“If I had known, I would have had more children.”
“Why didn’t you know?”
“Because I never asked.”
“Why not?”
“Because there was never anyone to have a conversation about it with.”
This conversation took place between an Orthodox woman and a yoetzet halacha, a halakhic advisor trained in the laws of family purity. Sadly, the woman was already beyond childbearing years when Nishmat, the Jeanie Schottenstein Center for Advanced Torah Study for Women, launched its yoetzet halacha initiative in 2000, with the graduation and certification of its first class of yoatzot.
In conversation with a yoetzet about a routine niddah question, she realized that had she been informed of this matter earlier, she might have been able have more pregnancies. There were many months when she had been more stringent than halakhically required in her observance of the laws of niddah (ritual purity) and had waited too long before going to the mikvah. Consequently, she often passed her ovulation period and missed opportunities for becoming pregnant. Most surprising was that she realized that she had never had a halakhic conversation about niddah with anyone.
Hearing this story as a Modern Orthodox woman of childbearing age, I found this woman’s dilemma shocking and disturbing. Fortunately, growing up in an era when women’s yeshivot and learning programs have been readily available to me, I have had many opportunities to study Torah sources, particularly on issues that have a practical impact on my halakhic life.
A Community Resource
For me, it is a given that there should be a community resource to address my need for the highest levels of halakhic knowledge, offered in a comfortable, userfriendly environment. In short, a yoetzet halacha is not only a vital component of my halakhic knowledge and observance, but it is also something I have come to expect as a feature of contemporary Orthodox life.
Speaking to a woman only a few years older than I am, I realized that her experiences were very different. She had had occasion to speak to rabbis about her fertility challenges and had found those conversations frustrating, leaving her in tears and angry. For her, being able to speak with a woman about the extremely sensitive issues of niddah and fertility was absolutely life-changing. She was able to open up, express herself clearly and with greater nuance and detail, to somebody who was able to relate personally to what she was feeling and experiencing. The yoetzet, based on both personal experience and her training in relevant medical factors, was able to ask follow-up questions that a rabbi might not explore. The answers that the rav and the yoetzet would give the woman might or might not be the same, but the experience of speaking with the yoetzet would never leave her in tears and feeling misunderstood.
Giving women the opportunity to speak with experts who empathize with the travails of family planning, know the feelings of excitement and disappointment, and have experienced the physiological and hormonal cycles accompanying the monthly cycle can completely change their relationship with the halakhot. The ability to have a conversation with a woman who was understanding, compassionate, and knowledgeable has completely changed the experience of observing niddah for many women. It has made them feel like an important part of the process. Going to a yoetzet turned a difficult experience into a wonderful one for the woman mentioned at the beginning of this article, who was eager to tell her sisters and her friends about her experience and convince them also to use the resources of the yoetzet halacha.
Importance of the Program
This is the importance of the program to a community: empowering women to seek halakhic guidance along with enabling couples to expand their families through appropriate application of the halakhic requirements. Thus, having a yoetzet halacha available to a community not only helps individuals, but also acts to strengthen the community as a whole. Each woman can decide for herself whom she feels more comfortable speaking to—a rabbi or a yoetzet. That is a personal decision, but the community must support and demand that the resources be there for those who need them. For many women, turning to another woman to answer questions related to taharat hamishpaha entails a different level of understanding, empathy, and connection.
A community that recognizes the importance of enabling a large segment of its population to have its religious needs and concerns understood and addressed is a community strengthened in its commitment to Torah and halakha. After all, it wasn’t the woman’s failure to identify reliable halakhic guidance that caused her to be overly machmir (stringent) and to miss her ovulation dates, but it was the community’s responsibility to provide her with a venue where she felt comfortable enough to speak to someone who was fully educated in matters of niddah and who could understand what she was going through and talk with her about it.
Orthodox Judaism has always recognized that men and women are not the same. Educated women answering women’s intimate questions will serve to strengthen our Jewish community and its joy and commitment to observing halakha.