Why are women considered unclean in the Bible when on a period?
“Unclean” is not really a good translation for the word in question (“tamei” in hebrew) – the proper word (which still sounds lousy) is “impure.” The state of impurity was considered a natural state – it would have to be, since there are so many ways it could happen in an ordinary everyday life. Men could become tamei through nocturnal emissions or any other “spilling of seed,” if they contracted certain diseases, or coming in contact with a dead body or a cemetery, women through having their menstrual period or after giving birth – there’s a fairly extensive list of what would make a person tamei. In general, impurity didn’t have anything to do with your relationships with others, but with the Temple. You couldn’t enter the Temple or participate in the service if you were in a state of impurity. So you would have to wait the prescribed period of time, then go to the mikvah (the ritual baths), in order to be readmitted. At any given time during the Temple period, there were probably al
