Boundaries of Rituals: The Sanctuary and the Body
AT THE ROOT OF parashat Acharei Mot (“after the death [of]”) is the question of change. How is it that a person undergoes a transformation? What does it mean and how does it change her orientation to the Divine? The priestly writers also wonder how the people of Israel can undergo a collective change. The answer they provide is that change comes about through properly performed ritual. The priestly writers credited with much of Leviticus advocate constant change. According to them, the body itself is an ongoing process of flux.
Fascinated with the body and the body politic, the priests speculate that both have the potential to reach purity and optimal holiness. The converse is also true—the body can become impure and the community tainted by transgression. Neither the state of impurity nor the state of purity is eternal. Both are time bound and set within a spectrum of gradations between purity and impurity. Priestly ritual mediates between these states, and it demarcates them so that individual and community alike can know where they stand in relation to God and to others.
The body is not at fault for entering the state of impurity, which can be reversed through time and water. As it develops, priestly thought comes to consider the states of purity and impurity as larger than the physical body and affected by moral transgressions as well. This parashah combines two strata of priestly thought that modern critical scholars label as “P” for the Priestly School (Leviticus 16) and “H” for the Holiness School (Leviticus 17–18). The holiness of the sanctuary most concerns the P source, whereas the sacred nature of the land most concerns the H source. Both sources grant contaminating and purifying power to blood. Whereas Leviticus 16 attends to transformation, Leviticus 17 stipulates how people should introduce holiness into their diet.
Women must read and write themselves into the holy community presented in the H source. When Leviticus 18 specifically mentions women, it is in terms of the dangerous and potentially contaminating force of their sexuality. They are figures in the household whose bodies require policing. Leviticus 18 circumscribes the bodies of female relatives as forbidden, thus setting up a system of protection within the domestic domain. At the same time, these safeguards designate women as extensions of their husbands, brothers, and grandfathers and thereby restrict them. Such techniques are classic means of limiting women’s freedom.
—Rachel Havrelock
Outline—
I. STEPS TO ENSURE SAFETY IN APPROACHING THE DIVINE (16:1–34)
A. The expiation and purification of the Shrine (vv. 1–19)
B. The scapegoat ritual (vv. 20–22)
C. Post-ritual purification of priest and people (vv. 23–28)
D. The establishment of the ritual as an annual day of atonement (vv. 29–34)
II. LAWS ABOUT EATING MEAT (17:1–16)
A. Eating sacrificial meat (vv. 1–9)
B. Eating non-sacrificial meat (vv. 10–16)
III. LAWS ABOUT SEXUAL LIMITS (18:1–30)
A. The basic principle and the reason: Don’t do as the Canaanites do (vv. 1–5)
B. Forbidden relations (vv. 6–23)
C. Reasons and consequences: Don’t do as the Canaanites did (vv. 24–30)