Purity, Birth, and Illness
PRASHAT TAZRIA continues the theme of ritual purity that extends also to parashat M’tzora (Leviticus 14–15). While Leviticus 12 deals with the impurity of the woman who suffers from bleeding after childbirth, Leviticus 15 will concern women and men who experience other kinds of genital discharge, both normal and abnormal. The intervening passage, Leviticus 13–14, concerns tzaraat—certain growths on skin, fabric, or leather. Traditionally the term has been translated as “leprosy,” but in English “leprosy” nowadays refers to something other than the conditions that the Torah describes.
Parashat Tazria thus includes two different subjects: (1) the impurity from childbirth (Leviticus 12); and (2) the diagnosis of and regulations concerning skin, garments, and leather goods with certain kinds of surface eruptions (Leviticus 13). Common to both, however, is the Israelite notion that physical conditions can produce a pollution that affects not only the party afflicted but also the sanctuary—the abode of the divine Presence. Therefore, the individuals affected must not “touch any consecrated thing, nor enter the sanctuary” during prescribed periods (12:4). Being denied access to holiness extends to all whom the Torah considers impure (tamei). Certain sins also result in the pollution of Israel’s holy place (see, for example, 16:16, 18:24–25, 20:3).
The common denominator regarding all the physical conditions that produce impurity is their association with the nexus of life and death. Numbers 12 shows that the Israelites associated tzaraat with death: when Miriam is stricken with it, Aaron pleads, “Let her not be as a stillbirth [literally “a dead person”] which emerges from its mother’s womb with half its flesh eaten away!” (12:12). In the Torah, blood is synonymous with life (Genesis 9:4; Leviticus 17:14). Vaginal blood had an even greater significance for some of the ancients, who thought that it contained the seed that united with the male seed (semen) to produce a human being (Jacob Milgrom, Leviticus 1–16, 1991, pp. 744, 767, 950). As menstrual fluid, it signified a lost opportunity to create life, thus linked with the process of death. This applied as well to the person who suffered from scale disease.
The legislation in Leviticus 12 and its focus upon the menstruating woman have had an enormous impact upon the lives of Jewish women. (For the practical consequences of impurity for women in ancient Israel, see the introduction to parashat M’tzora.) The view that women—via their normal, recurring bodily functions—generate a pollution antagonistic to holiness served as a justification for women’s distance from the sacred throughout Jewish history. Women were disqualified from the Israelite priesthood perhaps because of fear that the sudden onset of menstruation would result in the clash of impurity and holiness, with presumed dire consequences. (For a different perspective, see T’tzaveh, Another View.) After the destruction of the Temple, which was the focus for the laws of ritual purity, women were often prevented from having contact with a Torah scroll, for example, because of the fear of giving affront to God by approaching in an impure state. The basis for many of the restrictions imposed upon the menstruant and the woman who gave birth was found not in Jewish law but rather in popular custom, which triumphed despite the objections of some rabbis. In addition to her participation in public religious life, the private life of the Jewish woman was affected: she and her husband were not allowed to engage in sexual relations during extensive periods of time, which greatly impacted her fertility and married life in general.
—Elaine Goodfriend
Outline—
I. LAWS FOR THE IMPURITY OF A WOMAN AFTER GIVING BIRTH (12:1–8)
A. Impurity after the birth of a male (vv. 1–4)
B. Impurity after the birth of a female (vv. 5)
C. Sacrifices by a woman who gave birth (vv. 6–8)
II. LAWS FOR DIAGNOSING AND CONTAINING SKIN DISEASES (13:1–59)
A. Skin diseases and procedures for diagnosing and containing them (vv. 1–44)
1. Shiny marks (vv. 1–8)
2. Discolorations (vv. 9–17)
3. Boils (vv. 18–23)
4. Burns (vv. 24–28)
5. Infection of the scalp or beard (vv. 29–37)
6. Vitiligo (vv. 38–39)
7. Baldness (vv. 40–44)
B. Restrictions for the person with scale disease (vv. 45–46)
C. Infection of fabrics and of articles made of skin (vv. 47–59)