Bad Blood: The Period Talk in Rabbinic Judaism and Zoroastrianism

We talk with Dr. Shai Secunda about the Babylonian rabbis’ science of blood, breaking taboos through sex education, and menstruation as a cure for rabies. Today, taboos about menstruation keep thousands of girls from attending school. For Jewish sages in late antique Persia, such beliefs led to laws that required women to stay away from their husbands during their periods and to wash at prescribed times. (Whether women followed these laws is another question!) Blood could pollute, yet it coul...