Suzanne Singer

Theologian Elizabeth Dodson Gray notes: "Women's bodies may be the hardest place for women to find sacredness" ( Sacred Dimensions of Women's Experience, 1988, p. 197). Our society sends negative messages to women from earliest childhood about the expected perfection of their physiques and the disappointments of any flaws in the female form. Parashat M'tzora, then, with its focus on menstrual impurity (15:19-24), seems to impart the same kind of unfavorable sense. Rejecting our own received biases and patriarchal assumptions about menstruation, however, can help us form a contemporary view of these so-called taboos.

Focal Point Then, as the rear guard [ m'aseif] of all the divisions, the standard of the division of Dan would set out, troop by troop. (Numbers 10:25) The riffraff [ hasafsuf] in their midst felt a gluttonous craving. . . . (Numbers 11:4) Then the Eternal One said to

We regularly distinguish common stories from those we consider mythic . The philosopher Paul Ricoeur suggested that this distinction is useful for recognizing that myth manages to express profound ideas about what we perceive to be fundamental aspects of reality. At the same time, we recognize deep down that we