Tazria–Metzora is hitting differently this year, and not in the way it sometimes does, where a text simply feels newly relevant or interesting, but in a way that feels much more immediate and personal.
I have a lot of feelings as I find myself in the throes of perimenopause, and what I thought might be menopause, which, perhaps, is too much information, but after a year of thinking I was done, suddenly I am not. With that comes the realization that my body is not quite finished doing what it is doing, whatever that is, and I am back to thinking about all of it again, the rhythms, the disruptions, the not knowing.
Tazria and Metzora speak directly about the human body, and specifically the female body, about menstruation, childbirth, and separation. They describe a woman separating from her husband during times of menstruation or right after childbirth and then returning. There is a rhythm here, a sense of predictability, of cycles that move in a particular way: blood and then no blood, distance and closeness, separation and reunion. All of this is tied to the possibility of life, to the idea that the body is oriented toward creating something new.
And yet, what happens when the body no longer follows that rhythm? I understand that not all women’s cycles follow a predictable pattern, but what of the pause, specifically menopause, which we tend to understand as the cessation of menses?
The Torah gives us so much language for the beginning, for fertility and birth, and the cycles that make life possible. It assumes a body that menstruates, can become pregnant, and give birth. These parshiyot build a framework around that body, rooted in blood and physical states, in what is visible and definable, and there is no language about hormones and the internal experience of a woman whose body is changing in ways that are not as easily seen, but are no less real.
What did women in ancient times do when they reached this phase of life? Did they struggle with the changes in their bodies? How did they navigate their relationships and the physical expectations that come with marriage, when their hormones were all over the place? Did they even recognize this about themselves and their bodies, or are these questions we are only now beginning to ask because our lives look so different? How do we talk about this in a way that is honest and rooted in tradition when the Torah is silent?
I do not have answers, and even if I did, I imagine my answers would be shaped by my own lived experience, just as someone else’s would be shaped by theirs. But I know that this, too, is part of Torah, the searching, the noticing, and the quiet assertion that our lived experience belongs in the conversation.
