TORAH SPARKS
Parshat Tazria-Metzora
April 22, 2023 | 1 Iyyar 5783
Torah: Leviticus 12:1-15:33 Triennial: Leviticus 12:1-13:39
Maftir: Numbers 28:9-15 Haftarah: Isaiah 66:1-24
Before and After Birth
Bex Stern-Rosenblatt
Parashah
There s a common way of expressing, a formula, in the Tanakh how children come into the world. First, a man gets together with a woman. Usually, this is described along the lines of the man knowing, taking, or coming upon the woman. Next, the action shifts to the woman. She does two consecutive actions. She tehar and teled, gets pregnant and gives birth. The final step in the process is the naming of the child, done by the woman, the man, or both of them together.
Almost every account of children entering the world uses this formula, sometimes with a prologue or an addendum or two. A common prologue is that God gets involved, opening the womb of the woman. This is, naturally, after God had closed the womb of the woman. The importance of God s role in the creation of children appears most starkly in the creation of the first child, Cain. There, Eve says, I have created a child with God, acknowledging that her pregnancy and birth story are not hers alone. We also find the horrifying addendum of pain in childbirth given as a curse to Eve and to all of humanity. The trope that childbirth is painful is so powerful that the pain of childbirth is often used as a metaphor for ultimate suffering in the Tanakh.
Even with these additions, the formula describing how children come to be is missing some crucial parts. The formula makes it seem as if no time passes between becoming pregnant and giving birth. There is only one place in the Tanakh where the reality of being pregnant is described. Rebecca, terrified, goes to inquire of God what all these painful changes happening in her body are and God responds to her. Beyond this one time, the nine months of pregnancy seem not to exist. Likewise, the formula marks the role of the man in sex. He is the one taking the action to make the woman become pregnant. The woman is known, come upon, taken. We do not see things from her point of view. The story told is how children come into the world. It is not the story of love, the story of passion, or the story of pregnancy. It is hardly even the story of childbirth.
However, our parashah offers a brief reframing of the whole process. We hear the parts of the story which a pregnant woman would care about. The woman becomes the main character. While the events of the telling are the same – a woman gets pregnant and gives birth – the way the story is told is completely different. In our parashah, a woman brings forth seed, gives birth, becomes impure, sits in a state of blood purification for a set time, and then brings a sacrifice to the Temple and re-enters normal life. The only shared verb is the verb of giving birth. The naming of the child is not mentioned. The details given about the child are important only to the extent that they help determine the state of the woman. Moreover, the parashah lingers on the time that the woman will spend recovering from childbirth. Gone is the total ellipsis of the period of pregnancy we saw in the formula. Here, the recovery time is not only mandated, it is set forth as the most important detail.
Strikingly, in this passage the woman brings forth seed rather than becoming pregnant. The Talmud (Niddah 31) will use this particular phrasing of a woman bringing forth seed to mean a woman orgasming. It will explain that when a woman orgasms before a man, she will have a male child, but if a man orgasms first, she will have a female child. Indeed, there is only one hint (excluding Song of Songs) of female sexual satisfaction in the Tanakh. Sarah, on hearing that she will have a child, laughs, saying that she is already unable to experience pleasure and her husband is old. But here in our parashah, using the reading from the Talmud, the start of the whole process is a woman experiencing pleasure.
The reappearance of this story of childbirth at this point in Leviticus, this time told to emphasize the parts most important to the woman, comments on the point of the sacrifices of Leviticus. They are not just for the sake of the continuity of the Israelite people. They are not just rituals to justify the existence of a class of priests. They also function to help each person understand and give meaning to their individual experiences, birthing them into the community narrative.
Those Who Choose What God Doesn t Want
Vered Hollander-Goldfarb
Haftarah
The Rosh Hodesh haftarah, taken from the last chapter of the book of Isaiah, brings back to the fore the criticism of the people s worship. In the first two chapters of the book, Isaiah rails against those who practice religious practices vainly. In this haftarah Isaiah (according to scholars a different Isaiah, who may have prophesied as late as the Second Temple era) points to two types of people: Those to whom the word of God is a driving force, and those to whom the appearance of the worship is the significant factor.
The haftarah opens from the grand vantage point of God the heavens are My throne, and the earth is My footstool (Isa. 66:1). From that observation point God sees people for what they truly are. Some are the poor and of a contrite spirit, and who trembles at My word. (V.2) It would take a humble spirit to make space for God in one s self-perception, to put God s word first.
The other group, those who fail this Godly test, appear pious: They sacrifice, bring offerings, and burn incense. But their methods of getting close to God (standard practice in the cultic culture of the ancient world), are lacking:
He who kills a bull – he slays a man.
He who sacrifices a lamb, – he breaks a dog s neck;
He who offers a grain offering, – swine s blood;
He who burns incense, – he blesses an idol. (v.3)
Isaiah s words are somewhat unclear, leaving an open field for the commentators and translators. Many add the words as if turning the text into metaphors. The person who kills a bull is considered by God as if he slayed a man. This reading, found in many medieval commentators (see Rashi and Radak) criticizes the cultic practices of the people for lack of proper intent, turning them into acts equivalent to murder and idol worship.
Shadal (Luzzato) reads the text literally: He who kills a bull (presumably for sacrificing to God) may also slay a man. A person s religious practice is not an indication of his commitment to God s word. Shadal understands the words of Isaiah as criticizing the people for believing that in religious practice one can manipulate God: acting abhorrently elsewhere, and in the Temple placating God by bringing a sacrifice. Isaiah is trying to tell the people that serving God while acting hideously is seen by God for what it is: Hypocrisy and haughtiness. This allegation was introduced by Isaiah in chapters 1-2. Now the book comes full circle.
The editor of the book chooses to close
with a warning: God seeks those who are committed to God s word, not those who
give the appearance of worship but whose practice is void of true content, or worse
covers up horrific acts. Outward appearance of sacrifices might fool society,
and perhaps even allow the person to lie to himself, but God knows who is truly
concerned about God s word.
Sexual Relations Following Childbirth:
Biblical Interpretation and Halakhic Intuition
Joshua Kulp
The Halakhah in the Parashah
The opening verses of parashat Tazria spell out two periods of impurity for a woman following childbirth. The first period lasts seven days for a male child and fourteen for a female (I am not going to discuss why there is such a difference I don t think anyone knows). During this first period the Torah writes (Leviticus 12:3), she shall be unclean as at the time of her menstrual impurity. The Torah references a later passage concerning menstrual impurity (Leviticus 15:19-24) and its various instructions concerning how a menstruant transmits impurity. There is almost certainly also a prohibition of sexual relations (see Leviticus 18:20 and 20:18). This period is followed by a longer period of 33 (for a male child) or 66 (for a female child). During this period, she shall not touch any consecrated thing, nor enter the sanctuary until her period of purification is completed. The simplest reading of the Torah is that she no longer defiles objects as she does during the first period, and rather is simply prohibited from entering or coming into contact with holy objects or space.
My aim here is not to discuss why such prohibitions exist, but rather to focus on how they came to be observed in the post-Temple world. After the destruction of the Temple, the observance of the rules of purity began to gradually wane. Without a means to purify from serious forms of impurity, which require the Temple red heifer ceremony, all Jews came to be considered impure. However, the one issue that remained from this world is the issue of sexual relations with a woman who had menstruated or given birth. And with regard to when sexual relations begin to be permitted after childbirth, the Torah is not clear. Leviticus 12:4 states that, And thirty days and three she shall stay in her blood purity (and v. 5 refers to 66 for a female child). But what does that phrase, she shall stay in her blood purity mean? Does it mean that sexual relations are permitted even though the woman is still experiencing discharges of blood? Or does it only mean that she does not convey impurity the way she did during the first 7/14?
Sifra Tazria 1:7 interprets the phrase to mean: She shall stay in her blood purity: Even though she sees [blood]. All later rabbis clarify that this ruling implies that even if she sees blood during these 33/66 days, the Torah does not prohibit sexual relations. Such blood is not menstrual blood and thus sexual relations are explicitly permitted by the Torah. In the early Middle Ages we find Jews who indeed maintain this ancestral rabbinic interpretation. The geonic authors of Halakhot Gedolot and the Sheiltot, the two most important geonic works, both rule that sexual relations may be resumed after the 7/14 day waiting period, even if there is still blood.
Among other medieval authorities, we begin to see a reticence with regard to this practice. Both Maimonides (Laws of Forbidden Intercourse 11:7) and the Tosafot (Niddah 37a) note that there are those who still maintain this practice, particularly in France. However, the common custom seems to have already been modified, at least in most lands. During this period, relations are permitted, but only if the woman is no longer experiencing any blood. If the woman experiences blood, it is to be treated like menstrual blood, requiring the requisite waiting period and subsequent immersion in the mikveh. This is a stringency vis a vis the earlier practice, but in light of normative Jewish practice, it is understandable. In a culture in which sexual relations while a woman is experiencing blood discharges is considered strictly forbidden, it is not hard to understand why people were reluctant to suspend this taboo, even if ancient halakhah permitted it. Halakhah is a negotiation between written sources and people s perceptions of how a religious life should be led. For the most part, rabbis accepted this stringency and it was codified into normative law (See Shulkhan Arukh 194:1).
However, at times halakhic authorities push back against stringent practices, particularly when they come at too great a cost. Maimonides (Laws of Forbidden Intercourse 11:15) polemicizes vehemently against a custom to refrain from having intercourse for the full 40/80 day period, even if there is no blood:
Similarly, in certain places, the practice is – and support for this is found in the responsa of some of the Geonim – for a woman who gives birth to a male not to engage in relations until the conclusion of forty days and for one who gives birth to a female [to refrain] until after eighty days even though they discovered bleeding only during the [first] seven days. This is not a [proper] custom. Instead, these responsa are in error and indeed [the observance of this practice] in these places is of a heretical nature. They learned this interpretation from the Sadducees. It is a mitzvah to compel [these people] to remove [this improper custom] from their hearts and to return them to [the observance of] the words of the Sages who require only the counting of seven "spotless" days as explained.
The Rambam indeed may be correct that this was a custom learned from sectarians the Karaites do indeed rule this way. But beyond that, the Rambam is negating this stringency because it comes at the expense of the resumption of sexual relations after birth. In rabbinic thought and halakhah, regular sexual relations between a married couple are considered a mitzvah and prohibiting them when there is no reason to do do is a stringency that comes at great cost. Therefore, for the most part (there were some authorities who did find justification for the stringency) rabbis ruled that such a practice should not be condoned.
In sum, this rather complicated issue is a case where we see multiple phenomena in halakhic development: 1) Early rabbinic interpretation clearly sides in favor of early resumption of marital sexual activity. This is in line with the rabbis positive view of marital relations. 2) Medieval practice was influenced by taboos stemming from Judaism and other cultures a taboo against sexual relations when the woman is experiencing blood discharge. 3) Rabbinic negotiation of stringencies the acceptance of some along with the vehement rejection of others.