You may have heard me share this. How the first time the menstrual cycle is mentioned in the Torah (in this week’s parsha), it’s referred to as Orach KaNashim - the Way of Women.

A soft acknowledgement that the rhythm of a woman’s body is itself a sacred path.

One of my students - having heard this from me several times - sent me something that cemented an idea I've been gestating for a while.

Also based on this week's parsha:

Hinei ba'ohel - Sarah was in her tent.

Rashi acknowledges this phrase as praise for her tznius. For many of us this was taught as though a woman’s highest virtue was to stay hidden - unseen, unheard, and confined to the home.
 

But that’s not what’s happening here.

Because we'll see in a few weeks (in Parshas Vayeitzei),

Leah was praised for the opposite.
 

Sarah, inward - ba’ohel.
Leah, outward - vateitzei Leah, she goes out.
Those two directions mirror the cycle itself: menstruation and ovulation, inward and outgoing, introversion and extroversion.

I knew that Leah definitely ovulated around that time because she conceived that night.

It would have been perfect if Sarah was on her period when she was in her tent, but it seemed from the text that Sarah menstruated only after the angels announced she would conceive - so the timing wasn't lining up perfectly.

Until my student sent me the Rashi of a few verses earlier - where it says that Avraham didn’t bring out the bread to serve his guests because Sarah had gotten her period that day. (Don't come at me, but back in the day, bread baked by a menstruant woman wasn't accepted for consumption.)

But that was the piece I had missed!

(I love how this becomes shared Torah and collective learning.)

Sarah was already menstruating when the angels came.
She was in her tent not because she was hiding, but because she was in her menstrual phase - naturally inward, private, reflective.

We know Sarah didn’t live her life tucked away.
She and Avraham traveled, taught, inspired, brought people close to Hashem.
But at this moment, she was honoring what her body was asking for - quiet, solitude, space.

Leah, on the other hand, was at her peak of ovulation when she went out in the fields to Yaakov. Va'teitzei Leah was just as much praise as Hinei ba'ohel.

Because being a woman is not about being one way all the time.

It's about being in our rhythm. 

That’s the deeper truth of tznius: not hiddenness, but inwardness.
Not restriction, but alignment - and how we express and embody our deepest essence.

This week has been pulsing with aliveness with over a thousand Jewish women rediscovering this same wisdom in The Pulse of Womanhood.

Women remembering that the Orach KaNashim - the Way of Women - is still coursing through us. 

When to go inward. When to emerge. When to rest. When to create.

Sarah in her tent, Leah going out - two expressions of one truth.
 

The pulse that began with our foremothers is still moving - through our bodies, our prayers, our remembering.

As always, the Parsha Point opens the door to a new perspective. There's so much more. I hope it gave you something illuminating to think about.

Have a wonderful Shabbos!

Yes, you can still register to The Pulse of Womanhood until November 12. (Then it goes behind a paywall.)

The Way of Women  is an awesome class exploring how the women in the Torah embodied this cyclical rhythm.