Parsha TAZRIA

Article by Rabbi Yisroel Fine

If a woman conceives seed”
“If a woman conceives seed and bears a male child, then she shall be impure for 7 days”

The association of impurity with childbirth is a disturbing one. Does this not serve to reinforce the prejudices of those who denigrate the child-bearing role of a woman as primitive and animal-like, and devoid of any spiritual dimension?

The commentators forcefully reject this notion, but their diverse approaches are significant. All this depends, of course, upon one’s perception of the Torah concept of “Tumeah” and “Tahara” [Impurity and Purity]. Rabbi S R Hirsch places the impurity following childbirth within the category of, what he describes as “Tumeot K’doshot” –impurity which serves to awaken the individual to his spiritual potential.

Childbirth is at one and the same time the highest and noblest occupation of partnership with the Almighty in a sublime act of creation, and yet, it is also part of a process of “Tazria” of bearing seed – being a passive participant in a physiological process. It is precisely at a moment when a woman involuntarily submits to the laws of Nature, that she must reassert again her own spiritual independence. Human birth may be involuntary, but human development is anything but. The spiritual state of “Tumeah”, therefore, alerts her to life’s challenge itself – to establish the independence of the human spirit in the face of the seemingly binding grip of nature.

Rabbi Menachem Mendel of Kotzk, however, sees the Tumeah-state following childbirth, not as a stimulus to the spirit, but as its very reflection. Tumeah, he asserts, is the mirror-image of Kedushah [holiness]. Whenever Kedushah departs, the vacuum so created is filled by its antithesis – impurity. A corpse is the source of Tumeah only because of the prior departure of its soul, the source and stimulus to the sanctification of human life.

Similarly, for a woman to be the bearer of human life is to don the mantle of the Almighty Himself. This ultimate act of Imitatio Dei, imitation of G-d, enshrouds a woman in the act of childbirth with a unique state of Kedushah. “Tumeah”, far from signalling the denigration of the child-bearer, testifies to her very worth. Her subsequent state of “Tumeah” is a legacy of the Kedushah that was; a bearer of spiritual testimony to the sanctified moments now no longer.

Rabbi Chaim Attar, in his commentary Or Hachaim, alludes to this approach but adds an embellishment. The degree of Tumeah extends for twice as long following the birth of a girl than for that of a boy, for fourteen days and seven days respectively. Could it be that the act of bearing a child who herself will be the bearer of others is a doubly sanctified act than that of bearing a male child? If it is so, the laws of “Tumeat Ledah” [the impurity of childbirth] relate to us both a powerful but also a surprising message.

Rabbi Yisroel Fine