Having a body is hard.
I say this to friends and family all the time. In response to regular aches and pains, to trying to figure out what to wear, to disappointments when trying to conceive and pregnancy losses and complications, to suffering from chronic physical and mental illness:
It is hard to have a body.
In a very different way, I find this parsha, Tazria, hard for my body.
It says:
“When a woman conceives and gives birth to a male child, she shall be impure for seven days…”
It says:
“She shall not touch any consecrated thing, nor enter the sanctuary until her period of purification is completed.”
It says:
“If she bears a female, she shall be impure two weeks…”
These verses--among so many others-- are hard for my body. As a woman. As a woman who does not have children. As a woman deeply committed to this tradition that for most of its history was content to talk about me but not to me.
It is hard to read about women in labor and immediately postpartum as the objects rather than the subjects of profoundly personal moments.
It is hard to imagine giving birth and being told you are now in a state of impurity-- a state that forces you to remain at a distance from your family, at a distance from your community, at a distance from God.
It is hard to read verse after verse of a text that does not normally concern itself with women, but finds itself highly concerned with the functioning of a woman’s body and how it might impact the men and religious observance around her.
It is hard to be reminded that the Torah, a sacred text I cherish, cares most about women when they are able to produce children, but does not know how to tend to the pain and sacrifice of childbearing and birth and postpartum recovery; does not know how to offer support when a person or couple struggles to bring children into their lives; does not know how to stand by those who choose not to or are unable to have children.
There is a moment in Tazria where the Torah instructs a person who is afflicted with tzara’at, an affliction of the skin, to call out, “tamei, tamei” announcing themself impure to the community. Sometimes, this is what it feels like to have a body when reading the Torah: as if the Torah is pointing right at us and calling, “tamei, tamei” “impure, impure.”
Yet, I am standing here. We are gathered together in shul, committing ourselves day after day to this faith and this legacy, and even eagerly soaking up the wisdom of the text we inherited, celebrating the gift of Torah and our ability to pass it from generation to generation. An opportunity that I truly-- to my bones--believe is a tremendous privilege and blessing.
Poet and activist Sonya Renee Taylor wrote, “The body is not an apology. The body is not a calamity. The body is not a math test. The body is not a wrong answer. The body is not a failed class. You are not failing. The body is not an apology.” (With thanks to Rabbi Elliot Kukla for putting this poem in conversation with Tazria)
Even with the Torah’s othering language and the insistence on tumah, on impurity and distance, I believe that our tradition agrees with Taylor-- that the body is not an apology and its workings are not failures. Even when, at least to my 21st century ears and heart, it feels like the Torah is saying something that might hurt, I believe God and Judaism do care about me and my body.
A few years ago, Rabbis Aviva Richman and Jason Rubenstein taught a gorgeous series called “The Torah Was Not Given to Angels.” This title, in itself, is a remarkable notion and a sharp response to the verses of Vayikra. Since the Torah was not given to angels, the rules within it have to figure out what to do about these complicated bodies we inhabit.
Rabbi Richman shared midrashim where angels approach God and question why God did not gift the Torah to angels instead of people. The angels say-- “it is fitting that you keep the Torah in the heavens-- give it to us, your angels who are covered in your radiance. They say, “We are holy and pure, like the Torah. We are eternal, like the Torah. Keep the Torah here with us.”
These arguments are well-reasoned. Why would God give the Torah to humanity-- mere mortals, who sin and contract impurities?God’s response is shocking and also moving: God says, “The Torah cannot be fulfilled by you” because you are holy, because you do not have a body and do not contract impurity or illness, because you do not die. The Torah was meant for imperfect recipients. The Torah can only be for people, for our not-so-perfect bodies.
In Midrash Tanhuma, God goes so far as to say, “The Torah cannot be fulfilled in the upper worlds… Where can it be fulfilled? In the lower world, as it says, “I made the land and created humanity upon it.’” Meaning, God created the world and humanity in order to give them the Torah because the Torah has no other place and no other recipient where it can be fulfilled.
The body is not an apology, the body is a manifestation of God’s desire to bring holiness into the world. Maybe this can help us reframe the pronouncement, “tamei, tamei,” shifting our experience of being called out for having a body and instead seeing it as a calling in, a calling toward our bodies and towards what we need in that moment. There is a discussion in the Talmud that supports this reading of this verse: “A person must say “tamei tamei” to announce their pain to the masses, and the masses will pray for mercy on that person’s behalf. And similarly, anyone to whom a painful matter happens must announce it to the masses, and the masses will pray for mercy on their behalf.”
In other words: Every time we encounter verses or texts or laws that bring us pain, we must announce to the masses “tamei tamei-- this hurts” and those who hear our cry know that we need their prayers.
One of the most remarkable parts of our traditions is that these incidents of pain and calling out do not just invite our fellow community members into the moment with us, but God, too. A mishnah in Sanhedrin teaches: When a person is in pain, what does the Divine Presence pray? “It is my own head that aches, it is my own arm that aches.”
According to this Mishnah, God did not merely create us and leave us in this world, God remains linked to us: spiritually and physically. When we hurt, God prays. When we hurt, God feels our pain, too.
God’s partnership in our pain is an incredible concept, but most of the time, it feels too abstract.
What keeps me here-- in relationship with millennia of texts, delighting in Judaism, committing my life to practicing and teaching this tradition-- are all of the ways that “the masses” have responded to cries of “tamei tamei” throughout the generations. What keeps me here is that we are living in a beautiful moment when we can have conversations about love and confusion and pain and God all at one time.
What keeps me here are the constantly evolving rituals and ritual-makers that have stepped in to support people in places where the rituals and priests of Leviticus fell short-- rituals that hold, that comfort, that celebrate. Rituals that draw people in.
What keeps me here are the new voices-- new midrashim, new interpretations and new interpreters, new tools and methodologies that complement and question the texts that our people have so carefully transmitted through time and space.
What keeps me here is that when we have cried “tamei tamei” there has always been and there always will be a response.