The concepts of Purity( TAHARA ) and Impurity (TUMAH) are returned to in these Torah portions. These concepts of Tahara (Purity) and Tumah (Impurity) do not relate to what their English translations wrongly portray. These concepts have nothing to do with hygiene and personal cleanliness (Clean and Unclean). They also have nothing to do with powers of goodness as opposed to powers of evil (pure and impure). They also cannot be seen as some type of blot or physical manifestation that needs to be removed or cleansed.
They are concepts that can only be explained in picture form. Being Tahor is about being a potential vessel for the sacred and the holy, while being Tameh is about losing that potential. They represent a state of being.
We see that Tumah is connected with death and decay. Such death and decay represents the opposite of holiness and spiritual growth. The most extreme example of this and therefore the most potent source of Tumah is the human corpse. That is also why various types of animal carcasses and certain types of insects that are connected to death and decay can transmit such spiritual impurity. In a similar fashion, certain diseases of the reproductive tract that cause decay are also sources of this state.
Yet that connection to death and decay is in fact a symptom and not the cause: The Kotzker Rebbe explains that Tumah can actually only set in when holiness departs. That is to say that many things and people in our reality have great potential to be filed with holiness. When that potential is lost, the state of lost potential is called Tumah.
That is the reason that one will never find the concept of Tumah or spiritual un-cleanliness ever being applied to anything that does not also have the potential for Tahara spiritual cleanliness. If it does not have the potential to be a vessel of the sacred and the holy, then it can never fall into the state of impurity and Tumah.
What then does all this have to do with the experience of childbirth?
Clearly a birth is a leaving of one state of being into another.
Leaving the womb in all its spiritual connotations is similar to leaving the Garden of Eden. Life and its expectation change dramatically. The possibilities of failing those expectations rise dramatically as well.
Our sages teach us that through a beautiful Midrash. It is in the womb that a baby exist between the heavenly spheres it came from and the our earthly reality. The Midrashic teaching discusses that the infant in that stage, a new body with a new soul, is immersed in Divine awareness. In the words of the Midrash, an angel teaches that infant all that he or she will need to know about the Divine nature of the world.
Yet just before the baby breaks forth into our physical world, out of the protective reality of the womb, an angel strikes the mouth of the baby right under the nose and leaves an imprint.
The baby then forgets all that it has been taught.
That loss of divine knowledge is a source of Tumah as well. As the Kotsker taught “Tumah can actually only set in when holiness departs".
Then what is the point? Why must that experience be experienced?
It may be to teach us that the rest of this infant's life is about recovery, not discovery. We have all experienced that truth. When one hears a deep spiritual truth, that truth resonates and the soul seems to "leap " at it.
Confronting death and the curtailment of possibilities is always the source of Tumah.
Experiencing rebirth and renewal like in the Mikveh (ritual bath) or through other affirming experiences is the Life-healing power of Tahara.
May that always be so in our lives.
Lilui Nishmat Yehudit bat Sinai veGolda Yocheved
Rabbi Moshe Kempinski, author of "The Teacher and the Preacher", is the editor of the Jerusalem Insights weekly email journal and co-owner of Shorashim, a Biblical shop and learning center in the Old City of Jerusalem, www,shorashimshop.com