Tazria

VaYiqra 12-13

Danger, Instability, and the Affirmation of Life:

What Childbirth Tum'ah Can Teach us About Our Bodies in the Divine Order

Aryeh Bernstein, 5763

In Parashat Tazria, Sefer VaYiqra transitions from matters of purity and impurity regarding animals (as we read last week) to those regarding human beings. The first case is the mother who has given birth (12:1-7).

A number of questions stand to be addressed in this short passage. I will focus on the following:

1) Why does childbirth render the mother "impure" (teme'ah)?

2) What is the difference between the first stage (the 7 or 14 days) and the second stage (the 33 or 66 days)?

3) When the process is complete, why does the mother have to bring a hatat offering? A connected question: Why did I translate hatat as "purification offering" when most translations render it "sin offering"? What has such an offering got to do with a birthing mother?

4) Why are the periods of time for boys and for girls different?

In my treatment of these questions, I once again rely heavily on Prof. Jacob Milgrom's commentary on VaYiqra in The Anchor Bible series, as well as on some provocative conversations with my teacher, Rav Elisha Ancselovits.

1) First of all, we must break a resilient misconception: "Tum'ah" does not mean "uncleanness", as it is sometimes translated. Bodily waste, such as feces, urine, and vomit are not "teme'im", although they are certainly "unclean". (For example, one is prohibited from praying in the presence of these substances, precisely because they are unclean and smell bad.) Tum'ah, rather, reflects a diminishing of life or narrowing of the gap between life and death. Its opposite, taharah, bespeaks an affirmation of life and the sustenance of appropriate, clear boundaries between life and death. That is why the deepest level of tum'ah is "tum'at met", the impurity conducted by a corpse. Blood represents life (as does semen, but this is not our topic). "For the life of the flesh is in the blood" ("כִּי נֶפֶשׁ הַבָּשָׂר בַּדָּם הִוא"), says VaYiqra 17:11. (For more and wider examples, see Bereishit 9:6, VaYiqra 17:10-14, and Devarim 12:23.) This is a centrally important point toward understanding much of the Torah's treatment of "priestly matter", as we discussed a couple of weeks ago in Parashat VaYiqra. In the aftermath of giving birth, a new mother bleeds vaginally in a relatively uncontrolled fashion. This discharge of blood indicates risk, danger, instability-a narrowing of the essential gap between life and death. Tum'ah is the term for this dynamic. The Tanakh regards serious levels of tum'ah, such as those that last for over a week, as contaminating the sanctuary and thereby alienating God from the sanctuary, that is, from the midst of the people. This alienation reflects the experience that the community has-or should have-that God affirms and chooses life, and that so should we. Since the individual's tum'ah affects the sanctuary, and, therefore, God's presence among the whole community, therefore, the whole community has the responsibility to nurture the vulnerable person back to health, so that sacrifices can be brought. Similarly, in other situations in which the sanctuary must be purged, the community has the responsibility to bury the dead properly and to prevent and punish transgressions and encourage repentance, so that the hatat can be brought and God's active presence restored in the community.

2) Prof. Milgrom cites sources that the period of post-birth bleeding tends to vary between about two and six weeks. The upper end of that standard range corresponds to the period of 40 days for the birth of a son (7 days of impurity and 33 days of blood purity). The blood itself tends to change during this period. Initially, it is a bright red color similar to menstrual blood and is treated as such, bestowing tum'ah upon her. As time elapses, the blood discharges in paler, browner shades, perhaps indicating the body's process of return to health and stability. The Torah refers to the latter bloc of time as "taharah", suggesting that she returns to normal domestic life, remaining restricted only from sacred items, such as sacrificial or priestly food (terumah). There is some dispute over whether she and her husband may resume sexual relations during the days of "blood purity". The way I have outlined the distinction here suggests that they may. Indeed, all the Torah specifies is that during these days, "she shall not touch any consecrated thing, nor enter the sanctuary until her period of purity is complete"-"בְּכָל קֹדֶשׁ לֹא תִגָּע וְאֶל הַמִּקְדָּשׁ לֹא תָבֹא עַד מְלֹאת יְמֵי טָהֳרָהּ".

3) "Hatat" is generally translated as "sin offering", derivative of the word "het", meaning "sin". Indeed, the most common instances in which one is required to bring a hatat are when one has sinned accidentally. (See, for example, VaYiqra, chapter four.) However, other individuals required to bring a hatat include our case of a birthing mother, a man with an unusual genital discharge (VaYiqra 15:14-15; note the similarities between this case and our case), and a person completing a Nazirite vow (Bemidbar 6:13-15). It is rather farfetched to describe these individuals as sinners, although attempts have been made, from the Talmud down to modern times. Instead, "hatat" should be understood as derivative of the pi'el grammatical form "לְחַטֵא", which means "to cleanse", or "to purge". We read an example of this two weeks ago in the description of the inauguration of the newly established altar (8:15):

This sense of cleansing or purifying is how both Onqelos and Rashi, for example, understand the appearance of this word in Bemidbar 19:19. Along those lines, the function of the hatat offering is to decontaminate the sanctuary-not the person-of defilement. Milgrom describes the blood of the hatat offering as "ritual detergent". The kohen brings the hatat on behalf of the woman, as her agent, to purge the sanctuary. Two more examples buttress our case of a person who is responsible for decontaminating the sanctuary. One who does not purify himself or herself ("וְלֹא יִתְחַטָּא") after coming in contact with a corpse "has contaminated Hashem's sanctuary"-"אֶת מִקְדַּשׁ יְהֹוָה טִמֵּא" (Bemidbar 19:20). Men with irregular, uncontrolled genital discharges must be purified "lest they die through their impurity by contaminating my Tabernacle which is among them"-"וְלֹא יָמֻתוּ בְּטֻמְאָתָם בְּטַמְּאָם אֶת מִשְׁכָּנִי אֲשֶׁר בְּתוֹכָם" (VaYiqra 15:31).

The mother has not sinned. She has endured a period of risky and uncontrolled body rhythms. Even during the days of "blood purity" (after the first week or two), when she is pure for everything except sancta, such that she may return to her everyday life and resume relations with her spouse, her body still reflects a disruption in the controlled orderliness of life, in that she still bleeds in unpredictable ways. This means that the human ability to perceive God's presence and dominion is-or should be-in a state of anxiety. That is what the Torah means when it says that the sanctuary-the symbol of God's presence in the community-is contaminated because of irregular genital discharge, contact with death, or severe sin. The common ground between sin and this kind of encounter with death is that both reflect a similar large phenomenon-a displacement of the human perception of God's central control. What it means to bring a hatat sacrifice is to affirm the restoration of divine, controlled order after the disruption has gotten under control through restoration of physical or spiritual health. When a repentant sinner or a recovered mother brings a hatat, she purifies not herself, but the altar-symbolically affirming the return to the healthy, controlled, "normal" state of affairs in the world, a state of life, health, and mitzvot. This is not merely anthropology; it is ideology, the Torah's expression of the values with which we should understand and respond to our world: life must always be affirmed and clearly distinguished from death and the events of our bodies are of central, religious significance, demanding our careful response.

4) The different length of time after giving birth to boys than girls is a real mystery. It is tempting to say, simply, that since ancient societies valued males more than females, the birth of females generated more impurity than males. This may be the beginning of some understanding, but it strikes me as overly simplistic and not on topic in that cavalier a formulation. I have some vague thoughts, but not formulated sufficiently to put in writing. Meanwhile, I encourage you to try to think of an explanation that accounts for the details.