This week we have a double parsha (weekly Torah portion) which deals with purity.  (For those who don’t know, the Jewish calender is lunar based and needs to add an extra month every other year or so to keep the month of spring in the springtime.  When that extra month is not there, like this year, we have to double up some of the parshas.  And this week is one of those times.)  The first parsha talks about the purity of growth on the body and clothing.  The second talks about these same growths on houses, and what to do about them.  The first parsha starts talking about purity in childbirth and the second ends with purity of a man’s semen and a woman’s menstruation.

The theme here is clearly purity.  However, before I get into a discussion on purity, I want to make something perfectly clear: the affliction tTzaraat in Hebrew, is not leprosy.  If it was, haShem (god) would have told us to go to a doctor, instead of a priest.  Also, leprosy does not live on clothing and the walls of buildings.  Tzaraat is a spiritual ailment and that is why you have to show it to a priest.  A Jewish priest can determine if you have this disease because the inauguration ritual he went through raised his level of purity to the point where he can see the underlying spiritual malady on a person, his clothes, and the walls of a building.

Which leads me very nicely into the question of purity.  The Hebrew word for pure is tahar and the word for not pure, in Hebrew, is tomae.  Often this second word gets translated as impure or contaminated, thereby giving the connotation that tahar is good and tomae is bad.  I don’t think this is the intent at all;  I think this way of thinking misses the point and can lead people to not feel good about their bodily functions.  Something tomae is not necessarily bad.  Steel for example is a mix of 2 elements, so it would be considered tomae, and it is certainly not bad or unclean.  Tomae, I tend to think of as mixed.  Drink pure alcohol and it will kill you, but mix it with fruit juice and it becomes a lovely drink to say, “L’chaim,” (which is a Hebrew toast that translates at “To life!”) over.  Tahar and tomae are just states of being, and neither good nor bad.

This distinction is very important and is made in the first parsha. In Vayaykra (Leviticus) chapter 13, verses 13 and 14, it says that someone covered head to toe with tzaraat is tahar or pure, but as soon as healthy skin appears, he becomes tomae or in a state of mix.

Why does haShem insist we make this distinction?  Because to approach god, a person must be pure – all of one way or state.  So haShem needs to tell us what constitutes us not being in that state and how to return to that state.

Now, I said before, the priest (or cohen in Hebrew) is of an even more pure state.  Where do I get this from?  Part of the purification process includes the placing of blood and oil on a person’s right ear, thumb, and big toe (we read about this for a person with tzaraat in this week’s parsha, and as part of the priestly initiation in last week’s parsha).  This helps (how I do not know. If anyone has ideas on this, please feel free to comment below) make a person’s state more pure.  In the case of a person who had tzaraat, it helps a person move from a tomae state to a tahar state.  For a son of Aharon (and for Aharon himself),  he moves from one level of tahar to another level.

Ok, this makes sense with an affliction, but what about a normal physical process like childbirth?  In childbirth, a woman becomes mixed because her blood and the baby’s blood, two living beings, are mixed together.  Hence she is tomae.  It takes a week or two depending on the baby’s gender (If someone asks why, in a comment below, I will give one explanation that I have heard 🙂 ) for the mother’s blood to be completely her own again.  And interestingly, the torah then says that she is in a state of blood purity for a period of time; however, she is not tahar enough to have contact with something holy (the Hebrew word is kodesh which also means separate).  So, as we see, being tahar does not mean all is good.  The new mother, though blood pure, still has something in her that is not her.  Perhaps it is a mental or spiritual connection with the baby that takes time to separate.  Not being a woman or a mother, I really can only guess.  Are there any mothers out there that want to share what feels different to them 40 or 80 days after they have given birth?

To end, let us look at a man giving his seed and a woman who is bleeding.  A man giving his seed means that his seed is a living thing that is separate from him, but created by him.  Hence the impurity is similar (please women, don’t be offended, I am not really comparing the two) to a woman creating life, of course on a much much smaller scale.  One could also think of the sperm like a germ inside the body, which is why an oozing sore also makes one tomae.

And a woman bleeding is in a mixed state of temporarily letting go of a chance to make life.  She is in a mixed state of ready to make a child and not ready to make a child; for a woman can still get pregnant when she is menstruating.

I now leave you with blessings to celebrate the movement we have of going in and out of the mix.  Have a good week.

About the Author

Shmuel Shalom Cohen spent 10 years studying Torah in Jerusalem. Six years ago, he started Conscious Torah to help Jews connect to their tradition in ways they didn’t think possible. Shmuel also started, and is the executive directory of Jewish Events Willamette-valley, a non-profit whose mission is to build Jewish community, pride, and learning. In his free time, Shmuel likes walks in nature, playing music, writing poetry, and time with good friends.