Tazria: Beyond Impure/Pure

Tamei

• Impure
• Polluted
• Unclean
• Profane
• Ineligible
• Off limits

Tahor

• Pure
• Clean
• Holy
• Eligible
• Fair game

Rabbi Jeffrey K. Salkin, "The JPS B'nai Mitzvah Torah Commentary," pg. 125

Today "dirty" would be our normal and natural way of understanding the notion of something being impure. The biblical term tamei, however, means something deeper. It signifies an altered or different condition. Being tamei is not necessarily bad; it could be something so miraculous or awesome that it leaves you in an unnatural state. For that reason, the person who is tamei needs to go through a ritual that makes [them] tahor, "pure." Some things (like childbirth) are so big that they leave an indelible mark on us.

S. Tamar Kamionkowski, "Leviticus," pg. 100

The primary concern in Leviticus 12-15 is determining the status of a woman or a man at any given time regarding their permissibility to enter [Hashem's] sanctuary or to partake of sanctified food. Leviticus 12-15 is about one's ontological status in relation to holiness. Absent the sanctuary these priestly categories would become utterly irrelevant. In fact, we might go so far as to say that these categories have nothing to do with God's will or moral imperative. In these chapters, God does not judge, warn, or praise the community in any way; [tamei] simply drives away God's presence as two opposing magnets repel each other.

Rabbi Shai Held, "Living on the Boundary: The Complexity and Anxiety of Childbirth," https://www.hadar.org/torah-resource/living-boundary#source-381

One of the crucial boundaries in Leviticus—arguably the most crucial one—is the line between life and death. Corpses, for example, having just crossed the boundary between life and death, are considered impure and extremely contagious to those who touch them (Numbers 19:1-22).

In light of this, maternal impurity after childbirth comes into clearer focus.

The mother’s impurity implies no moral judgment whatsoever; she is considered ritually impure, not morally impure. Childbirth takes place at—and to some degree unsettles—the boundaries between life and death: A new life comes into the world, but blood, considered the seat of life, is lost in the process. Since, for the Torah, blood is “the chief symbol of life[,] its oozing from the body [is considered] the sign of death" (Milgrom).

[...]

Maternal loss of blood during childbirth is a concrete reminder and manifestation of the very real danger that in bringing forth new life, the mother faces possible death—as does her vulnerable newborn. As Bible scholar Frank Gorman puts it, “The woman manifests the loss of life in the act of bringing forth a new life. It is the woman’s location in this ambiguous state that generates her [impurity]: She holds together in her own body the realm of life and the realm of death.”

Baruch Levine, "JPS Torah Commentary: Leviticus," pg. 249

In ancient times, concern for the welfare of the mother and child was most often expressed as the fear of destructive, demonic, or antilife forces. This fear is evident in other incantations and spells against demons and witches who were thought to kill newborn children and afflict their mothers. It is reasonable to assume that similar anxieties were current among the ancient Israelites as well. And although biblical religion certainly did not permit magic spells and the like as proper means for overcoming these perceived threats to life, it did provide ritual means, as well as practical methods, to accomplish for the Israelite mother and her community what magic was supposed to accomplish for a pagan mother.

Thus, chapter 12 presents a seemingly paradoxical situation: new life but also a new threat to life. Going beyond the protection of mother and child, the legislation also aimed at safeguarding the purity of the sanctuary and the surrounding community from defilement. To this end, the new mother was barred from the sanctuary and from contact with sacred things, out of the apprehension that the antilife forces, which prey upon the newborn and the mother in her state of vulnerability, would be carried with her into the sanctuary.

Philo, "Questions and Answers on Genesis 1:25"

Accordingly the lawgiver says that woman was made from the side of man, intimating that woman is a half of man’s body. For this we also have evidence in the constitution of the body, its common parts, movements, faculties, mental vigor and excellence. For all things are seen as if in double proportion. Inasmuch as the molding of the male is more perfect than and double that of the female, it requires only half the time, namely forty days; whereas the imperfect woman, who is, so to speak, a half-section of man, requires twice as many days, namely eighty.

Based on James C. VanderKam, The Book of Jubilees, Corpus Scriptorum Christianorum Orientalum 511; Scriptore Aethiopici 88 (Leuven: Peeters, 1989), with adjustments

In the first week, Adam and the flank, his wife, were fashioned, and in the second week [God] showed her to him. And for this reason a commandment was given to maintain [postpartum mothers] – seven days for a male [child] and for a female two seven-day [units] – in their impurity.

Afterwards, when for Adam forty days had been completed in the land where he had been fashioned, we brought him into the Garden of Eden to till and maintain it. And his wife was brought [there] on the eightieth day. Afterwards, she entered into the Garden of Eden. For this reason a commandment was written in the heavenly tablets for the one who gives birth…

Rabbi Shefa Gold, "Tazria," https://www.rabbishefagold.com/tazria-metzora/

Tazria begins by discussing the condition of a woman immediately after childbirth. She is blessed with a time of separation and then given a path for returning. I understand this condition not only in the context of childbirth, but in regards to the creative process. During a time of intense creative output, as with childbirth, a person steps outside the boundaries of time and space. She touches the realm between the worlds where ayin (“nothing”) gives birth to yesh (“existence”).

In that place between worlds she is completely taken up by the process of birth. The artist lives inside the poem, painting, or song, and the rest of the world, for a time falls away. The blessing of Tazria is in knowing that there will again be a way of returning to the community, to normal life. The time of alienation, which is necessary for the creative process to unfold, is also finite. The artist may return and bring with her the riches that she has mined and be re-integrated, welcomed back, and appreciated by her community.