The Evolution of the Niddah Practice from Ritual Hygiene to Biopower: A Study in Digital Ethnography

The concept of purity exists in many cultures all over the world. This article investigates the idea of Jewish female purity – niddah. The word “purity” itself suggests its connotation to physical and ritual hygiene. This paper shows that even though the concept of “ritual purity” in Judaism might have started as an ancient form of hygiene, nowadays it functions as sexual restriction and biopower over Jewish women. Rabbinical sexual prohibitions have drastically transformed the initial practice in an effort to control female gendered behavior. Due to the sensitivity of the subject matter, this essay is written using the methodology of digital ethnography. The digital research was conducted in several Facebook groups of mainly English-speaking Orthodox women. The online research provides an insight into Jewish practices related to niddah, which are not traditionally spoken of freely and demonstrates how the contemporary concept of niddah affects women’s lives severely. &nbsp