Center for Jewish Leadership and Ideas

Parashat Tazria (Leviticus 12:1-13:59) – Adar II 5774

 
CENTER for
Living on the Boundary: JEWISH LEADERSH
The Complexity and Anxiety of Childbirth and IDEAS
Rabbi Shai Held
at MECHON HADAR

Parashat Tazria begins by discussing the ritual status of a mother

after childbirth. When a woman gives birth to a boy, she is ritually
impure for seven days and then enters a period of purification, a
kind of limbo, for thirty-three additional days. During the first
week, it seems, she is prohibited from engaging in sexual relations
with her husband; during the days that follow, she is permitted to
engage in sexual relations, but she is not allowed to “touch anything holy” or “enter the
Rabbi Shai Held
sanctuary.” When her period of purification is over, she brings two sacrifices—an olah, or
burnt offering, and a hattat, which is usually—though, as we“One
shallofsee,
theproblematically—
keenest minds in Jewish theology
in our
translated as “sin offering.” If the woman gives birth to a girl, the time periods aretime.”
each
—Jon D. L
doubled—she is considered ritually impure for fourteen days and must go through a sixty-six
day period of purification (Leviticus 12:1-7).
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Interpreters have long been perplexed by this strange set of laws. Why
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birth considered impure? And why must she bring a hattat, or sin offering—has she done

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something wrong for which she must atone? Even more confusingly: Why does her impurity
last longer when she gives birth to a girl than when she gives birth to a boy? Does this tell us
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anything about the relative status or
Although boundaries are to be strictly importance of boys and girls?
upheld, sometimes—unavoidably—
As part of its passion for maintaining
they are crossed, resulting in a state of
order, Leviticus is extremely concerned
ritual impurity.  

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 Center for Jewish Leadership and Ideas
Parashat Tazria (Leviticus 12:1-13:59) – Adar II 5774

 
with divisions and boundaries.1 The priests (kohanim) are enjoined to “distinguish between
the sacred and the profane, and between the impure and the pure” (Leviticus 10:10).
Although boundaries are to be strictly upheld, sometimes—unavoidably—they are crossed,
resulting in a state of ritual impurity. It is crucial to emphasize that impurity is not in and of
itself sinful. It is, rather, “a simple fact of life, a part of nature.” Tellingly, the Torah never
prohibits anyone other than a priest from becoming impure—“people and objects routinely
and unavoidably contract impurity at all times.” (In this context, sin only comes into the
picture when one is impure and does nothing to change that state and return to purity.)2

One of the crucial boundaries in Leviticus—arguably the most crucial one—is the line
between life and death. Corpses, for example, having just crossed the boundary between life
and death, are considered impure and extremely contagious to those who touch them
(Numbers 19:1-22).3

In light of this, maternal impurity after childbirth comes into clearer focus. The mother’s
impurity implies no moral judgment whatsoever; she is considered ritually impure, not
morally impure. Childbirth takes place at—and to some degree unsettles—the boundaries
between life and death: A new life comes into the world, but blood, considered the seat of
life, is lost in the process. Since, for the Torah, blood is “the chief symbol of life[,] its oozing
from the body [is considered] the sign of death.”4

Bible scholar Baruch Levine suggests that the Torah uses the category of impurity to deal

                                                                                                               
1
I have discussed this at length in “Order Amidst Chaos: Connecting to Leviticus,” Parashat Vayikra 5774.

2
Baruch J. Schwartz, “Leviticus,” in Adele Berlin and Marc Zvi Brettler, eds., Jewish Study Bible (2004), comment
to Leviticus 12-15 (p. 232).
3
Cf. Richard D. Nelson, Raising up a Faithful Priest: Community and Priesthood in Biblical Theology (1993), pp. 22-
23.
4
Jacob Milgrom, Leviticus: A Book of Ritual and Ethics (2004), p.123.

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 Center for Jewish Leadership and Ideas
Parashat Tazria (Leviticus 12:1-13:59) – Adar II 5774

 
with “conditions that are life-threatening.” In the ancient world, few situations conjured up
fears of death quite like childbirth did. “Although the new mother was a source of joy to the
community,” Levine explains, “and her new child a blessing, she [also] generated anxiety…
The childbearing mother was particularly vulnerable, and her child was in danger too, since
infant mortality was widespread in premodern societies.” Although this may seem counter-
intuitive, Levine insists that “by declaring the mother impure, susceptible, the community
sought to protect and shelter her.”5

Maternal loss of blood during childbirth is a concrete reminder and manifestation of the very
real danger that in bringing forth new life, the mother faces possible death—as does her
vulnerable newborn. As Bible scholar Frank Gorman puts it, “The woman manifests the loss
of life in the act of bringing forth a new life. It is the woman’s location in this ambiguous
state that generates her [impurity]: She holds together in her own body the realm of life and
the realm of death.”6

The moment of childbirth is thus highly

paradoxical and not a little bit
Maternal impurity... is a way of

confusing: “New life but also a new coping with and responding to the
threat to life.”7 Maternal impurity, then, ways in which the boundaries of life
is a way of coping with and responding and death have been crossed.  
to the ways in which the boundaries of
life and death have been crossed and to the great dangers that that crossing brings in its
wake.

Why, then, must the new mother bring a sin offering? The simple answer is that she does not.
                                                                                                               
5
Baruch A. Levine: Leviticus (1989), p. 249.
6
Frank H. Gorman, Jr. Leviticus: Divine Presence and Community (1997), p. 78.,
7
Levine, Leviticus, p. 249.

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 Center for Jewish Leadership and Ideas
Parashat Tazria (Leviticus 12:1-13:59) – Adar II 5774

 
The prevalent rendering of hattat as “sin offering” is mistaken. Bible scholar Jacob Milgrom
has convincingly shown that a hattat is not a sin offering at all. The Hebrew verb in question
is not hata (sinned), but hita, “which carries no other meaning than ‘to cleanse, expurgate,
decontaminate.’”8 A korban hattat, then, is “an offering of purgation,” or as Everett Fox
suggests, a “decontamination offering.”9 Traditional Jewish commentaries were well aware
that what is at stake here is not sin. As the medieval Tosafists note, “According to the literal
meaning (peshat) of the text, [the mother’s] sacrifice is not brought on account of sin” (Da’at
Zekeinim to Leviticus 12:8). Moreover, as we have seen, there is no suggestion whatsoever
that the woman’s impure status results from a sin she has committed—after all, in the Torah
fertility is seen as a great blessing and a fulfillment of God’s creational designs (Genesis 1:28
and 9:7).

But even if we can make good sense of the

Why, then, must the new mother bring
new mother’s state of impurity, we are still
a sin offering? The simple answer is
left to wonder: Why does that condition
that she does not.  
last longer when the child is a girl? The
biblical text is silent on this question, so we have no choice but to speculate. Some scholars
assume that some form of sexism must be at play, that the law must somehow be an
expression of a sense that boys are superior to and more highly valued than girls. One recent
scholar, for example, claims (without offering any evidence) that “the different time periods
[of impurity after childbirth] seem to reflect primarily the male chauvinism of the culture, a
social preference for males.”10 But it isn’t at all clear that length of impurity should somehow
correlate with worth or status. As Bible scholar Elaine Goodfriend notes, “Greater potential

                                                                                                               
8
Jacob Milgrom, “Sin-Offering or Purification-Offering?” Vetus Testamentum (1971), pp. 237-239. Citation is from
p. 237.
9
Everett Fox, The Five Books of Moses: A New Translation with Introduction, Commentary, and Notes (1995).
10
W.H. Bellinger, Jr., Leviticus, Numbers (2001), p. 78.

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 Center for Jewish Leadership and Ideas
Parashat Tazria (Leviticus 12:1-13:59) – Adar II 5774

 
for [impurity] does not indicate social status; after all, the handling of a human corpse defiles
to a far greater degree than touching a dead lizard (compare Leviticus 11:29-31 and Numbers
19); yet the status of the human is higher than that of a reptile.”11

So why does the mother’s impurity last longer when a girl is born? Bible scholar Samuel
Balentine (among others) argues that “a woman’s loss of blood at childbirth leaves her in a
weakened condition that… makes her susceptible to illness and potentially to death. The
same threat applies to her daughter, who as a mother-to-be will one day share the experience
of losing some of her life in order to bring life into the world.”12 In giving birth to a daughter,
in other words, a woman brings into the world another person who may well skate uneasily
on the often very thin line between life and death. This amplifies anxiety about the
boundaries between life and death and thus lengthens the mother’s period of impurity.

Deep disquiet about the risk of childbirth to the mother’s life is pervasive in Jewish sources.
One seemingly odd law holds that the mitzvah of procreation (pru u-revu) is incumbent upon
men but not women. Since procreation is impossible without women’s active participation,
this is puzzling, to say the least (one does not need an advanced degree in biology to
understand this). Explaining this rabbinic
ruling, R. Meir Simha of Dvinsk (1843-
In giving birth to a daughter, in other

1926) suggests that the reason women are words, a woman brings into the world
exempt from the mandate to procreate is another person who may well skate
that the Torah does not want to demand uneasily on the often very thin line
of them that they place their own lives in between life and death.  

                                                                                                               
11
Elaine Goodfriend, in Torah: A Women’s Commentary (2008), p. 641.
12
Samuel E. Balentine, Leviticus (2003), p. 103. In a related vein, cf. R. Shmuel Eidels (known as Maharsha, 1555-
1631), Hiddushei Aggadot to Niddah 31b, who ties the mother’s lengthier period of impurity after giving birth to a
daughter to her worry that the daughter, too, will one day experience the agonizing (and presumably
dangerous) pain of childbirth.

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 Center for Jewish Leadership and Ideas
Parashat Tazria (Leviticus 12:1-13:59) – Adar II 5774

 
danger by bearing children (Meshekh Hokhmah to Genesis 9:7). It is possible to dismiss this as
apologetics, but I am not so sure. More likely, it reflects a deep-seated sense of respect for the
reality that women can—all too often did, and to some extent still do—die in bringing forth
life.

Many of us who live in places with access to advanced medical care find it hard to relate to
these laws, and to the anxieties that animate them. Many of us have never known a woman
who died in childbirth—something that would likely have been true of very few people just a
hundred years ago. That is, obviously, an unambiguously good thing. And yet the blessing
(or luck) of living when we do, where we do, means that the laws of maternal impurity in
parashat Tazria can strike many of us as alien, or antiquated, or both.

How should we relate to these verses in our changed situation? It is worth noting that in
recent years, rates of maternal mortality have been on the rise in the United States; they have
more than doubled over the past twenty-five years. A recent report indicates that “each year
in the U.S., about 700 women die of pregnancy-related complications and 52,000 experience
emergencies such as acute renal failure, shock, respiratory distress, aneurysms and heart
surgery.”13

Moreover, and not surprisingly given massive inequalities in access to advanced medical
care, rates of maternal mortality vary dramatically around the world. While in Israel 7 out of
100,000 women die in childbirth, and in Hungary 21 do, in the Republic of Congo 560 out of
100,000 women die, while in South Sudan 2,054 do.14 The specter of women dying in
childbirth may be held at bay for many of us, but it still remains all too real, and in many

                                                                                                               
13
Michelle Munz, “Why Are So Many U.S. Women Dying During Childbirth,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, April 13,
2013. Accessed 3/2/14. Munz reports that in 1987 U.S. maternal mortality rates reached an all-time low of 7.2
deaths per 100,000 live births, but that more recent figures suggest that the current rate hovers around 15 deaths
per 100,000 births.
14
Information on MMR (maternal mortality rate) accessed 3/2/14.

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 Center for Jewish Leadership and Ideas
Parashat Tazria (Leviticus 12:1-13:59) – Adar II 5774

 
places childbirth kills with devastating frequency.

Maternal ritual impurity is the Torah’s way of recognizing the mystery and power of
childbirth: A new being has just crossed the boundary into life. But it is also a way of
acknowledging the terror that in helping her child across the boundary, the mother faces the
risk that she could cross it in the other direction. The risks have been mitigated for many
modern women, but they have surely not been eliminated. Leviticus wants to us to remain
aware of that very stark and sobering fact.

Jewish theology insists that those of us who have received certain gifts are intended to pass
them on—that we are channels for blessing and goodness rather than receptacles.15 So taking
stock of our changed situations places obligations upon us. We are required to help ensure
that others receive what we have already been given—the possibility of safe and effective
medical care for women during pregnancy and childbirth. We are called, in other words, to
help make death in childbirth as distant a memory as is humanly possible.

Shabbat Shalom.

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15
I have explored this idea at length in “No Leftovers: The Meaning of the Thanksgiving Offering,” Parashat
Tzav 5774.