Tazria
Lev. 12:1 – 13:59 

By Rabbi Baht Weiss

Did you know that the Torah contains the first maternity leave?   

Ok, that may be a stretch.  But we find a discussion in this week’s Torah portion of a woman’s physical state after giving birth and her need for isolation.  

This week’s Torah portion Tazria begins by explaining “When a woman at childbirth bears a male, she shall be tamah, impure seven days…On the eighth day, the flesh of his foreskin shall be circumcised.  She shall remain in a state of blood purification for 33 days: she shall not touch any consecrated thing, nor enter the sanctuary until her period of purification is completed.  If she bears a female, she shall be impure two weeks…and she shall remain in a state of blood purification for 66 days.” 

At first glance, this text feels very offensive.  A woman is ritually unclean, “impure” after giving birth? But perhaps there is another way of thinking about this. In a commentary on Leviticus 12:2 (Tz’enah Ur’enah) a parallel is drawn between the period of impurity following childbirth and the mourning period following a death (and yes-I realize one is a happy occasion and the other a sad one): “The Torah states that a woman is in a state of impurity for seven days after giving birth.  Similarly, there is a seven-day period of mourning for the dead. All is counted by the number seven.” A mourner is not in a physically altered state during shivah but rather in a spiritually altered emotional state.  Thus—if there is a parallel between the two moments in life—the week immediately following a birth and a week following a death—it must be that these two are linked by their spiritual and emotional quality.  

Rabbi Helene Ettinger points out “Ritually prescribed periods of isolation often serve dual purposes: first, they protect the community from contact with someone in a “contagious” state (whether that contagion is physical or spiritual) and second, and simultaneously, they protect someone in a vulnerable state from intrusions of the community.  There is no doubt that terms like, tamah, impure, indicate that the newly delivered mother was viewed as contaminated by the birth and the ensuing issue of blood.  That does not negate the fact, however, that for the seven- or fourteen-days following birth, the mother’s special status protected her and legitimated her need to focus on the baby and herself. The succeeding thirty-three or sixty-six days, then, provided an additional cushion of time during which she resumed her full role within her family but remained exempt from certain other communal activities and potential responsibilities.  The legislation found in Lev. 12 guaranteed women a certain amount of recovery time following the birth of a child, and this may well have had a positive effect on women’s lives.”1. 

That’s the maternity leave to which I was referring!  

I have always been offended with the terminology of describing a new mother as “impure”, but I appreciated this perspective, instead viewing it as a special status, that protected her privacy and allowed her time to care for her child and herself.  A new mother is provided boundaries— space and time for her life-changing status. 

Another difficulty with this text—Why are women who birth daughters placed in this “tamah” status double the amount of time—14 days of impurity and 66 days in a state of “blood purification”? It feels troubling to read of different time allotted based on the sex of the child.  But we see that after 7 days, the boys were circumcised on the 8th day and at that time there was no formalized ritual for a daughter entering the covenant. By today’s standards it seems sexist to treat babies differently based on their gender. Yet don’t we do the same when a child is born? By dressing the boys in blue and girls in pink, society is quick to identify and categorize their gender. I used to make baby naming booklets for girls on pink paper, until I realized I was adhering to these gender stereotypes—and supposing my own idea of gender or color preference on these children. Instead, let these children tell us who they are, rather than us proscribing our own expectations on them!  

I suppose one of the reasons that mothers bearing girls were given double the time than boys could be because just as these women created life, these daughters also have the possibility of carrying children one day as well. 

Perhaps this sense of separation creates a respect for the power of women—those who like God create life. In fact, after the period of impurity has concluded, the woman is asked to present sacrifices to God (a lamb as the burnt offering and a pigeon or turtle dove as the chatat (sin) offering). The sin offering served as a vehicle for returning someone in a contaminated state to a pure state; it was not an indictment of that person. 

Rabbi Ettinger explains “Our ability as human beings to create in general, and to create life in particular, links us closely to God. At no other moment do we act so powerfully like God as when we bring forth a new life. The ritual sacrifices following childbirth thus highlighted a women’s unique relationship with God through the shared experience of creation.”  Rabbi Ettinger suggests that “it is our challenge to search for a new and appropriate ritual in place of the ancient sacrifices, one that celebrates Divine-Human connection in the of each new child’s life, regardless of gender.” 

 

 

1 Goldstein, Elyse, Ed. The Women’s Torah Commentary, 2006, Jewish Lights Publishing, 2006 p.202-210.