No doubt you've wondered, as I have, about the unusual law in this week's sedra: a woman who gives birth enters a state of impurity. Why? Isn't child-bearing a positive thing, which should bring one to a higher state of purity?


Furthermore, the length of her impure status is doubled when she has a girl (14 days, as opposed to seven for a son). Do I detect the ugly scent of sexism at work here?


Let's put aside our preconceived notions and see this from a different angle.


Purity, in Jewish terms, is always linked to life. Where there is life, there is holiness, taharah. But when life is absent or removed, such as in a dead body, then tumah, or impurity, fills the vacuum. So, a corpse in Hebrew is called a chalal, or empty space, a word related to chol, mundane or profane, and is the highest level of tumah impurity.


A woman who has a child - life! - within her is profoundly pure, a creator. In fact, she cannot become a nidah or

A woman who has a child - life! - within her is profoundly pure.

enter a state of impurity at all during her pregnancy. But when that child is born and that life is removed from her body, the result is a temporary state of tumah. It is doubled when she delivers a girl, because her daughter will also someday be a carrier of life and then have that life removed.


When life is present, kedushah abounds; when life is absent, a trauma is created that must be conceded and confronted.


Life is also the theme of Parshat Hachodesh, the last of the four special parshiyot. It is always read on the last Shabbat of the calendar year (Nissan, of course, is month number one). The word chodesh - our term for counting time - is connected to chadash, "new." The linkage is crucial. While time inexorably marches on - whether we like it or not - we must view each unit of time as a new stage of life in which we can accomplish great things. Every year, every month, every day is a G-d-given opportunity to create kedushah.


We are not here in this world just to mark time or fill space; that is impurity personified. We are here to create life, to add life, to sanctify life - that is holiness and G-dliness.


The Torah records that the first Jewish woman - Sarah - lived to be 127: 100 plus 20 plus 7. Her age is listed that way to teach us the importance of appreciating the gifts and strengths we have at every point in our life: Whether as the precocious and innocent child of 7, the blossoming young adult of 20, or the wise matriarch of 100.


Some people think the calendar is always greener on the next page. Kids can't wait to get older, while grown-ups wish they were young again. A better approach is to live life to the fullest at every point on our personal time-line, so that we can look back when Adar fades into Nisan and say, a la Ol' Blue Eyes: "That was a very good year!"