By Rabbi Moshe Pogrow
The mitzvah of milah is the fundamental condition of the relationship between Hashem and the Jewish people. Milah requires that man subordinate his body to G-d’s will. In doing so, we actualize the potential for freedom, which is what the laws of tahara are intended to preserve. The orlah, representing the undisciplined, unmastered body, is the embodiment of belief in man’s lack of freedom, a belief that stems from the idea of tumah. Thus, we find many mitzvos in which the arel and the tamei are paralleled: both are prohibited from eating terumah and kodshim, and both are exempt from the mitzvah of re’iya b’regel. It appears that the day of milah restores to our consciousness the teaching of moral purity.
Hence, on the day of her son’s bris, the child’s mother too enters the stage of returning tahara. Moreover, on account of this day, the tumah and tahara cycle of the yoledes is shortened by half.
When a woman has given birth to a girl, the period of tumah and yemei tohar is doubled; and the words shvuayim k’niddasa imply that this cycle is seen as doubled: one cycle for the mother, similar to the cycle that follows the birth of a boy; and a second cycle for the daughter, as the second cycle of seven and 33 days takes the place of what would have been milah had the infant been a boy.
One of the basic character traits of the Jewish woman is her willingness to subordinate herself to the measure of morality. By contrast, a Jewish man are trained for purity of character through the sign dai of milah. Now, it appears that the tumah and tahara laws observed by women serve as equally forceful aids.
On the day of his son’s bris, a father fulfills the first of the duties incumbent upon him, and resolves to prepare his son for life: he must train him to walk before Hashem, in complete adherence to the Torah, and through his own conduct he must serve as a role model for his son to emulate in the future. So, too, following the birth of a daughter, the mother’s path to tahara is twice as long as it is after the birth of a son, impressing upon her the solemnity and magnitude of her task—to be an example and role model for the Jewish women of the future.
Indeed, the mother’s influence on the moral standards of her daughters is twice as great as that of her sons. With sons, the crucial part of their education comes from the father, as the sons see in him a model for their own future. With daughters, however, the mother is both a role model and a molder of character. Hence, after the birth of a girl, she must doubly prepare herself to ascend the path of purity —for her own sake, and for the sake of her newborn daughter.
Based on the commentary of Rav Shamshon Raphael Hirsch zt”l on Chumash, with permission from the publisher.
