Vote for my best Torah post (if you like it)

I voted for the second tables, third covenant one (Original Torah). I like it a bit better.

Vote for BZ’s Best Series:
Best Series: Jewish Pluralism Mah Rabu

Best Jewish Religious Blog (goes to finals, starts may 9) Mah Rabu

You can vote once every day from every computer you use.

Best Post voting runs until Sunday, May 6, ~10pm US-EDT.
The Finals Round for Blogs and Posts will start, G-d willing, May 9th, ~10pm (US EDT) and finish on May 16, 10pm.

Exodus 11:7

? ?????????? ??????? ????? ?????? ??????? ?????????? ??????????? ?????? ??????? ????????? ??????????? ? ?????? ????????????? ????????? ?????????? ?????????? ????????? ?????????? ????????????? ???? ???????? ???????????? ??????? ?????? ??????????? ?????? ???????? ?????????? ? ??????????? ???????? ???????? ????????????? ?????????? ??????? ?????????? ???? ??????????? ?????????? ???? ???????
? ???????? ? ??????? ??????????? ???? ????????????????? ????????? ?????????? ??????????????? ????????? ??????????? ??????? ???????? ??????? ?????? ?????????? ??????? ????????????
? ??????????? ?????????????? ??????? ?????? ????????????????????? ??????? ???? ??????? ???????????? ???????????????????? ??????????????? ?????? ????????? ???????????????? ??????????????? {?}

From NJPS

4 Moses said, “Thus says the Lord: Toward midnight I will go forth among the Egyptians, 5 and every first-born in the land of Egypt shall die, from the first-born of Pharaoh who sits on his throne to the first-born of the slave girl who is behind the millstones; and all the first-born of the cattle. 6 And there shall be a loud cry in all the land of Egypt, such as has never been or will ever be again; 7 but not a dog shall snarl at any of the Israelites, at man or beast — in order that you may know that the Lord makes a distinction between Egypt and Israel. 8 Then all these courtiers of yours shall come down to me and bow low to me, saying, ‘Depart, you and all the people who follow you!’ After that I will depart.” And he left Pharaoh’s presence in hot anger.

I offer the following discussion in honor of Motek’s first seder:

I wrote a paper in college on how the early sources saw the Torah’s explanation for the plagues, how they justified the suffering of the ordinary Egyptians. As made clear in this paragraph from Exodus 11, even the first-born of the slave girl was killed. This section of the Exodus is replete with reasons such as in verse 7 “to make a distinction” and elsewhere that YHWH is the true God, powerful, and present.

After all the horrible plagues and the uproar at the death of the firstborn predicted in verse 6 “and there shall be a loud cry”, how is it that davka the dogs should be quiet. Moreover, the dogs seem to only be quiet towards the Israelites and even their animals!

Is it possible that the Torah is referring to Basenji dogs?

From Wikipedia

Like wild canids, Basenjis do not bark. They will, however, give the occasional single “woof.” They also chortle, whine, squeal, howl, and make a Basenji-specific noise called a yodel or a baroo. Some Basenji screams, during times of distress such as being locked up, have been compared to the scream of a woman, the crow of a rooster; essentially, their ability runs the gamut of vocalizations. Though they do not bark, they are quite capable of making their voices heard.
The Basenji is one of the most ancient dog breeds. Originating on the continent of Africa, it has been venerated by humans for thousands of years. Basenjis can be seen on steles in the tombs of Egyptian pharaohs, sitting at the feet of their masters, looking just as they do today, with pricked ears and tightly curled tail.

But if the dogs are Basenji, then they wouldn’t be barking in the first place and there would be no miracle. But to anyone who has lived in an area with wild dogs, the idea of them being quiet all night or even towards a part of the population is patently ridiculous!

In sum, in contrast with the outcry of the Egyptians, the dogs are miraculously silent. It may seem impossible, but it is such a specific detail, it must be referring to something that actually happened, or was familiar to the people at the time. This is an important example of how the Torah may have transmitted an embellished detail of a story. I’ll leave it to you to ponder whether the normally loud dogs were silent to all things Israelite, or whether the normally silent dogs, yodeled at the Egyptians.

Among the subjects explored in the monologues were: coming of age in Israel; Israel as a young woman’s first love; falling in love with Israeli culture, Israeli food and even Israeli cats; a New Yorker’s experience of serving in the Israeli army; being in dialogue with Israel; separating from Israel and how to say goodbye.

Fundamentalist Christians place great importance on the Decalogue, which they call the 10 Commandments (in Hebrew it is 10 utterances). They want to place it in schools and courthouses, to remind everyone, presumably, to keep the Sabbath. What they may not know and certainly don’t mention, is that Jews count the commandments differently. Moreover, the version in Exodus 20 is different from the version in Deuteronomy 5. Which of the four varieties do they want to post?

I have written an article for a friend’s blog which deals with one of these differences. Is Shabbat a day of remembering that God rested on the seventh day of Creation (Exodus), or is it a day to keep holy because we were freed from being slaves in Egypt(Deut.)? In other words, is Shabbat a day to be kept (Shomer Shabbat, Deut.) or remembered (Zokher Shabbat, Ex.)? In separating out the different strands of how the Torah approaches Shabbat, I will attempt to deconfound part of the Azeret haDibrot (10 utterances).

See how I work with the Shomer Shabbat system of Halakha to create a system Zekhirat Shabbat HERE.

A number of years ago I was preparing to read Torah. I noticed a number of different section in this parashah had a different cadence and theme than the rest. At the time, I was trying to learn Yemini cantillation. So, I chanted Dt. 2:10-13, 20-23 in a different trope. Nobody noticed, but I have thought about it since then.

2:10 It was formerly inhabited by the Emim, a people great and numerous, and as tall as the Anakites. 11 Like the Anakites, they are counted as Rephaim; but the Moabites call them Emim. 12 Similarly, Seir was formerly inhabited by the Horites; but the descendants of Esau dispossessed them, wiping them out and settling in their place, just as Israel did in the land they were to possess, which the Lord had given to them. —

2:20 It, too, is counted as Rephaim country. It was formerly inhabited by Rephaim, whom the Ammonites call Zamzummim, 21 a people great and numerous and as tall as the Anakites. The Lord wiped them out, so that [the Ammonites] dispossessed them and settled in their place, 22 as He did for the descendants of Esau who live in Seir, when He wiped out the Horites before them, so that they dispossessed them and settled in their place, as is still the case. 23 So, too, with the Avvim who dwelt in villages in the vicinity of Gaza: the Caphtorim, who came from Crete, wiped them out and settled in their place. —

3:9 Sidonians called Hermon Sirion, and the Amorites call it Senir — 10 all the towns of the Tableland and the whole of Gilead and Bashan as far as Salcah and Edrei, the towns of Og’s kingdom in Bashan. 11 Only King Og of Bashan was left of the remaining Rephaim. His bedstead, an iron bedstead, is now in Rabbah of the Ammonites; it is nine cubits long and four cubits wide, by the standard cubit!

(See also Gen 6:1-4 14:5, 15:20, 36:20, Josh 3:13, 13:13, MAP)

In the book of Numbers, we read quotes from the book of Wars of YHWH. In Joshua and other books, we read of the book of Yashar. In the book of Kings, we read of the Chronicles of the Kings. So, it is not uncommon for the Bible to quote other books. Sometimes the poems, such as Exodus 15 or Numbers 21:27-30 are quoted without reference. I believe these two sections in Dt. 2 were copied from another source.

I will not write, now, about textual criticism, however. I will write about the function these sections serve in explaining Israel’s conquering its northern border.

Emim, Refaim, Zamzumim words of fear, more on this later. ]]> http://torah.originaljewish.com/2006/07/28/devarim-5766-ancient-texts-in-an-ancient-text/feed/ http://torah.originaljewish.com/2006/07/27/prayer-for-peace/ http://torah.originaljewish.com/2006/07/27/prayer-for-peace/#comments Thu, 27 Jul 2006 21:54:00 +0000 OJ http://torah.originaljewish.com/posts/2006/07/27/prayer-for-peace/ I got engaged last Friday and a friend said that a bride and groom have extra merit when saying blessings, so I wrote this, shatuf befi.

Yehi retzono shel manhig haolam lehafkiah einei hasonim vetokfim, leharbot shalvah veshaanan beolam velehafshir hafsharot tovot al kol mahklokot bein shehem lesheim shamayim, o lo lesheim shamayam. Ve she nire shalom veyehesim tovim bimhera beyamenu, amen

May it be the will of the ruler of the world to open the eyes of the haters and attackers, to increase tranquility and repose in the world and to make good compromises whether for the sake of heaven or not for the sake of heaven. and that we should see peace and good relations soon in our days. amen

Chapter 31 begins with God commanding Moses’s last act, to correct (NQM M) what the Midianites did, and to separate out fighters in order to reprove (NQM B) Midian for their sin. These two uses of NQM in parallel teach the intent of the bloodshed that follows, to return the Israelites to God by punishing the Midianites. (note: parallel)

While the story as written is unlikely to be historical, it nonetheless shows a middle stage in the relationship between Israel and the wide-ranging kingdoms of Midian. When Moses was young, he lived among them and married a Midianite priest’s daughter. Her father maintained strong ties to Moses (Exodus 19).

In this story all Midianite men and female non-virgins are killed (while the virgins may be married). By the time of Ezra and Nehemia, any intermarriage with the surrounding nations was prohibited. (Deuteronomy lays out different conditions for taking women in war).

That being said, if the sin in this story is related to Bilaam and Baal Peor (an idol), then why the later complete prohibition of marriage with other nations under Ezra and Nehemia. In the story of Dinah and Schechem (Gen 34:21), for example, intermarriage is seen as a exemplary of a peaceful relationship, just as Beit Hillel and Beit Shammai later intermarried (Eruvin 13b?) in Deut 7:3

3 You shall not intermarry with them: do not give your daughters to their sons or take their daughters for your sons. 4 For they will turn your children away from Me to worship other gods, and the Lord’s anger will blaze forth against you and He will promptly wipe you out. 5 Instead, this is what you shall do to them: you shall tear down their altars, smash their pillars, cut down their sacred posts, and consign their images to the fire.
6 For you are a people

Only the Moabites and Moabites are completely forbidden to intermarry, for a historical sin Yevamot 76b (except Ruth and Orpah 4:13). The Bible seems to have a mixed message on intermarriage. Joseph married the daughter of an Egyptian priest (Gen 41:45), so presumably, idol worship wasn’t a forbidden trait in wives then.

Going back to the parashah, what had the Midanites done to deserve a virtual genocide? If the crime was sexual licentiousness on the part of Midianite women and Israelite men, why are the Midianite men killed? Is the tradition correct that Bilaam asked the Midianite women to engage in cultic sex with the Israelite men at Baal Peor (San. 106a; Yer. ib. x. 28d; Num. R. l.c.) ? Shouldn’t the punishment then be to anyone involved in the act, not just the non-virgins? Isn’t collective punishment, especially collective near genocide something to be frowned upon? How could God command this as Moses’s last act?

It is strange, by comparison, that everyone who worshipped the Golden Calf was killed, but not all Israelite men who cohabited with Midianite women were killed.

Looking at the quasi-historicity of the text, it appears that later events, perhaps in the time of Judges (21:10-12) recast the story to tell the contemporary audience of the importance of monotheism, of worshipping YHWH— not as even later texts would consider it as a matter of intermarriage.

To summarize, the writers of the early Bible (Torah, Neviim), saw deviance from strict monotheistic worship as a captial offense. Anything that diluted the Godly purity of the Israelite people would be punished. Foreign worship (????? ???, ???”?) not only led away from God, it made you a bad person. Since Israel became a nation, the writers of the Bible were concerned with not just a loss of belief in God, but a loss of the moral system that such a belief necessitates (Hosea 6:6 For I desire mercy, and not sacrifice, and the knowledge of God rather than burnt-offerings.) Viewed in that light, where the Torah sees foreign worship as immoral for Israelites (Deut 4:19), we begin to understand the severity of the crime.

In today’s terms, though breaking with the Jewish people should not be considered a capital offense, we can perhaps use the metaphor that moral behavior is Jewish behavior (note, this emphasize has shifted to legalism in some communities). It is therefore our job to revive those dead to Jewish values (i.e. moralism) through an understanding of the moral demands of being Jewish. Above all, we must do so diplomatically, and not as our forefathers did.

Dvar Peor

See Balak, women whoring with men, Pinhas ended it.

Parallel Command

Bemidbar 25:17-18 TzRR

?? ??????? ?????????????????? ???????????? ???????? ?? ????? ?????????? ???? ?????? ?????????????? ???????????????? ?????? ??????????????????? ????????????? ?????????? ???????????? ???????? ???????? ?????????? ??????????????????? ????????????????????

Unlikely To Be Historical

Some debate as to the historicity of the story p.178 based on utter destruction, numbers, booty, no injuries

Marry Midianites

31:15 Moses said to them, “You have spared every female! 16 Yet they are the very ones who, at the bidding of Balaam, induced the Israelites to trespass against the Lord in the matter of Peor, so that the Lord’s community was struck by the plague. 17 Now, therefore, slay every male among the children, and slay also every woman who has known a man carnally; 18 but spare every young woman who has not had carnal relations with a man.

Moses Married a Midianite

Moses Exodus 2:21, Bemidbar 12:1

Ezra Nehemia on Intermarriage

Forbidden Ezra Nehemia 10:2-3,44, Nehemiah 10:31

Deut on Taking Women in War

Okay Devarim 21:10-14

Deut 21:10 When you take the field against your enemies, and the Lord your God delivers them into your power and you take some of them captive, 11 and you see among the captives a beautiful woman and you desire her and would take her to wife, 12 you shall bring her into your house, and she shall trim her hair, pare her nails, 13 and discard her captive’s garb. She shall spend a month’s time in your house lamenting her father and mother; after that you may come to her and possess her, and she shall be your wife. 14 Then, should you no longer want her, you must release her outright. You must not sell her for money: since you had your will of her, you must not enslave her.

There are two transmissions in parashat pinhas, the transmission of authority to Joshua before Moses is “gathered unto his people”(27:13), and the apportioning of the land of Canaan to the males living at that time.

There are two traditions regarding how the torah was given. Reish Lakish says at Sinai all at once (???? ????? ?????), whereas R’ Yohanan says it was given scroll by scroll (????? ????? ?????) (Gitin 60a). This parashah strongly supports the latter theory as not only does Moses not know the answer to whether fatherless, brotherless daughters should inherit their ancestral land (27:1-11), but that this divine decision is later challenged and changed at the end of the book (31:1-13). The Revelation at Sinai clearly was not enough to rule in this case.

The word used for Moses to transmit his authority is SMK ???, meaning to lean. The words normal usage in this sense is that the an animal to be offered was leaned upon to display the selection of the animal and, in some cases, the transmission of sins to the animal.

Now, the word for inheriting land that is used for males is YRSh/??? or NTN/???, both the more common usage. The word used in this parashah for daughters inheriting land is ‘BR/?????, passing or transmission of the land. The distinction being made is that men rightfully inherit land that is theirs, whereas women are “passed the land”??? ?? ????? ?????? ??? ??: ???? ???? ????? ?????? ????” (Sifri beMidbar 134). “It is passed from the appropriate, to the not appropriate.??? ????? ?? ?? ????? ???? (ibn Ezra, Olam haTanakh p.169)” Moreover, only the fatherless, brotherless daughters can be passed the ancestral land. Mothers, Aunts, Sisters, etc. cannot.

In other words, the triumph of the women in this story is very clearly within an established patriarchy, where even the language belies that women are only passed the land so that it stays within the (patriarchical) tribe.

Both the language of transmitting authority and inheriting land denote a direct interaction between the giver and the receiver. The Torah is essentially allowing women a passive role in transmitting land from male to male.

The story, therefore, teaches us two things. One, that the revelation is open to challenge and to rewriting. And two, that even the revisions may be revised. The Torah may have been progressive in its time, but in our time, we must used its own principles to judge its conclusions.

The Torah teaches what’s known as kashrut/The Dietary Laws in three texts:

• The Prohibition of Seething a Kid in its mother’s milk (Exodus 23:19, 34:26, Deut 14:21)
• The Types of animals permitted or forbidden to eat (Lev 11:1-47, Deut 14:3-21).
• The prohibition of eating blood (Deut 12:13-25, Lev 17:10-14, this parshah). It includes that the animals must be killed at the neck (Schehitah ?????)to be kosher.
• • Calf must stay seven days with mother and can’t be killed on same day as its parent.(Lev 22:26-28)
  • Send away a mother bird from the nest (Deut. 22:6)

Now, for some background.

Biblical Scholars recognize that the book of Leviticus is composed of two distinct layers– the majority of it (P source) and the Holiness Code (H source). The Holiness Code runs from chapters 17-26, and possibly chapter 11. Besides its linguistic differences from the rest of the book, thematically, it includes a broader focus on how non-priests can be closer to God. Specifically, in the early chapters of Leviticus, ??? QDSh/Holiness means a separation, a removal or dedication of something to God.

??? QDSh/Holiness

In the Holiness code (H), ???/QaDoSh can mean something like Godliness. “You shall be holy, for Holy am I, YHWH, your God” (19:1). Since God cannot be holy under the first definition, the second one must be employed here. It is because of the inclusion of the (very popular to discuss) the ethical laws in this section that many people are not aware of the changing shades of meaning of “Holiness”.

How does the blood talked about in the Holiness code relate to the second definition of “holiness”?

In this week’s double portion, I will follow the meaning of “blood” from the theme of expiation, to food, to offerings, to life, avarice, to menstruation, to not imitating foreign practices, and to not worshiping other gods. I will focus on how this applies to the Dietary Laws.

Life

Expiation From Sin

In any case, 1) the blood signifies the life force (nefesh) of the creature and 2) it belongs to God. Since God created the life, the pouring the blood on the altar or sprinkling it on the cover are necessary parts of offering the animal to God and lead to the expiation of sins and the purging of uncleanliness from the Sanctuary (16:14-16).

Niddah / Menstruation

Pagan Practices of Surrounding Nations

Eating Meat

Application

So, what is the ???? ????/relevance of this blood taboo on eating meat? The Torah connects eating blood with disrespecting the Source of Life. Leviticus 11:1-47 talks about what animals can be eaten; here we learn how to eat them. (Leviticus (P/H) lacks the law of seething a kid in its mother’s milk, Exodus 23:19, 34:26, Deut 14:21). Specifically, last week I rejected the niddah laws outright. However, I reject them because their values are oposed to mine. I see the Torah menstrual blood taboo as irrelevant and hurtful.

The difference between how I see a law as irrelevant and how the many secularists before me saw it, is that I would like to keep the spirit of the law, an aspect of its historical development, and as much of its traditional practice as possible. In addition, I keep materials in my home that allow someone more strict or traditional to eat, even if its not on my usual dishes.

I see that the principle of taking a life in spilling blood. Since that life doesn’t belong to us, it was historically given to God on the Altar or covered by earth. Today, it is enough to refrain from eating bloody meat to recognize that eating meat involves the taking of a life. (Note: Halakhically, fish blood doesn’t count as blood)

Implication

I take the risk of making value judgement on Torah commandments because I want to observe them, but they conflict with my worldview (weltanschauung).

The laws regarding menstrual impurity belie a view of blood flow as dirty, unclean, impure, and possibly dangerous. I cannot accept that. I can, however, accept that we must make concessions in killing an animal for food.

In Leviticus 11 we learned that only the “clean” animals are permitted to eat. In this parasha, we learn that the price for eating meat is not eating the blood, because that is the life of the animal, and its life belongs to God.

Conclusion

I, therefore, accept the Jewish tradition of preparing meat to be as bloodless as possible as it shows deference to the Source of Life. However, I keep the spirit of the law by, for example, deciding when to eat dairy after meat by when the taste of the meat is gone, so that I do not mix the tastes of dairy (life) and meat (death).

This understanding of “not boiling a kid in its mother’s milk” causes difficulty because it would, by extension, prohibit eating eggs with chicken or caviar with fish. According to Halakha, fish blood is considered pareve (should you want to eat it)! I resolve this by saying bal Tosif, tzarikh sof ladavar (M Pisha 1:7), this is a place where I must lay my boundary and maintain community. My principles are ancient and my practice respectful. How do you respect life when eating?

Notes

Live By Them:

Gerim:

Saul and Eating Blood:

Hunting: An interesting note is that though hunting animals is permitted, the form of hunting is Tsayid, meaning trapping. Because even wild animals must be slaughtered (???) at the neck and not mortally wounded, the wild animals must be trapped rather than shot at. In later Jewish Law, hunting especially for sport is forbidden as it causes unnecessary pain to the animal (tzaar baale hayim ??? ???? ????).

Risk: A slippery slope risks that can lead to secularism or apostasy

• One, is that this is probably not what the Torah meant, since it’s redundant. However, as the original meaning of the text was not paramount to the Rabbis, I can let it slide.
• Two, BZ learns from the categories of the list that the topic is incestuous or adulterous relationships. However, the list also includes bestiality, sex with a menstruant, and leaves out the man’s daughter, nieces, and wife of his mother’s brother.
• In context, the verse is bookended by prohibitions of being like the following nations 18:1-4 and 20:22-26. I would need to be convinced that the Torah approved of non-incestuous same-sex relationships. Whether this impacts on his midrash I have not yet decided.

In any case, bravo on a brilliant understanding of the text using classical methods.
Mah Rabu:

Likewise, Leviticus 18:22 (by way of the kelal ufrat uchlal that we have explained above) constructs the prototype that mishkevei ishah refers specifically the incestuous and adulterous relationships of the sort listed in Leviticus 18, so that Leviticus 20:13 can also be understood to refer only to these categories of same-sex relationships.

For example, when I went to the Israel rally in DC a couple of years ago, a speaker stated that the Palestinians felt pain. A bunch of people booed. I was upset at them, but neither cheered nor made other noise. The news reported that the crowd booed the speaker. I just wished the speaker had given us something to cheer for so we could be heard, too. It made Jews look bad.
Live the Questions:

I have two rules for rallies that I’d like to introduce here, based on two unfortunate parts of the Darfur rally.

Rule One:
A rally speaker should check in with other consituencies before invoking them.

One of the rabbis who spoke at the rally went on and on about the “historic Black-Jewish partnership for social justice,” and spoke as if there were an unbroken connection between Rabbi Heschel marching in 1965 and today. Now, I am extremely proud of the contributions Jews made to the civil rights movement as freedom riders, as voter-registration activists during the Summer of Freedom, as leaders who lent their voices to the struggle. However, we haven’t really stuck our necks out for the African-American community very much since then. So invoking the “historic Black-Jewish partnership for social justice” feels downright disrespectful.

How do religious people enhance their capacity for feeling compassion?

They would engage in a deepening of their relationship with God, because all that is good in us is a reflection of the divine. As we grow in intimacy with God and so become more God-like ourselves, we will begin to reflect those attributes. It is why we say, “Be compassionate as your heavenly father is compassionate.”

As you grow closer to God, you become more aware of God’s concern for the other. You realise that this spirituality is not a lonely journey. It is about growing in a relationship with a community. You then realise that your own humanity depends on that of the other. In Genesis God makes it clear to Adam that it is not good for him to be alone.

You have spoken of the African concept of “ubuntu”, that “a person is a person through other persons”. Is this key to compassion?

You are human because of your relationships. I am because you are”

This is the idea that you cannot be human in isolation. A solitary human being is a contradiction in terms. You are human precisely because of relationships; you are a relational being or you are nothing. I am because you are. As you grow in your relationship with God, you find this has repercussions on your relationships with others. Hence the two fundamental laws in Christianity: love God and love your neighbour.

In your work on reconciliation in South Africa and Northern Ireland, you encourage victims and perpetrators to talk about their own suffering in order to encourage feelings of compassion. Why is this important?

The word compassion means “suffering with”. You want to enter into the other’s pain, their anguish, passion and suffering. In my reconciliation meetings, when the perpetrator talked about his own upbringing in a deprived and poor home, the victim who was listening to them was almost always affected. We had one case in Northern Ireland where the victim said that if he had been brought up in the circumstances in which the perpetrator had been, he was certain he too would have done what this guy did. It is about trying to get someone to understand how the other turned out to be who they are.

From issue 2549 of New Scientist magazine, 29 April 2006, page 48

This quote from the end of Metsora sums up a section on sexual impurity. The Torah recognizes five source of sexual impurity: abnormal and normal sexual flows of men and women as well as intercourse. But why the dire warning “lest they die through their uncleanliness”? The table below summarizes theses states.
15:32-33 Torat ha Zav

There are five basic contacts that transmit impurity. The portion doesn’t seem to mention directly touching the person. You may become impure by sitting or lying on something he or she lied on, but touching the bedding or article sat or lied on, or contacting their fluids.

The first thing to notice is that both men and women need to bring two birds to sacrifice 7 days after the stopping of their sexual flow. However, for men, this is only true if his flow is unusual. For ejaculation with or without a woman, he may wash and be clean that evening. The exception to this is if he has sex with an impure woman. In that case, he acquires her state of impurity.

Now, a little word on language. The word here for sexual flow is zav. Zav is one of the words used to describe the bounty of the Promised Land. It is a land oozing (zav) with (goat) milk and (date) honey. It’s not a flow like a waterfall or a brook, but rather it is a kind of seeping presence.

For a man, a state of zav is always a sickness. A normal seminal emission for a man is called “shikhvat zera / the seed of laying “. A woman’s flow is described as “zov dam” either at the time of her “niddah” or not. Zov dam means something like “blood ooze”. It doesn’t sound nice, but unfortunately there’s really not a word for it besides “flow”, which isn’t accurate.

By the time of the Mishnah, a woman who had not yet immersed in a mikveh mayim to cleanse herself of her menstrual impurity was called a Niddah. However, in the time of the Torah, niddah was a state of infirmity, not a name for the woman herself. There have been various attempts to explain what Niddah means. A common understanding as advanced by Prof. Moshe Greenberg is that Niddah is from NDH meaning to exile or exclude. Hence, a Niddah would be a woman excluded from relations with her husband.

I opened this dvar with the verse “You shall put the Israelites on guard against their uncleanliness” (15:31). The Hebrew from this verse is ambiguous. The word vehizartem was translated by NJPS as from the room ZHR, means to warn, put on guard. But doing so assumes the Torah is speaking in a kind of slang, by dropping the H in ZHR, which it does occasionally do. However, there is no need to add the H to the word, as it may be understood with the root NZR meaning to separate or remove. (The Targum translates it accordingly as veTaFriShuN).

This understanding gets at the heart of the Biblical view of sexual impurity. The Torah not only sees menstruation as an infirmity, but it sees any discharge as putting you in a kind of diminished state. Later in Leviticus we read that the priests could have no disabilities or flaws when serving God (21:16-21) and that even the animal offerings has to be pure and flawless (22:20-26). Verse 15:31 continues “that they not die in their impurity, and that they impurify My Sanctuary which is among them”. In other words, having a sexual discharge is just as serious an imperfection before God as a priest with too long legs or an animal with boils. It diminishes you.

It makes me uncomfortable that the Torah views anything sexual as dirty. I see it as natural and good. Moreover, the implications of this worldview on having egalitarian congregations today is clear: The impurity of women is more severe and longer lasting than that of men. If the priest can’t be sexually impure, how can we have a sexually impure woman lead the services?

The obvious response is that we’re all impure today. Without a Temple to bring our offerings to, we cannot complete the expiation process. Even if, theoretically, women spend more of their lives Toraitically (deoraita) impure than men, it is of no matter. We cannot accept the Torah’s system of rendering normal processes impure. In addition, what other diseases are there that make you impure? I can only think of Tsaraat which we don’t have today. Why focus on sexual discharges exclusive of other diseases?

Normally, I try to find a value in even outdated Torah values. Perhaps there is something to only being permitted to have sex with your wife for half the month. Perhaps it can rejuvenate your lust. But, in my opinion, sexual taboos can only lead to harm.

Just think of all the Orthodox men and women out there who don’t even touch each other just because they might end up having intercourse during the woman’s period! It must be at least half of women out there who don’t even want to have sex when menstruating. And because of this, these people won’t dance at weddings or even have mixed seating so that families can sit together. Do we need to be so afraid of sex?

In the more liberal communities, these laws have even less relevance. We understand that sexual discharges don’t make you a bad person. We understand that it is more important to emphasize that people have sex as couples in loving relationships, than that we try to enforce abstinence. If the relationship is respectful and mature, that is enough.

I don’t believe that I am off topic here. If we are to take the values in this portion of the Torah to heart, then we are engage in a paradigm that views sex as especially dirty. And given that a healthy sexuality is a part of a healthy lifestyle, I have to say to the Torah: Let us celebrate life and not death. The ritual of mikveh mayim to celebrate rebirth is wonderful. We shouldn’t see the menstruation itself as an infirmity. Let us celebrate the body in its normal routine. And let us celebrate love as we are fortunate to find in our lives.

????? ?????/? ???? ???? ????? ??????? ?????? ??????. ?? ??? ????? ?????? ??? ?? ?????? ?? ?????? ?? ?? ???? ????

Hareni mahzik/a mehadash hehametz hahefker shehifkarti vebiarti bereshuti. Kol Hametz ve seor she silakti yehe li lishtamesh bah velehenot bah kol yemot hashana.

“I hereby take possession anew of the ownersless hametz that I abandoned and removed that is in my domain. All hametz and leaven that I put away will be mine to use and enjoy all the days of the year.”