Why Tazria is More Than Just "Ew, Women are Icky"
When the 21st century makes it impossible to understand things
Welcome to the alliteratively and delightfully entitled Qontroversial Questions on the Parashah (it’s still pronounced “Controversial” – I just think I’m being qlever). Subscribe to continue to receive these and please share with those you think would be interested.
Note: This is a very long piece – in part because it represents an overarching theory I’ve always wanted to share about what is one of the most difficult parts of the Torah to make sense of in the 21st century. I know several people who print these to read over Shabbat (rather than trying to skim it on their phones) and I recommend it for this one.
I. It’s Probably Good That It’s the Torah’s Shortest Chapter
I know, I know, the division of the Torah into chapters is not a Jewish innovation. But between its obvious usefulness in creating a standardized system for navigating the text and its ubiquitousness, it makes the following fact noteworthy: Parashat Tazriʿa opens with the shortest chapter in the entire Torah, Leviticus 12, which is a mere eight verses.
And though the main theme of this week’s double-parashah of Tazriʿa-Metzora is the mysterious affliction, tzaraʿat, the opening chapter of Tazriʿa discusses a very different theme which, to put it mildly, isn’t the easiest thing to read in the 21st century.
Aside from the obligation of berit milah (v. 3), this short chapter focuses on the laws that govern a woman after childbirth. First, we are told that childbirth renders her ṭumʿah – which is typically translated as “impure” – for an entire week, in the exact same way that niddah, menstruation, renders her ṭumʿah (v. 2).
Next, we are told that she then enters a state termed “dĕmēi ṭohorah” – which Rabbi Sacks, following Rashi’s lead, translates as “bleeding pure blood” – in which she is prohibited from both touching anything holy and entering the Temple for thirty-three days (v. 4).
But all of this is only the case if she gave birth to a boy. If she gave birth to a girl, everything is doubled: she is ṭumʿah for two weeks and is dĕmēi ṭohorah for sixty-six days (v. 5).
The final three verses detail the sacrifices she must bring to once again become ṭahor – which is usually translated as “pure” – with the Torah insisting that one of the offerings she must bring is a ḥaṭṭat, which is usually translated as a “sin offering” (vv. 6–8).
And I have a pet theory here that part of the reason we devote so much energy to discussing tzaraʿat when it comes to Tazriʿa-Metzora is not just because of its associations with the prohibition of lashon ha-ra, “malicious gossip,” but also because focusing on tzaraʿat allows us to conveniently ignore all the awkward questions that Tazriʿa’s opening verses raise, such as:
Wait, why does childbirth render a woman impure?
Wait, why is she more impure if she gives birth to a girl?!
(Originally, there were more questions, but I think you’ll agree this is long enough in just addressing these two.)
But in true Qontroversial Questions on the Parashah fashion, these questions are all predicated on two misunderstandings: the meanings of the concepts being bandied about here – such as ṭumʿah and ṭahor – and the Ancient Near Eastern context in which these laws were given.
And while better understandings of these things don’t change the glaring dissonance between our modern society and the generation to which the Torah was given, it does help process exactly what the Torah is instituting with these laws.
II. You’re All WEIRDos
While I’m not naïve enough to believe that if everyone just read one book, the world would be a better place, I do think that were such a book to exist, it would be Jonathan Haidt’s The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion. And while nowadays, Haidt is better known for opposing teenage smartphone use (and I can’t recommend this podcast enough for addressing that, though I am rabbinically obligated to warn you that there is bad language and inappropriate humor) – the thrust of The Righteous Mind is crucial.
Building on research by Joseph Henrich, who later turned it into his own popular and fascinating book, The WEIRDest People in the World, Haidt explains that many of the issues in contemporary society emerge from the uniqueness of modern society’s moral values.
Because, while we in the modern world assume that everyone else must think like us, our modern society is unique for being what’s termed “WEIRD,” an acronym for Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic. Not only are most societies in the world non-WEIRD, but there was never a prior time in history when societies were WEIRD.
And, for Haidt, the crucial thing here is that, while all non-WEIRD societies – that is, every human to have ever existed before modern, Western society – have six axes to their moral worldview, WEIRD societies not only share just half of those axes but have fundamentally different interpretations of these shared axes to non-WEIRD societies.12
But complicating matters further – and, indeed, the core point of The Righteous Mind – is that modern-day America (which is the main focus of the book, though it’s still relevant to all Western countries) is not a purely WEIRD society. In a nutshell, the more religiously observant you are (or the more politically conservative you are), the more likely it is that your moral compass is non-WEIRD – the more likely it is that you not only have more factors you consider when making moral evaluations but that you disagree even on the ones that you think you share with the truly WEIRD in society.
And though the book was published in 2012, I think there’s so much to say about its relevance still today regarding all the current hot-button societal issues.
But for the purpose of processing the beginning of Tazriʿa, the most important aspect to consider is the fifth moral foundation of non-WEIRD societies that is absent in the Western world: what Haidt terms “Sanctity/degradation.” This moral foundation seeks purity and abhors impurity – often by employing the emotion of disgust towards things considered taboo.3
And, in many ways, the sentence you just read summarizing Sanctity/degradation also works as a nice summary of many parts of Sefer Vayikra: it, too, seeks purity and abhors impurity – often by employing the emotion of disgust towards things considered taboo.
But were you to suggest that to Haidt, he’d correctly offer a caveat – one that’s central to understanding Sefer Vayikra.
III. Tum‘ah vs. Sheketz
That Haidt is Jewish has no relevance to anything – but it makes for a nice coincidence given his grasp of a nuance in how Sefer Vayikra invokes the terms ṭumʿah and ṭahor that usually goes unnoticed.
Because Haidt writes that, upon reading the Torah, he was “shocked to discover how much of the book – one of the sources of Western morality – was taken up with rules about food, menstruation, sex, skin, and the handling of corpses.” And while he (mistakenly?) assumes some of these laws are designed to protect people from contracting diseases, he recognizes that the main consideration behind many of these laws is the emotion of disgust (p. 15).
And here he has a footnote taking issue with the legendary British anthropologist Mary Douglas, who believed that what motivated the entire laws of kashrut was a concern for purity: “I disagree, and think that disgust plays a much more powerful role” (p. 380, n. 22; emphasis added).
And Haidt justifies his position by appealing to a verse in last week’s parashah, where the Torah prohibits “all the swarming things that swarm upon the earth” (Lev. 11:41), to which he argues that the Torah’s choice to characterize bugs as “swarming” has far more relevance to disgust – it captures the sense that they are icky4 – than the typical way we understand the concept of purity.
And we must applaud Haidt here for being completely correct about Sefer Vayikra – while also acknowledging that he’s wrong. Because Douglas, too, should be applauded for also being completely correct – while also being wrong at the same time.
Because both of them, having never read the Torah in Hebrew, failed to notice that within the laws of kashrut there is a fundamental distinction borne from the Torah’s very careful choice of words – categorizing some prohibited creatures along the lines of Douglas’ theory but others very much in consonance with Haidt.
As Rabbi Amnon Bazak notes, some of the prohibited creatures – such as the pig and the camel – are prohibited because they are ṭamei, “impure.” Others, however, such as the swarming things upon land and in the seas to which Haidt refers, are prohibited because they are sheketz, which is typically translated as “an abomination.”
And this, for R. Bazak, is a key distinction. Because he argues that the category of ṭumʿah applied to animals like pigs recognizes that it is normal for them to be eaten by other human beings – it’s just that they are prohibited to Jews. In contrast, those creatures categorized as sheketz are seen by the Torah as objectively repugnant; and though they are explicitly prohibited to Jews, nonetheless, the Torah’s assumption is that people should find them inherently disgusting.
Douglas’ error was in focusing solely on the animals classified as ṭumʿah, while Haidt’s error was in only noticing those classified as sheketz. Both only saw a partial picture. But the fuller picture results in a fundamental principle at the heart of Sefer Vayikra.
Because, for Sefer Vayikra, ṭumʿah is not a repulsive state, it is a state that is considered natural for a human to be in. Nonetheless, the Torah believes that holiness and ṭumʿah are incompatible states. A Jew must thus avoid eating ṭumʿah to maintain their holiness, and when a person finds themselves naturally contracting ṭumʿah, they must keep a distance from the holy.
All of which is to say that, while nowadays the terms “pure” and “impure” as translations for ṭumʿah and ṭahor are popular – and they grasp the core idea – since they have become synonymous with moral notions, they obscure the actual intent behind it: someone who is ṭumʿah has just transitioned from one natural state to another, from ṭahor to ṭamei, which brings with it certain intense demands but is not supposed to include moral judgement.
IV. Jacob Milgrom Has Entered the Chat
Take a deep breath. If you’re still reading, congratulations! I know many people start reading and then eventually give up. And I know this, not because I’ve seen the data – because I refuse to look at the actual Substack analyses of who stops reading because I don’t need to become even more self-conscious than I already am – but because they have told me.
Yeah, I’m talking about you, Tammy!
And I’m not worried you’ll see this, Tammy, because I know you gave up by now! (Meanwhile, there’s 50/50 odds on if Srulie is still reading. But thank you, loyal readers Joseph and Greg, for sticking with this so far.)
Because everything I’ve written thus far has only reset our expectations when reading the opening of Tazriʿa. The questions remain; all that has happened is that the assumed moral judgement of the Torah has been neutralized.
Thus, the two questions I posed earlier:
Wait, why does childbirth render a woman impure?
Wait, why is she more impure if she gives birth to a girl?!
Can be rewritten without the same level of shock and confusion:
Why does childbirth render a woman the natural, non-judgmental ṭamei?
Why is she more ṭamei if she gives birth to a girl?
And it is here that answers start to appear thanks to the understanding of Jacob Milgrom. A fuller exploration of Milgrom’s understanding of Sefer Vayikra and its religious propriety would take an additional several thousand words – but, in a nutshell, while large swaths of his commentary don’t dovetail with Orthodox belief, there’s no denying that Milgrom understood the ancient context of Vayikra better than most.5
And regarding the laws devolving upon a woman who has just given birth, Milgrom has a fascinating observation. While so many of Sefer Vayikra’s laws share many similarities with the laws of other Ancient Near Eastern societies, there is a glaring exception: the Torah’s unique blood taboo.
This is something already found in the Torah’s prohibition against eating blood. As Milgrom notes, while so many of the other laws in Sefer Vayikra could simply reflect certain religious standards at the time (something that, as I mentioned a few weeks ago, is the view of Rambam), the decision to prohibit blood is a clear and conscious choice here in the Torah – because no other ancient society prohibited its consumption.
And this means that there is something specific to blood to which the Torah attaches significance. And here, Milgrom cites the end of Parashat Noaḥ, where God permits Noaḥ and his descendants to eat animals but stresses that “you must not, however, eat flesh bĕ-nafsho damo, with its life-blood in it” (Gen. 9:4).
And, indeed, the idea that life and blood are synonymous is a recurring theme of the Torah: ki nefesh ha-basar ba-dam hi, “for the life of flesh is in the blood” (Lev. 17:11); ki ha-dam hu ha-nefesh, “for the blood is life,” vĕ-lo toʾkhal ha-nefesh ʿim ha-basar, “and you must not consume the life with the flesh” (Deut. 12:23).
Thus, when it comes to the opening of Parashat Tazriʿa, the Torah once again fixates on blood.
Though here – in contrast to kashrut, where the prohibition of eating blood is unique – taboos concerning vaginal blood were common throughout the Ancient Near East. Yet, Milgrom nonetheless argues that there is a fundamental distinction between the Torah and other societies. Because, while other societies associated vaginal blood with demons, Judaism’s strict monotheism rejects such notions.6
Instead, the reason the Torah has such intense laws governing vaginal blood emitted here, be it from menstruation or during birth – an equation the Torah itself makes explicitly, “she shall be tamʾei seven days, kimēi niddat dĕvotah tiṭmaʾ, as at the time of her menstruation” (Lev. 12:2) – is because the loss of blood symbolizes the loss of life; it symbolizes death.
And this is why, while it is prohibited to eat all forms of blood due to its symbolism, the Torah does not view a cut or a scrape from which a person bleeds in the same way.
And it’s worth noting here, as Milgrom points out, that there is another non-blood substance that the Torah seems to subject to many of the same laws as vaginal blood: semen – which, while obviously not blood,7 is still symbolic of life.
V. Putting It All Together
Milgrom’s thesis thus boils down to the following. Though a woman who has given birth has, literally, just brought a living thing into this world, the concomitant vaginal blood that comes forth is still symbolic of death.
And here the Torah has a hard-and-fast rule woven into the spiritual fabric of Judaism: all vaginal blood triggers a state of ṭumʾah because the lost blood, while natural, symbolizes death – and just as death has no place among the holy, so does the person from whom the blood came. The state of ṭumʾah is not considered a punishment or a bad thing per se, it does not make the woman a pariah, it just ensures she does not come into contact with the holy.
And this, for Milgrom, also explains why the state of ṭumʾah is doubled for a girl: because the girl will go on to menstruate herself – thus her birth is, effectively, a double blood loss. The current blood loss combines with the future, potential blood loss to double the length of ṭumʾah.
It should go without saying that this is no easier to read in the 21st century. It still requires us to accept a very ancient and counter-intuitive understanding of vaginal blood, childbirth, and the like – something that is so alien to us WEIRD people.
And I’m not sharing it all because my hope is that, upon reading it, you’ll be like, “oh, I get it all now – I am no longer bothered in the 21st century by this strange primal perspective on blood, women, and childbirth.”
But my hope is that, in reading this, there is at least an internal logic to the Torah here. These laws don’t emerge because the Torah believes women are icky – an idea that is sometimes popular to tout – but because of an ancient, primal association between blood and death.
And while we no longer think in such terms, it’s a reminder of one of the most important principles when reading the Torah: that, while its message is timeless, its context is specific – it was given in the Ancient Near East. And, sometimes, if we cannot appreciate how people thought back then, we’ll never be able to understand how to read it in the present.
I should stress that there’s a lot more nuance to all of this – but for our purposes, my explanation is fine.
One of Haidt’s earliest essays on the topic addressed a major political fault line at the time between Tea Party Conservatives and Democrats, where he pointed out that the fundamental issue was that both groups agreed that society needed to be “fairer” but no one was recognizing that they completely disagreed on what it meant for society to be “fair.”
Haidt doesn’t think this category is completely absent from WEIRD societies – in 2012, he thought the way modern society related to racism fit this foundation, and I think Sanctity/degradation has only expanded in the years since – but it is far less central to a WEIRD society than a non-WEIRD society.
The only word that would capture the sense of disgust better would be the word “moist,” and I apologize if you shuddered at merely reading the English language’s most revolting word.
Milgrom’s best-known work on Sefer Vayikra is the two-volume Anchor Bible Series Commentary, where his treatment of just Lev. 1–16 is over 1,100 pages! I’m using his much more accessible Continental Commentary version, which is a more concise framing of his core understandings.
However much you might complain that Judaism does not align with modern-day egalitarian ideas, at least give it credit for rejecting vaginal demons from its canon.
If you didn’t nod while reading that, please call a doctor.