More about menstruation and Judaism,
Islam, Hinduism, Zoroastrianism and Christianity -
menstrual huts - Mikvah (ritual bath for Orthodox Jews) - menstrual myths
(Read a later comment on slapping at the bottom of the page.)
 
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The Museum of Menstruation and Women's Health
The Tradition of Slapping Our Daughters
By Caren Appel-Slingbaum
(Leer la versión en español traducido por María García)
The first time I got my period, my mother slapped me across the face.
Actually, it was more of a firm tap, but it was enough of a departure
from our usually loving exchange for me to ask her what was going on. She
told me that it was an old Jewish custom* (a
minhag in Hebrew), one that her mother had carried out with much more fervor.
However, beyond that she knew nothing substantive.
Perhaps its original purpose was to "slap
sense" into a newly fertile girl,
warning her not to disgrace the family by becoming pregnant out of wedlock.
Possibly it was to "awaken" her out of her childhood slumber and into her role as
a Jewish woman. I asked my mother for the folkloric reasoning behind
such a custom, but was only given a blank expression and shrugged shoulders
for a response.
Although I was spared the full force of the ritual, I still regarded
the custom as violent, even barbaric. Was slapping a young woman after her
first menarche experience a religiously sanctioned practice or part of some
old, backwoods schtetl (Jewish village) tradition, one passed down along
with the silver candlesticks and the prayer shawls?
While many rabbis have assured me that this slapping custom is not in
accordance with Jewish law, or halakhah, it is nevertheless a tradition
that has been well guarded and nurtured in one form or another for generations.
Perhaps the slapping custom (as I have come to call it) may not haven been
taught in Hebrew schools or synagogue sermons, but it has nevertheless affected
many Jewish women's lives. Is slapping our women as much of a rite of passage
into adulthood as a boy's Bar Mitzvah? Does slapping a young woman serve
a purpose now that girls are allowed to be Bat Mitzvah'ed as well? I ask
because, in spite of our modernity, we continue to slap one another.
I suppose I should be grateful. At least my religious culture doesn't
practice infibulation or clicteredectomies.**
Even so, a slap - as in any brutal act - brings about shame and humiliation.
Why should we equate those emotions with our bodies and our lifeblood?
Our blood. From menarche to maternity, from maternity to menopause,
the blood that flows from our wombs on down between our legs represents
the psycho-physiological marker of women's lives. Our pagan sisters eloquently
depict these symbols in the female archetypes: Maiden, Mother, and Crone.
The new religions - and the more "radical" branches of traditional
ones - understand that blood is more than a brown stain on our underwear.
It is our bodies' way of signaling to our hearts and minds to stop for a
moment, to rest and honor the passage of time in which we currently reside.
We must regard our blood - its inception and its cessation - as sacred because
it represents not only life's entrance and exit into this mortal sphere,
but our blood embodies the metaphysical stage of womanhood in which we are
inhabiting and, hopefully, celebrating at present.
My first menarche was even more significant to me than my Bat Mitzvah
because my body was the sole judge of my entrance into womanhood - not the
two men over sixty (the rabbi and cantor) who proclaimed after my Torah
reading I was now a woman in the eyes of God. I remember standing in front
of the congregation feeling completely embarrassed and awkward because,
in my mind's eye, I was still very much a child. However, by the time I
got my period six months later, I was more confident with my pending adolescence
and my changing body. I, unlike many of my peers, actually loved my expanding
hips and developing curves. This was what being a woman was all about to
me. And while I was not yet a "woman," I certainly no longer felt
as if I was a little girl. My body was perfectly aligned with my psyche
in proclaiming this next stage of my whole development - and my body signaled
me boldly through blood.
Some Jewish women were not slapped. Their mothers told them that they
would not have to endure such a ridiculous ritual. Although they were spared
the "skin exchange," many were still taught to regard their bodies,
their fertility, and their blood as shameful and potentially evil.
I shared my story - via a women's studies listserv - and asked for others
to bestow their experiences. Writer Marge Piercy told me that while her
mother had refused to slap her (as her grandmother had done to her mother),
she still made her burn her sanitary napkins in the alley after use. She
also kept Piercy away from fermenting wine and rising dough because she
believed that a menstruating women would turn the wine sour and keep the
bread from rising.
In Kate Simon's memoir, Bronx Primitive, her mother slapped her in order
to ward off the evil eye [which has a strong tradition in many cultures].
This, in spite of her mother's liberalism demonstrated by sending Simon
to college during an era when this was considered unorthodox.
Associate Professor Kathleen J. Wininger, of the University of Southern
Maine, was slapped by her Jewish Rumanian grandmother after she announced
the arrival of her first period.
"Years later when I was filming my mother for a documentary I
was making about mothers and daughters I asked her about this distressing
occurrence. In almost extreme close-up and what appeared to be some sort
of cerebral pain, she thought and thought. Finally, her face lit up and
I was about to receive the answer I had long been curious about. With tremendous
enthusiasm she replied: 'I DON'T KNOW!' She went on to say something close
to the effect of: Is it a custom, a superstition, is it for good luck?
Don't ask me why you get slapped! YOU JUST DO!"
I also received an email from American sociologist Maxine Craig, who
is currently living in Papua, New Guinea. She told me that amongst the Simbu
people there, it is customary for them to build menstrual huts
for their women. The hut is not meant to marginalize the "polluted,"
she explained. Rather, the menstrual hut is more of a positive woman's space
and also a place to have a break from their usual workload.***
As for me, I gave birth to my first child, a beautiful daughter named
Hunter Victoria, almost ten months ago. Now I must ask myself an even more
crucial question than the origins of the slapping custom.
Will I slap, or tap, her after her first menarche?
My answer is no, of course not. However, I will tell her my story and
that of my mother and some shared by the other women I have encountered.
And the point of my story will partially be about the way a woman's body
can be ill regarded - even by its possessor. I will also stress to her not
to fall into the assembly line of conformity- especially one that alienates
her from any aspect of herself, even if it is disguised in socio-religious
ritual. Always question the intention behind the act because by performing
a ritual - no matter how half-hearted - you give it your power, and women
hold immeasurable power through our knowledge, our words and lastly, our
blood. We should only channel that power into customs and rituals that honor
us correctly.
I am fortunate that my religion has changed with the times, thanks to
the Jewish Renewal movement mostly. Perhaps enough women got slapped and
were sick of being part of a religious culture that did not respect all
aspects of their women selves. Conceivably after Hunter's first menarche,
I will take her to our Jewish Renewal rabbi and we will celebrate her body
instead of demonizing it.
Maybe I will expand my own world view and borrow from the best of all
cultures, while keeping my own as my foundation. I think I will start by
building her a menstrual hut in the backyard. That way, when she is ready,
she will come to me and we will enter the hut together. We will honor her
next phase of life - and perhaps make a couple of símores sandwiches
and giggle by a homemade campfire late into the night.
And there will no longer be any form of violence in our heritage.
Then one day, after her daughters are grown and raising their own girls,
they will continue this celebratory cycle and not even realize that what
they regard as tradition was once considered revolutionary.
Notes
* an Ashkenazic
- central and eastern Europe - custom
** the cutting and sometimes removing of
parts of the vulva, sewing shut the entrance to the vagina, and removing
the clitoris, practiced by some cultures today
*** Some cultures do treat menstruating
women as polluted and to be segregated in menstrual huts. Read Prof. Sally
Price's comments about her years-long
experience in Suriname, South America.
© 2000 Caren Appel-Slingbaum
Caren Appel-Slingbaum is currently working as Administrator for the
National Endowment for the Humanities's Summer Institute on Disability Studies
at San Francisco State University, U.S.A. She is also working towards her
Ph.D. in American women's history. She resides in the San Francisco Bay
area with her husband and baby daughter.
An e-mailer wrote in November 2005:
[I]t's not only Ashkenazic Jews [Jews from central and eastern Europe]
who have/had the custom of slapping girls in the face at menarche. It's
an old Slavic custom, although in Slavic tradition it was the father
and not the mother who did the slapping. I suspect the Ashkenazic custom
derives from that, although among Jews it would have to be a woman doing
the slapping because of the laws of niddah.
My Slavic mother, who converted to Judaism, never slapped me, nor was
she slapped by her father, but she was the one who originally told me about
this custom. As it was explained to me, the purpose of the slapping (at
least among Slavs) was to bring a rush of blood to the girl's face and
thus to keep her from bleeding excessively at the lower end of her torso.
I've observed during extensive travels through Eastern Europe,
mostly in small towns and rural areas, that there are a lot of Slavic folk
customs are quite similar to those of Ashkenazic Jews, so this explanation
makes at least as much sense as any other, if not more, considering that
as far as I know there isn't a belief about menstrual "uncleanliness"
among Slavs (Christian or Pagan) which compares to that in traditional
Jewish belief and practice.
E-mail, February 2007:
Having only recently read the article, by Caren Appel-Slingbaum, about
the slapping of Jewish girls by their mothers upon menstruating for the
first time, I would just like to add that this was done to me by my mother.
My mother, who is of Polish origin, told me that she did this because she
never wanted me to lose color in my face (ie. never be pale). Presumably,
the slapping process retains a healthy color on our faces. My mother's
handprint on my face cheek disappeared rather quickly, and I am still always
pale. Thank goodness for blush make-up. And so much for this tradition
which I am happy to report ends with me as I will not do likewise to my
daughter!
Great article.
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More about menstruation and Judaism, Islam, Hinduism,
Zoroastrianism and Christianity -
menstrual huts - Mikvah (ritual bath for Orthodox Jews) - menstrual myths
(Read a later comment on slapping at the bottom of the page.)
See Midol newspaper ads, 1911-1961 - Midol
ads (magazine): 1938, 1939,
1948, 1960
See Kurb, Midol's competitor from Kotex.
Midol booklet (selections), 1959
© 2007 Harry Finley. It is illegal to reproduce or
distribute any of the work on this Web site in
any manner or medium without written permission of the
author. Please report suspected violations to hfinley@mum.org
See also Australian
douche ad (ca. 1900) - Fresca douche powder (U.S.A.)
(date ?) - Kotique douche liquid ad, 1974 (U.S.A.)
- Liasan (1) genital wash ad, 1980s (Germany)
- Liasan (2) genital wash ad, 1980s (Germany)
- Lysol douche liquid ad, 1928 (U.S.A.) - Lysol douche liquid ad, 1948 (U.S.A.) - Marvel
douche liquid ad, 1928 (U.S.A.) - Midol menstrual
pain pill ad, 1938 (U.S.A.) - Midol booklet (selections),
1959 (U.S.A.) - Mum deodorant cream ad, 1926 (U.S.A.)
- Myzone menstrual pain pills ad, 1952 (Australia)
- Pristeen genital spray ad, 1969 (U.S.A.) -
Spalt pain tablets, 1936 (Germany) - Vionell genital spray ad, 1970, with Cheryl Tiegs (Germany)
- Zonite douche liquid ad, 1928 (U.S.A.)
The Perils of Vaginal Douching (essay by Luci
Capo Rome) - the odor page
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