bag into the student bathroom where none of the other girls would have known what was inside. It felt very isolating. Thinking back to those moments now, all the teachers knew why I was there and always offered me a smile but in those moments I wanted a hole to swallow me.

Whilst my mum had had ‘the talk’ with me the year before, I don’t think I was actively aware of what was actually happening inside my body for another few years. I understood that every month I bled, but the connection between that and my reproductive organs did not match. It wasn’t until I got to my girls high school, where the topic was more common, that I fully grasped the idea.

I’m unsure when I first heard of mikveh and the whole idea of taharat hamishpacha, but during Covid at age 15, my mum had the second ‘talk’ with me. This one was so much more informal and again I wondered: how this happened to all the women in my life and how I did not know? What do you mean that every month Jewish women left their homes, dunked, and came back in a different headspace and status to the one they left the home in? It left me awestruck and baffled.

Once I got into my last two years of high school and the Jewish education became more relaxed, slowly but surely more answers were revealed. But mikveh and the whole world of taharat hamishpacha was never not presented as a taboo topic. It was always taught with the extra shadow hanging over, saying, you will have to wait until you get engaged before everything can be revealed. Also during these last two years of school, my community gained Shlichim whom I came to find out were Eden Center trained. I gained from them so much, and without realising, my confusion about the mitzvah started turning into understanding.

However, it wasn’t until my last term of Midreshet Lindenbaum when the option of a taharat hamishpacha class was offered in the evenings, that I understood how much I gained from them. The majority of the questions being asked by my peers to my incredible teacher were the same questions I had bombarded the Shlicha with as the cogs in my brain started to turn with questions that I couldn’t ask in high school. These questions came from a place fascinated not only by the biology aspect of women and how our cycles can lead to so much insight to our bodies, but how our bodies line up so much with the halakhic cycle of niddah.

This is why when I first heard Dr. Naomi Grumet speak about The Eden Center, it was obvious to me that I needed to get involved. My summer after Midreshet Lindenbaum, I embarked on what has been an incredible journey of knowledge, inspiration and ‘coolness.’. I’ve had the absolute pleasure of interning at the very place that as a teenager growing up in a community that didn’t feel like it allowed for different views, I wished existed, simply for the right to ask questions and to have the people to ask them too.

Here, I discovered that what I had once seen as a ‘taboo topic’ was actually a profound mitzvah that integrates so much wisdom about the female body and soul.

Being able to work behind the scenes in The Eden Center has allowed me to connect to so many. The most notable being the graduates of the kallah courses.

Firstly, I would like to thank all those who allowed me to interview them, you have all made me a very annoying future kallah (bzh) to teach. Secondly, I was constantly surprised when speaking to you all that what I thought was a very linear mitzvah (indeed in some parts it is) turns out to have so many personal aspects. I would like to share a few insights that I learned from these amazing women:

  1. Don’t leave laundry for mikvah night!
  2. Make space for your new inlaws. It’s a relationship that is inherently awkward but worth investing in.
  3. Discuss your expectations for your wedding night before the wedding night.
  4. Give yourself grace, this is a new topic which has practical ramifications; it’s okay to make a few mistakes.

As I continue to learn and ask questions, I’m grateful for the spaces that encourage open, honest dialogue. And I look forward to the time when I can fully experience these mitzvot myself, no longer baffled but inspired.

Dalia Kreike learnt at Midreshet Lindenbaum (Jerusalem), and made Aliyah during her Shana Aleph. She is currently doing Sherut Leumi at Hadassah Ein Kerem hospital in Jerusalem on the child oncology unit. The summer between ending Shana Aleph and starting Sherut Leumi she interned at The Eden Center