Words are inadequate to explain the importance Judaism attaches to these laws, especially to a generation whose members, for the most part, are not even aware of their existence. The punishment incurred by failing to observe these laws is the most convincing proof of their importance. This punishment is karet—complete cutting off from the community of Israel, the same punishment that befalls those who do not fast on Yom Kippur.
In their importance, the laws of family purity surpass many, many other precepts. “Building a mikveh takes precedence over building a synagogue, purchasing a Torah scroll, and fulfilling all other commandments” (Chafetz Chaim). It is to family purity, even more than to the other commandments, including Torah study, that we owe the preservation of the people of Israel. Let the reader not be content with this brief and superficial account of the law of family purity when seeking to put it into practice. As in other areas of Halakhah—and in life generally—the details determine the success of the entire undertaking. Only carrying out the details gives substance and meaning to the principles underlying the law.
To learn the prescribed rules, the reader should consult the Shulchan Aruch or other works that set out and explain the law in detail in an accessible and clear manner.
Seasoning for Food
What I have attempted to set out in this work belongs to the category of “ta'amei hamitzvot”—an explanation of the commandments. We cannot fathom the intent of the Creator who gave us the commandments, because it is immeasurably beyond our understanding; moreover, in trying to fathom that intent, we display unacceptable presumption. Yet what we are actually trying to understand is not why the Creator commanded us to observe these laws (commandments), but what He wanted us to understand from them—in other words, what benefits these laws bring to the various areas of life.
We are trying to understand the meaning of a commandment, but we are under no circumstances permitted to replace inquiries of this kind with investigation and reflection on the Creator's unfathomable intent. It goes without saying that the laws do not depend on the meaning we discover in them. For a law to be a law, it must be independent of our logic. “Ta'amei hamitzvot” literally means “the taste of the commandments,” that is, their qualities as we have “tasted” them: the translation “the meaning of the commandments” is an aid to understanding and is imprecise.
This should be borne in mind when we begin to seek the “meaning” of the commandment of family purity: by exploring the meaning of religious precepts, we are trying to add to our spiritual food a seasoning intended to “please” our palate.
Yet under no circumstances are we permitted to substitute this seasoning for our basic spiritual food, that is, the Jewish commandments as they are carried out in practice. Throughout our history, unsuccessful attempts have been made to “supplement” and replace the law with various logical constructions, while the true spiritual meaning of the commandments was completely ignored. The law must remain entirely independent of the values, meanings, and intentions that we believe we have discovered in it.