Defilement Contracted by Childbirth
12:1 God spoke to Moses, saying:
2 “Speak to the Israelites, saying: ‘Returning to the laws of ritual defilement, we will now discuss the ways in which the human body itself becomes a source of ritual defilement.
If a woman miscarries even a dissolved fetus (and, all the more so, a fully formed fetus) or successfully gives birth to a male child, she becomes ritually defiled and remains so for seven days. Specifically, she becomes ritually defiled to the same degree as she does during the days of her menstrual flow, as will be explained later, even if she did not bleed during the birth.
3 On the eighth day after the birth of a viable boy, the flesh of his foreskin must be circumcised.
4 She must immerse herself in a mikveh after seven full days have passed since she gave birth; this immersion purifies her from the ritual defilement caused by the birth. For the following 33 days, she will remain in a transitional state, during which defilement-by-bleeding is deferred and her uterine blood is therefore not a source of defilement should she bleed. After the 40th day from birth, uterine bleeding will once again ritually defile her, as will be explained later.
Normally, once someone has immersed in a mikveh in order to purify himself of ritual defilement, he is permitted to eat terumah after nightfall (if he is a priest or qualifying member of his household), and he is permitted to eat sacrificial meat and enter the Tabernacle precincts the following morning. In the case of a woman who gives birth to a boy, however, these cutoff points are delayed: she may not eat any consecrated food, nor may she enter the Sanctuary, until the 40 days of her purification from this form of ritual defilement have been completed. Thus, she may only eat terumah after nightfall following the 40th day, and she may only eat sacrificial meat and enter the Tabernacle precincts the following morning.
A CLOSER LOOK
[2] To the same degree as she does during the days of her menstrual flow: After the woman immerses herself in a mikveh following the completion of the week following the birth, she is technically permitted to resume marital relations with her husband, even if she continues to bleed for some time afterward. Furthermore, for the duration of her “non-defiling-blood” period (40 days for the birth of a boy and 80 days for the birth of a female), marital relations are permitted even if bleeding resumes after having stopped.
However, inasmuch as Jewish practice (which, in this case as in many others, has been enshrined in Jewish law) applies the menstrual restrictions on marital relations to any sighting of blood, as will be explained later, a woman who gives birth must wait until she has ceased bleeding totally (and then wait a full week) before immersing in a mikveh and resuming marital relations.
INNER DIMENSIONS
[4-5] She will remain: The Hebrew word used here for “remain” (תשב) means “sit.” The Torah frequently employs the image of God “sitting”; this image is meant to convey either of two notions: that of descent, similar to how we lower ourselves to sit “down”; or that of changelessness, as in the idiom of sitting “still.”
These two connotations of sitting allude to the two types of Divine creative energy (“light”): immanent light (memalei kol almin), which descends to enliven all aspects of creation, no matter how low their spiritual consciousness; and transcendent light (sovev kol almin), which is unchanged by creation, enveloping all reality at once and equally.
Both these types of light are produced through processes of constraint, albeit of different varieties. God creates His transcendent light by willing it to shine; this act of will is a self-imposed focusing of His undifferentiated primal self-revelation on the act of creation. We may thus describe it as a “qualitative” constraint; the light is not limited in intensity, but it is focused on creation rather than on anything else. In contrast, God creates His immanent light by constricting the intensity of the transcendent light; we may therefore describe it as a “quantitative” constraint.
The woman who gives birth, in this context, is an allegory for how God creates the universe: her “remaining”/“sitting” alludes to the two varieties of constraint that produce the two types of Divine light that create and sustain the world. The purpose of both of these acts of constraint is to create a world antithetical to Divine consciousness and revelation, which can then be transformed into being consummately conducive to Divine consciousness and revelation.
