The Dark Side of the Moon

So many people are confused by Jewish holidays because they change every year. It’s not like Thanksgiving, which was conveniently moved to November by FDR for economic reasons, much to the chagrin of turkeys everywhere. You always know that come the third week of November, you better get your cranberries in that shopping cart. Instead, Jewish holidays revolve around the lunar calendar, which doesn’t always have the same set number of months in a year. Even when Jewish holidays begin is confusing. Why sundown instead of the next day? That too is because of the moon. According to something I should know but don't, God created night then day, so Jews believe that a full day actually begins at night. We get the party started right, instead of calling it the eve.

Do you know what else follows a lunar month? That’s right, ladies, your periods. Most women’s cycles are 28 days, which is pretty much the length of a lunar month. Just like some months have a blue moon, an extra full moon, sometimes we lady folk get the curse twice a month, and aren’t we lucky? If you think about it, fertility has been linked to the phases of the moon forever, which means that maybe women aren’t from Venus after all, John Gray.

My body is more in tune with the moon than your average Jewish female. My cycle likes to start on Jewish Holidays, even Shabbat. If the opportunity to be embarrassed arises, my uterus is all over it. I am a member of the board of my temple, and one of the duties of that position is to represent the board during Shabbat. During weekly services, one of us has to sit on the bimah, the little stage in the front of the sanctuary, behind the rabbi and help him do his rabbi stuff, like opening the ark doors that house the Torah and reminding everyone to turn off their cell phones and their crying babies. Sitting up there is supposed to be an opportunity to show our support and availability to the congregation, which is defeated by the being above the masses aspect of sitting in a throne-like chair on the elevated platform. At our temple, most of those chairs are upholstered in lovely cream fabric and are about as comfortable as resting on the edge of a trampoline, complete with that feeling of springs up your ass.

The first time I had bimah duty, as we on the board like to call it, I started my period at sunset, or more accurately, at moon rise. I don’t want to get all graphic on you, but I am not a teenager. I am a grown woman who has birthed two children. I am what my gynecologist likes to call a super soaker. I armed myself with protection, the ultra thin womanly version of body armor, only in my crotchal regions. I took my place behind the rabbi, acutely aware that my chair was free of any stains and glaringly beige.

I grew nervous, both because my nether regions might resemble a crime scene and because I was behind the rabbi, a holy man several years my junior. Was the room warm, or was it me? Was anybody else sweating? I even screwed up my few jobs. I opened the ark when I was supposed to gather the papers with the names of the ill for whom we would say a prayer. I stood awkwardly behind him while he read from the Torah when I should have remained near my throne. I felt my face flush, and as I sat down again, I felt moisture where no menstruating woman wants to, convinced that all my protection had failed me, that there was a breach at the reservoir.

What could I do? It wasn’t like I could stand up again, in front of God and everyone, and check for blood on the bimah chair. No wonder the orthodox men don’t want to sit on a chair tainted by a woman who was menstruating. Maybe they had a point after all. It turned out that I did not ruin the throne of the chosen people. When the services were over, I stood as discreetly as possible and gave that seat cover a good once over. It looked as good as it did before I sat down. Being nervous, I got all sweaty, yes, down there, which explained my misperception.

Now I am teaching Sunday school, which means I am at the temple all the time, especially for all those holidays. I made it through Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur with no flying colors. The next holiday up was Simchat Torah. I know we Jews have a lot of holidays that don’t make sense, and this is definitely one of them. Simchat Torah celebrates the Torah, our religious text, which is handwritten by scribes on a scroll of animal skin, er, parchment. We commemorate the day by unrolling the Torah the rest of the way, reading the last few lines of it, going back to the beginning and reading the first few lines, and then rerolling it to begin a new year. If that doesn’t sound like a party, I don’t know what does.

To make it more festive, our temple celebrates Simchat Torah at religious school, allowing all the children of the congregation to hold the scroll as it is unraveled around the room and rerolled. These children’s hands, normally used for such things as butt scratching and nose picking, were now holding the Holiest of Holies between their dirty fingers, with us grownups interspersed between them so that the scroll wouldn’t hit the ground and become tainted. While I carefully held the parchment between my pinched thumbs and forefingers, I felt that familiar dampness. Yes indeed, my womb decided to pick that very moment to shed its unfertilized lining. I was an impure woman with my hands actually on the Torah scroll. I couldn’t exactly share my predicament with my eight year old students, or anyone else for that matter, but the irony wasn’t lost on me.

I don’t blame being unprepared. I blame the moon. Perhaps in the future I should limit my contact with holy doctrines and white seat covers when celebrating the Jewish holidays. Or better yet, I could dress up as a giant tampon for Purim, a holiday I like to refer to as the Jewish Halloween. That way I have all my bases covered, thank you Jesus.