Torah Posting: תזריע
The book of Vayikra may have transitioned gradually out of the priestly stuff from the end of Shemot and into the interpersonal laws I promised you, but after last week broke the seal on dietary laws, now it’s time to really let loose. We now transition from the purity and impurity of animals to that of people and our bodily functions and behavior.
I feel like I’m saying this over and over again, but now it’s really time to lay down the law about it. Do not expect all these laws to feel morally relevant to you in your present-day context and culture, even if you are Jewish. That’s not what we’re doing here. Dispense of all your internalized Christian-overculture values about how a Bible is a sort of philosophically perfect object that contains truths that are like the laws of physics only more true and important, such that wherever the laws of physics contradict the Bible, we must find a way for the Bible to be right.
This is a cultural transmission. It is sacred to the people descended from the culture it transmits because it tells us about our ancestral lineages: where we came from. That doesn’t mean we are them. We’re different now. The whole world is different now. What we learn from reading this cultural transmission is how our lineages grew and survived. They were this way because they cared about certain things, and the story seems to tell us that caring about certain things this much was key to their survival. The question you should ask yourself when confronted with some draconian-sounding law about the female body, for example, should be, “What do I care about that much?”
So that said, remember what the principles at work are here. The people are learning how to be careful with the sacred and the profane. They’re learning how to be rigorously observant, so that things don’t go sideways. Chaos failed them. Wandering rootlessly, they ended up enslaved. In order to stay free, they must form a powerful nation. Chaos must not engulf them again. And their leader, Mosheh — just as the God who speaks to him — is maybe turning the screws a little tighter than necessary because they know how volatile the situation is — how close it all is to falling apart.
This is the context within which we begin to receive these seemingly invasively intimate laws governing individual people’s bodies. That and the context mentioned a couple weeks ago of the apparent gendered bias about whose concerns were accounted for in the process of redacting this text. But, again, one more time: Don’t let the incompleteness of this text distract you from letting it teach you. There is always something to learn.
God speaks to Mosheh, saying:
When a woman bears a male child, she shall experience seven days of impurity, as she does when she begins menstruating. There is nothing wrong with that; it is simply a condition that makes one separate from the precious goings-on of religious operations. (Who wants to go over there, anyway? Great way to get blown up, if you ask me.)
On the eighth day, the child is to be circumcised, entering into the covenant of Avraham. Then the mother shall remain in a state of “blood purification” for 33 days and shall not touch any consecrated thing or enter the sanctuary for that time.
When a woman bears a female child, her first impurity is two weeks, followed by blood purification for 66 days; the isolation periods are twice as long as when giving birth to boys.
In either case, when the mother has completed her period of purification, she shall bring to the Tent of Meeting a lamb in its first year for a burnt offering and a pigeon or turtledove for a sin offering. If she cannot afford a sheep, two birds will suffice. The priest will offer it and make expiation on her behalf, and then she will be pure.
For the next section, God includes Aharon in the transmission because it’s about certain diseases seen to be as much spiritual as physical, and the priests are to be called upon as physicians of sorts.
When a person has some sort of skin swelling, rash, or discoloration, and it develops a scaly look, it must be reported to the priests. If the priest finds in his examination that the hair in the affected area has turned white, and the issue appears to go deeper than skin-level, it is צרעת. The priest must pronounce that person impure. צרעת is usually translated as “leprosy,” but the Hebrew word refers to a wider range of conditions.
If the issue is only skin-deep and the hair hasn’t turned white, the person only needs to isolate for seven days. On the seventh day, the priest shall examine again, and if it hasn’t spread, the person shall isolate for another seven days. On the second examination, if it has faded, the priest can pronounce the person pure; they just need to wash their clothes. But if the rash should spread after that, they need to return to the priest, and if the priest doesn’t like the look of it, it’s צרעת. Similar instructions are given for other kinds of rashes, inflammations, and burns.
This section goes on for quite a while into various anatomical and symptomatic variations. In one situation, if the condition turns the person’s skin all white, the priest then pronounces them pure. How could a person who is all white from head to toe be impure, I guess? But as soon as any patch becomes discolored, they’re impure again.
Then it gets to what actually happens to the person with צרעת. They shall tear their clothes and uncover their head. Their upper lip shall be covered. And when they walk around, they have to call out ahead, “!תמא! תמא”, to alert others to their impurity. As long as the disease is present, this person shall be impure and must dwell outside the camp.
This kind of disease can also take hold in fabric or in skins used as materials. The priest has to make this diagnosis, too, and if the fabric or skin is found to be corrupted, it must be burned. But just like with a person, there is an inspection process, and if the priest finds that it is not spreading, the article can be washed and isolated for another seven days, and if it fades, the affected part can simply be torn out. If it comes back, though, burn the whole thing.
There may not be a lot of concrete takeaways for us from this short parashah, but I think there is one: The life of this community, living this close to God, is going to be constantly punctuated with various people and objects coming in and out of states of purity and impurity. It’s going to create a rhythm, a spiritual metabolism, by which the people live.
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