Timeless TorahG-d is Life & Life is a Miracle
Biblical laws are not always easy to stomach, intellectually that is. Some are even difficult to swallow: they just don’t make sense to the modern mind. This certainly applies to the third Book of the Torah, Leviticus, which is replete with graphic rituals for animal sacrifices. But even within the third Book itself, two sections, Tazria and Metzora almost sound like ancient hocus-pocus. These two readings detail the conditions of a leprosy-like malady that affected one’s skin, clothes, and even the walls of one’s house.
This spiritual ailment was caused by the conflict between the Divine soul and the physical body in which it was trapped. Throughout history there have been two distinct and opposing ways of confronting this discord: be a hedonist (live for physical pleasure) or be an ascetic (relinquish physical pleasure). The former worshipped the physical while denying the spiritual; the latter enthroned the spiritual at the cost of the physical.
Judaism carved out a different path: use the body as a vehicle for the soul. The reason is simple. The physical world we inhabit is the one G-d pronounced, “Very good.” To be a hedonist is to deny G-d. To be an ascetic is to deny the goodness of G-d’s world. To be a Jew is to celebrate both creation and Creator. That is the principle that explains many otherwise incomprehensible features of Jewish life.
A striking example of this is our reading’s first rule: When a woman gives birth, she is ritually impure for seven days. Then, for thirty-three additional days she must wait before she can enter the Sanctuary.
Why should childbirth render the mother tomay (ritually impure) impeding any encounter with holiness? Though there is a temptation to see this law, and the others that follow, as inherently beyond the reach of human understanding, our Sages offer the following insights. 1. G-d is life. Judaism rejected those cults that glorified death. As King David noted, “It is not the dead who praise the L-rd,” (Psalm 114) and, “What profit is there in my death? Can the dust acknowledge You? Can it proclaim your truth?” (Psalm 30) Or as Moses succinctly put it in two memorable words: “Choose life.” (Deut. 30)
It thus follows that kedushah-holiness involves our supreme consciousness that we are standing in the presence of the G-d of life. That is why the paradigm case of tumah (ritual impurity) is contact with a corpse, while other cases of tumah include diseases or bodily emissions that remind us of our mortality. This sentiment was made explicit by the Spanish philosopher, Judah Halevi (1075-1141) in his famous work, the Kuzari: A dead body represents the highest degree of loss of life, and a leprous limb is as if it were dead. It is the same with the loss of seed, because it had been endowed with living power, capable of engendering a human being. Its loss therefore forms a contrast to the living and breathing.
The laws of purity apply exclusively to Israel, argued Halevi, precisely because Judaism is the supreme religion of life, its adherents are therefore hyper-sensitive to even the most subtle forms of death.
2. Judaism views the birth of a child as a miracle. Though every living creature engages in it and procreation is a “natural” development, Torah goes to great lengths to describe how many of the heroines of the Bible, among them Sarah, Rivka, Rachel and Chana, were infertile and had children only through Divine intervention.
The Torah’s message is unmistakable. To be a Jew is to know that survival is not a matter of biology alone. What other cultures take for granted is for us a miracle. Every Jewish child is a gift from G-d. No religion has taken children more seriously or devoted more of its efforts to raising the next generation. Childbirth is wondrous. To be a parent is the closest any of us come to experience G-d’s creative powers. That, incidentally, is why women are closer to G-d than men, because they know what it is to bring new life out of themselves, as G-d brings life out of Himself. This idea is beautifully captured by the very first man who, with great discernment, called his wife, (the first woman in history) Chavah, which means, “She is the mother of all life.” /
The laws relating to childbirth are now somewhat palatable. When a mother gives birth, not only does she undergo great risk (until recently, childbirth was a life-threatening danger to mother and baby alike), she is also separated from what until now had been part of her own body. The Rabbis were less poetic and stated it rather bluntly, “The fetus is like a limb of the mother.” (Talmud, Gittin 23b) / At one level then, the birth of a child signaled the detachment of one life from another life: A form of death, even if it is in the most minimalist sense.
This is, however, but one (negative) aspect of why a new mother is restrained from entering the Temple. There is another angle, one that captures the positive perspective on this strange restriction. There is a halachic principle: “One who is engaged in a mitzvah is exempt from other mitzvah.” (Talmud, Sukkah 26a) It is as if G-d were saying to the new Mom, “I exempt you from coming before Me in the place of holiness because you are fully engaged in one of the holiest acts of all, nurturing and caring for your child (as only a mother can).
“Unlike others you are exempted from visiting the Temple, where you would experience being attached to Life in all its sacred splendor. Instead, you are experiencing it directly and with every fiber of your being as you nurse your infant. In another few weeks you will come and give thanks before Me (together with the special offerings for having come through a time of danger). But for now, look upon your child with wonder as you have been given a taste of the great miracle of Creation, otherwise known only to Me.” Giving birth is love begetting life and mortals imitating Immortality.
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