The sun sets on Friday night and we light the Shabbat candles. Basking in the warmth of the kitchen, my Bubby and I follow our ancient traditions and mindfully separate the workweek from this Jewish day of rest. As we sit down for dinner, I bring up something we’ve never talked about before: menstruation.

Certain sects of Judaism — like my own, Modern Orthodox fold — consider discussions of periods too private to talk about. I’m shocked by my grandmother’s openness when I ask how she dealt with her period while surviving the Holocaust as a teenager. But then I question myself: Why is this the first time I feel comfortable enough to ask about something that has happened to me approximately every month since the sixth grade?

I’ve been questioning everything about my Jewish upbringing and the heteropatriarchy embedded within its foundations. As a curator, I create experiences for others to challenge their own expectations. But it wasn’t until I recently curated an exhibition about menstruation at my gallery, Rojas + Rubensteen Projects, that it became very clear, very quickly, that I was not the only one dumbstruck by the taboos around menstruation in our private and public spheres.

There is a real void in knowledge about the rituals related specifically to niddah — the Hebrew word that refers to Jewish menstrual law and customs. The root of the word comes from nadad, which, technically, means "to depart, flee, wander," but people have come to understand it to mean "separate."

The Torah states that a woman becomes ritually impure (teme’ah) when she has her period, and it's interpreted from the Torah verses that a woman can’t have sex with her husband during this time. When her period ends, she regains her spiritually pure status (taharah) by immersing in a ritual bath (mikvah).

It's important to note that according to rabbinical sources, the niddah experience regulates heterosexual sexual relations between man and woman, rather than same-sex sexual relations. In the Orthodox community, few women — and even fewer men — learn about niddah until marriage. This creates a knowledge gap between what happens to your body when you hit puberty and when you get married (if marriage is what you choose). My married, observant friends seem to be in two camps: They either love the tradition or hate the language of “impurity.” TBH, I’m still unsure what I’ll do when I get married and what purity will mean to me.

Contemporary scholars are still grappling with niddah. Rebecca Blady, a rabbinical student at Yeshivat Maharat who observes niddah in her own marriage and teaches women and couples the practice, explains: “Purity and impurity are two sides of the same coin of being HOLY and shouldn't be seen as a perfect negative-positive dichotomy.” This is how ancient texts get interpreted by every generation and integrated into feminist practice.

Today, more Jewish-identifying teens are becoming aware of the tradition, and choose their own interpretations. Sixteen-year-old Aliza Abusch-Magder, a Conservative/Reform Jew, tells Teen Vogue: “Though Judaism traditionally sees periods as negative, I embrace both my body and my heritage, with no shame around either. My period is a reminder that my body is a sanctuary in which God resides — I am perpetually amazed that my body has so many complex systems that function nearly flawlessly.”

Other girls, however, like a 16-year-old Modern Orthodox teen, who prefers anonymity, explained to me that menstruation feels like just another biological process. “Besides for feeling awkward about it, [shrug emoji], it happens to all of us . . . Like, sometimes I sneeze, sometimes I get sick, sometimes I have a really good night's sleep, sometimes I'm on my period.”