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Parasha Metzora: Leviticus 14:01-15:33:
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"When a man loves a woman, she can bring him such misery."
My apologies to you, dear reader, if the content of this d'var Torah causes you any unpleasantness. This Torah portion was not read in early Reform services. Instead, a portion from one of the Prophets substituted. Some may consider its topic to be X-rated. I can assure you that it is all from our Torah and our Talmud. If you are uncomfortable with it, please set it aside for another time. These chapters however were studied vigorously not only by our sages but also by the Church fathers. The impact these chapters have had on Western society's view of sex, women's roles, women's rights and bodily fluids has been astounding.
Genesis says that God created men and women in His image. We were commanded to multiply, the first of the Torah's 613 Mitzvoth. We were created, as you know from your biology classes, with our females having the ova (eggs) that would, when fertilized by the male seed (sperm) grow into a child in the woman's uterine wall. If the egg does not embed in the wall, it is sloughed off monthly in what is called menses. It is a wonderful system made, as we are traditionally taught, in God's image by God. God would not make us full of dirty and contaminated fluids, would He?
"A man from whom there is a discharge of semen shall immerse his entire flesh in the water and remain contaminated until evening." (Lev. 15:16)
"Any bedding upon which the person with the discharge will recline shall be contaminated, and any vessel upon which he will sit shall become contaminate." (Lev. 15:04)
"Anyone who touches the flesh of this man...remains contaminated." (Lev. 15:07)
"If the contaminated person spits on someone, that person becomes contaminated (Lev. 15:08), as does any riding equipment on which he sits." (Lev. 15:09)
"A woman having had sex is contaminated until the evening (Lev. 15:18)
"When a woman has a discharge, her discharge being menstrual blood, she shall be in a state of separation for seven days and anyone touching her shall remain contaminated until the evening." (Lev. 15:19)
"Her bedding and clothes become contaminated and anyone having sex with her is contaminated for seven days." (Lev. 15:20-24)
The Talmud teaches that semen (zav-emission) is contaminated. It causes contamination to the emitter and anyone who touches it or him. The Talmud called a man who has had a seminal emission a baal keri. If one has a second and then a third emission, his level of contamination, and what he needs to do to purify himself increases. If one sits on a blanket that a baal keri had sat upon, he becomes contaminated. If he sits upon ten blankets, with the bottom most one being the only one that the baal keri sat on, he still becomes contaminated (Rashi). The Talmud extracts its laws of family purity, taharat ha mishpocha, from verses 15:19-28. The basis for the laws of a menstruant (niddah) and the period of time each month a man is forbidden to his wife (niddut) are found in these verses according to the sages. The rabbis posited that since husband and wife are sanctified to one another, these laws of family purity are the basis for the religious survival of the family unit.
Talmud Niddah 66A states that since it is difficult for a woman to know exactly when she has stopped menstruating, whether her discharge is menstrual blood, clotted blood, or another type of discharge (zavah), she needs to bring a "bedeka" cloth to her rabbi for him to look at it and make the determination if she is allowed to again cohabit with her husband. Since it is difficult to determine if the stains on this cloth are fresh blood, dried blood, or a zavah secretion, the Talmud says the women of
"Mundus Vult Decipi" means the world wants to be deceived. Our people did not invent family purity laws, nor did we take them to their furthermost degree. Other cultures that preceded us in the
If there is any area where Judaism goes to an absolute extreme, it is in the separation of the sexes, according to Rabbi David Rosenfeld. Traditionally, boys and girls were sent to separate schools on the pretext of sexual separation. However the effect was to keep girls unschooled and untaught in Torah and Talmudic laws that controlled their lives and keep them well versed in childcare, cooking, and other household duties. In a traditional synagogue men and women are separated with a mechitza partition. Mixed social gathering and dating were almost nonexistent. Match making with arranged shidduchs (engagements) was the norm.
The Talmud says a man and woman who are not married to each other cannot be alone in a place where it is unlikely for someone to intrude. How old can this woman be in order not to be alone with a man? Three years old is the answer. Why three? Because a three-year-old is capable of having sex. Someone younger than three can have sex, but her hymen will regrow, the rabbis teach, so she is still technically a virgin, and her father can still marry her off as unspoiled.
The Mishna states in Chagiga 1:08, that many of our precepts are as "mountains hanging on hairs." This means that mountains of technical details and laws are based on passing scriptural references. I can understand how society then needed to function with women subservient to men. I can understand also the use of slaves in this historical context. But I cannot condone nor can I tolerate seeing Jewish women – or any women – being dragged along, unwillingly, by their Talmudic hair. Granted, our Talmud is said to protect women with a ketubah (marriage contract), but if one reads the tractate in the Talmud called Ketuvot, one will find that the vast majority of the text is to protect the man's investment in his wife (or wives).
Dafs (folios) 6A and B discuss whether having sex with a virgin on Shabbat is allowed. Rabbi Simi says that one may not stuff a piece of cloth to seal a barrel. But Rabbi Shmuel says on Shabbat one may enter a narrow opening even though he may make pebbles fall. Rav Ami says it is wrong to lance a boil on Shabbat because pus in a boil is stored outside the flesh, but that virginal blood is stored inside the flesh. The pages go on like this discussing how one gives back a bride who is not a virgin, and how one can decide his wife's virginity. There is very little concern for the welfare of the bride, especially when she must be forced to testify that she was a virgin and to show proof of this with a bloodied rag. Remember also, in any traditional ketubah, it is the husband who can release his wife from marriage and pay her off. If a husband does not give his wife a Get (Jewish divorce), he is free to remarry as he may have many wives. The abandoned wife cannot remarry as she is still legally married. The liberal Jewish movement has made monumental inroads into this problem by making part of the marriage ketubah a promise of the husband to grant his wife a Get, in case of a civil divorce.
There are Talmudic reasons for a ketubah to be voided so a divorced woman is given nothing. This is not just for adultery. A woman's ketubah rights are voided if she serves him food that has not been tithed, has sex with him when menstruating, does not separate the challah, breaks a promise, goes to the market with her head uncovered, speaks to another man, or spins (sits with her legs spread) in public. Whose purity are we protecting with these taharat ha mishpocha? Whose family are we protecting? Or do these laws just protect the man's investment in his wife under the guise of family purity?
Judaism has never subscribed to the notion of men living together to gain spirituality through celibacy like monks and priests. But the church fathers got their interpretation of women as distractions to spirituality from our teachings. The Talmud when written was sex-segregated and patriarchal. Yes, we can quote passages about how God told Abraham to listen to Sarah as examples of how women have respect in traditional Judaism. But what did Sarah tell Abraham to do? She told him to kick Hagar and Ishmael out of the camp. A different reading might say that the entire Arab-Jewish conflict was based on a barren woman's jealousy. The rabbis of the Talmud, as I will give you examples, were easily aroused by women.
The only time they spent with women was as small children with their mothers, or in bed for a few moments with their wives. Because of their beliefs it was necessary for them to live their lives, not with women, but parallel to them. Some acted like monks during the day but had marital relations at night.
While there are Talmudic passages in which men recognized their own weak sexual nature and made many laws to keep women separate from men, some say that the Torah shows women as "anomalous, dangerous, dirty, and polluting" writes Jacob Neusner. Some write that the sages ascribe moral laxity to women incapable of sexual restraint. Leonie Archer claims that the rabbis consider women to be the sexual aggressors.
In Talmud Kiddushin, Mishna Chapter 4, Law 12 disallows a man from being alone with two women, as the rabbis posit sex could occur with one while the other watched, or with both. The same Mishna allows a woman to be alone with two men, as men are so Torah conscious they would protect each other from her advances. The Talmud teaches that if your business is with women; do not be alone with them. A man should not teach his son a trade that will let him be among women. (Can a traditional Jew be a gynecologist?) A woman can be alone with two men, but not if one is a child, because "she is not embarrassed to engage in sexual relations in the presence of a minor."
Rabbi Judah said that bachelors may not pasture small cattle – sheep and goats – because they would commit acts of bestiality, but the Talmud allows this because "Jewish men are not suspected of this." Did the rabbis miss the passages in the Torah about how if a man has sex with an animal both he and the animal are killed?
The Talmudic law says that one man cannot accompany two women and one of their dead children to the cemetery for burial for fear that they will seduce him. The Talmud also teaches that men should not hear a woman's voice, as they will find it seductive. This of course lends another validation for a mechitza during worship. Should the women in our society be subjected to humiliation because men cannot control themselves? Are the wearing of wigs, frum clothes, and hiding behind a mechitza needed because men will not take a metaphorical cold shower?
According to Rabbi Ismar Schorsch, past Chancellor of the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York City where modern Orthodox rabbis are trained, Judaism "avows the goodness of the human body. It is no less a mirror of God's grandeur than the soul. Judaism does not dichotomize human nature into body and soul, polar opposites locked in never-ending conflict. The flesh is not the devil's domain or the seat of our passions, to be expiated by the spirit."
Professor Jacob Milgrom in the new Anchor Bible commentary on Leviticus explains that to the desert Israelites, "blood was the arch symbol of life. Its oozing from the body was not the world view of the sign of demons, but was certainly a sign of death." If the intention of the author of the Torah laws was to have us appreciate life in all people, segregating women for a third of each month may have protected men from "a walking death," but certainly painted women as carriers of death. As we can see from any reading of history, scapegoating some group as bearers of evil, poisoners of wells, carriers of plagues, destroyers of economies, bloodsuckers of a nation's life force, can lead to pogroms, massacres, and shoahs.
Women are traditionally kept off the bimah as they could sexually snare men with their looks and voices and because they may be contaminated if they are in menses or recently gave birth. The Talmud says that women are released from commandments that are time bound (praying three times a day at specific times, for example) as raising children controls their time, and that mitzvoth comes first.
But the Talmud does not say a woman cannot do these mitzvoth if she takes the obligation upon herself. The Torah teaches that men are just as contaminated as menstruating women if they had an ejaculation of semen. Since the Talmud also teaches that it is a mitzvah to have marital relations on Shabbat evening, who is checking to make sure the men on the bimah at Saturday morning's services – who are touching the Holy scroll of our Torah – have purified themselves with a mickvah dip on the way to shul?
What would be the logical reason for not allowing women who have reached menopause, or who have raised their children, from appearing on the bimah? The rules of keeping women relegated to a position behind the mechitza barrier, not only in synagogues, but outside as well, do not hold up to logical inspection.
The Torah passages outlined in the d'var from this parasha that have been brought into Western civilization's canon, civil, and common law have served to keep 50 percent of the human race enslaved spiritually, financially and emotionally. For example, it was only relatively recently that women were given the right to vote in the United States.
There are those who believe that God wants women to submit willfully to their husbands. Our teachings say that women's menstrual blood, men's sperm, and the sex act cause contamination and need a dip in the mickvah, as well as a sacrifice to reclaim purity. Some rabbis, by teaching that the oral law was given by God on Mt. Sinai, have caused generations of suffering. These beliefs have caused an accepted misogynistic culture that still exists and is approved of in many quarters. If the pope can apologize to us for 2,000 years of mistreatment based on the Church's teachings, is it not high time for those who say their semicha (ordination) comes from traditional oral transmission to make amends for 2,500 years of women's suffering?
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