Contact with a Sefer Torah

A Sefer Torah is sacred, its sanctity reflected in a series of halachot enjoining us to show it honor and to take care not to debase it. For example, the Talmud teaches that we honor the Sefer Torah by standing when it is lifted up:

We also accompany a Sefer Torah if it crosses our path, including on its way in or out of the aron kodesh.¹ Ideally, we establish a fixed place for a Sefer Torah,² and do not freely move it from place to place without reason. Rather, out of respect for the Torah, we come to it.³ Indeed, the Yerushalmi, after expressing surprise that the Torah is passed from person to person in Beit Ha-mikdash on Yom Kippur, tells us that this violates a general rule:

In addition to actively honoring the Sefer Torah, we further respect its sanctity by protecting it. For example, we keep a Sefer Torah out of bathrooms and away from excrement. The Talmud teaches us that even a king, who must keep a Torah with him at all times, does not bring it with him to those places.⁴

Furthermore, we should not touch the parchment of a Sefer Torah directly,⁵ and should certainly not handle a Sefer Torah when our hands are soiled.

We also ensure that no erva (nakedness) should be exposed in the presence of a Sefer Torah, even when it is not being read:⁶

We must show tremendous care to respect the Sefer Torah, whose words are of Divine origin. Rambam goes so far as to conclude the laws of proper conduct in the presence of a Sefer Torah by citing a mishna from Pirkei Avot about honoring Torah. “Torah” in this mishna refers to the idea of Torah as a whole, and we honor the Sefer Torah because it is a physical representation of the concept of Torah.

The halacha against handling the Sefer Torah when dirty does not extend to ritual impurity (tum’a), because words of Torah are not susceptible to ritual impurity, which, unlike dirt, is often physically imperceptible:⁷

Along these lines, the Tosefta explicitly permits people who are ritually impure, including niddot (women with menstrual impurity), zavim (men with unusual genital emissions), zavot (women with irregular uterine bleeding), and yoldot (women postpartum) to read Torah:

Rambam understands the permission to learn and read Torah as applying to handling the Sefer Torah itself:

Shulchan Aruch⁸ follows suit, quoting Rambam.

Note that Rema offers no caveat or qualification here. A person’s reading or holding a Torah while ritually impure is fully permissible, and in no way detracts from its honor.

The Mishna and Tosefta do not restrict women from learning Torah or from handling a Sefer Torah, when in nidda or otherwise. Nevertheless, stringency about women coming into contact with a Sefer Torah while menstruating did gain currency. In the geonic era, Rav Yehudai was asked whether a nidda was permitted even to pray or enter a synagogue:

Although Rav Yehudai gives an unequivocal yes, Baraita De-masechet Nidda (not really a baraita; its provenance and exact date are unclear) presents the view that a woman may not enter a synagogue while in nidda:

This text suggests a Biblically-based prohibition on the nidda entering synagogue, rooted in a verse about post-partum women entering beit ha-mikdash. Yet there is no sign of such a prohibition in any authoritative Tannaitic or Talmudic source. However, it seems from authorities in medieval Ashkenaz, where Baraita De-nidda became popular, that a custom along the lines of this ‘baraita’ did take hold among women on a grassroots level:

Ra’avyah considers women not entering the synagogue during nidda to be praiseworthy, comparable to men choosing to be stringent about immersing after a seminal emission prior to prayer. Or Zaru’a, Ra’avyah’s student, adds that another aspect of this stringent practice was to refrain from touching Torah scrolls:

Though Ra’avyah and Or Zaru’a look upon this stringency favorably, both make it clear that halacha does not technically obligate a nidda to refrain from entering a synagogue or touching a Torah scroll.

This stringency, and the instinct behind it, can seem very distant from the standpoint of today. While it took root among some women in Ashkenaz, it was not practiced universally:

Relaxing the Custom

Even where the practice was observed, halachic authorities such as Terumat Ha-deshen made exceptions for special circumstances:

Terumat Ha-deshen recognizes that inability to join the congregation in prayer on Yamim Nora’im would create “an anguish of the spirit” for women, and explains that in this case, gratifying women outweighs common practice. Since avoiding synagogue while in nidda is not obligatory, other factors, such as a woman’s spiritual need to be a part of large gatherings for prayer, take precedence.

In making this argument, he alludes to a Talmudic precedent:⁹

Women were permitted to lean on the sacrifices voluntarily, even though that could be considered to be in violation of the rabbinic prohibition of giving the appearance of performing labor with sanctified animals (avoda she-bekodshim), performing labor with a sacrificial animal. In some cases, women’s spiritual needs can outweigh halachic concerns around handling sacrifices. So too here, if there are competing claims between a stringent custom about menstrual bleeding and a woman’s desire for contact with the sacred, the stringency loses.

Indeed, within a hundred years after Terumat Ha-deshen, Ha-agur reports that Ashkenazi menstruants in his region did not practice this custom, with the exception of shying away from looking into the Torah when it is raised during hagbaha, since then the very writing of the Torah is exposed:

Impurity or Instinct?

It can be difficult to grasp what motivated this stringency. Rema mentions the practice and then cites Terumat Ha-deshen, along the way providing a clue to understanding it:

Though Rema mentions refraining from prayer as part of the custom, later authorities clearly reject the idea that a woman would not pray in the days of her menstrual flow, given that women have an obligation to pray.¹¹ Rav Ya’akov Emden suggests that he must have in mind specifically when a woman has blood flowing out of her body in a way that makes her dirty:

This suggestion makes sense, because Rema draws a distinction between entering synagogue when a woman is bleeding and when she is counting her white days.¹² Halachically a woman remains ritually impure, whether or not her bleeding has ceased, until she immerses in a mikveh at the end of her white days. The distinction Rema makes, then, suggests that this custom was driven not by the technical halachic status of menstrual impurity (nidda), but by the messy physical reality of menstruation.

Perhaps women’s inclination to be stringent about nidda and synagogue during the time of active bleeding on the whole had more to do with religious instinct than impurity, and perhaps this instinct had a connection to hygienic concerns.¹³

In Practice

The thrust of modern halachic authorities is to be lenient. Magen Gibborim summarizes this well:¹⁴

Mishna Berura agrees, though he does mention hagbaha as an exception:

This aspect of the custom is surprising, however, given that Shulchan Aruch, drawing on Masechet Soferim,¹⁵ rules that there is a mitzva for women to see the Torah during hagbaha, and Rema there mentions no exception:

It seems that a woman cannot follow the stringent custom of not looking into the Sefer Torah without being lenient about hagbaha.

Carrying the Sefer Torah