My Torah, the Schottenstein edition, has some deeply unsatisfying commentary regarding the first aliyah of Parasha Tazria - regarding a period of purification after giving birth, double of which is required after giving birth to a baby girl (two weeks and a second, 66-day period) as opposed to a baby boy (one week and a second, 33-day period). Despite its lengthy attempts (that mere life is not enough and that existence must be elevated through a period of purification and eventual offering, or that a burnt and a sin offering must be brought to "atone" for negative thoughts the woman may have had about her husband during labor - the latter of which goes far beyond merely not making sense to me), none click.
I, therefore, began to think of the connection between periods of purification we had just seen (the kohen's purification of seven days before the inauguration, purification after touching the carcass of an animal) and periods of purification we are about to see (skin conditions).
And all of this ties into the name of this parasha, which is Tazria (conception).
There seems to be something much, much - anciently - deeper than the "good and bad" we assign to tamei ("impure") and tahara ("pure"). It's not only that one is associated with righteousness, the other with wickedness; one associated with life, the other associated with death. If so, then why would the Torah label conception and birth - the ultimate affirmation of goodness and life - as "tamei" - impure? And to further talk about this post-birth experience as "contamination" - as it does in translation - it just doesn't fully check out. It, in fact, may unfairly denigrate the entire process and serve as a totally misplaced basis to subjugate and oppress women.
What then are we to make of this stark distinction between things that are allegedly "impure" when those things have such wildly different circumstances? How is it that someone has to bring a sacrifice both when they've erred and when they've given birth?
What is floating around for me right now - and what I'll surely need to meditate on - is that it is not a traditionally dialectical approach -- life v. death, righteousness v. wickedness - but rather some sort of direct encounter with the creative force of life that needs a sort of formal time period after it. Almost a sort of dichotomy wherein "tahara" is a state not in the direct eye of creative energy and "tamei" is directly after encountering such divine creative energy.
There must be some sort of transition - a formal integration, much more formal than the subjective and sometimes meaningless "integration" that we see tossed around today in some spiritual circles - which the Torah is here to bring us. That after such an encounter, one is in a different energetic vibration, and at the end of that cool-down period, a real offering of livelihood - a so-called "sacrifice" which is then either burned or at least partially eaten - formally closes the period - and at which point we can return to "real life." A transition from, as the kabbalists might have it, hod (splendor) back to netzach (endurance).
Maybe we'll never know what the real meaning behind tamei and tahara is until the redemptive period. Until then, something deep inside me needs to believe that it must go far beyond how we currently conceive it as "impure" v. "pure." To be continued...
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