Purity, Body, and Self in Early Rabbinic Literature. DR. S Mira Balberg

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СКАЧАТЬ and impurity as significantly different from what preceded it, is deeply connected to several conceptual developments introduced in the Mishnah, which greatly increased the transferability of impurity, and thereby made it a much more pervasive and all-encompassing reality. While some of these conceptual developments can be traced back, in a nascent form, to the Second Temple period, the cumulative effect of all these developments taken together is a substantial expansion of the realm of impurity and the transformation of impurity into an ever-present factor in the rabbinic construction of everyday life. In what follows, I will examine three central manifestations of the increased transferability of impurity in rabbinic legislation: the graded system of impurity, principles of duplication of impurity, and expansion of biblical modes of transmission of impurity.

      The Graded System of Impurity.As I mentioned, in the Priestly Code the only participants in the impurity system, apart from the primary sources of impurity, are those who have direct contact with these primary sources. In contrast, in the mishnaic system even persons and objects several times removed from the source can be affected in terms of impurity. For the rabbis, impurity does not end with whatever had direct contact with the source. Rather, even an item that did not touch the source directly but only touched something that touched the source (or even only something that touched something that touched the source) is affected by the source’s impurity, albeit in an attenuated manner. In order to understand this admittedly complex principle, which has no parallel in other codes of impurity,⁵² it is necessary to delve for a moment into the rabbinic understanding of the concept of impurity or, more accurately, into the rabbinic understanding of what is being transmitted from one entity to another in the course of the contraction of impurity.

      The effect of impurity is depicted in the Mishnah in a highly physical or even mechanical manner, as if by a transmission of substance from one entity (human or nonhuman) to another entity through contact. The verb that is most commonly coupled with the word tum’a (impurity) in the Mishnah is qbl (to receive), the same verb used to describe, for instance, the pouring of liquid from one receptacle to the other, as if to suggest that the impure substance A transmits something to B.⁵³ This “something” that is being transmitted is, in effect, the ability to make other things impure: in the Mishnah, to say that A makes B impure is to say that A gives B the capacity to affect C. Accordingly, the rabbis distinguish between making something ritually impure (letamē) and making something ritually disqualified (lifsol): to make something impure is to invest it with the ability to make others impure; to make something disqualified is only to prohibit this thing from being used for sacred purposes.⁵⁴ For instance, an impure barrel of wine will make whatever touches it and whoever drinks from it impure, whereas a disqualified barrel of wine cannot be used in the sacral realm (that is, it cannot be given to the priests) but does not make others impure.

      In the biblical impurity system, the chain of impurity almost always ends with B, the thing that contracted impurity directly from the source. The common paradigm is that when the source of impurity A (for example, a menstruating woman) touches another person or object B (for example, her husband), then B becomes impure in an attenuated manner, that is, only for one day. There is no indication that B can convey impurity to anything else, and it is actually hard to think what repercussions such doubly attenuated impurity would have for whatever touched B.⁵⁵ In contrast, in the Mishnah the chain of impurity does not end with B, which had direct contact with the source, but continues to move further in a graduated manner in such a way that even an item that is five times removed from the source is affected by its impurity in a minor form. Thus, if A is the primary source of impurity, B touched A, C touched B, D touched C, E touched D, and F touched E, F is still affected by A in terms of impurity. Let us illustrate this with a hypothetical example:

      1 Jill (A) is menstruating; when she touches Jack (B), Jack becomes impure in the once-removed degree (in rabbinic terms, Jack is “first” of impurity, whereas Jill, the primary source, is a “father” of impurity).

      2 Jack (B) touches Josh (C); Josh is now impure in the twice-removed degree (in rabbinic terms, he is “second” of impurity).

      3 Josh (C) touches a heave-offering of oil (D); the oil becomes impure in the thrice-removed degree (it is “third of impurity”).

      4 The oil (D) is poured on a meal-offering designated for the Temple (E); the meal-offering becomes “fourth of impurity.”

      5 A piece of the meal-offering (E) falls into a container with purifying water (F); the water is now “fifth of impurity.”

      As this example illustrates, once the item in question is twice-removed from the source or more, its impact on other items becomes increasingly limited, and is restricted to sacred articles that are particularly vulnerable to impurity: a “second” of impurity can only affect heave-offerings (terumah), holy articles (qodesh), and purifying water (mei hattat); a “third” of impurity can only affect holy articles and purifying water; and a “fourth” of impurity can only affect purifying water.⁵⁶ Nevertheless, this graded system indicates that for the rabbis of the Mishnah, the “contagious” effect of impurity is not limited to direct contact with the source, but is seen as continuing to travel well beyond it.

      The extension of the effect of impurity beyond immediate contact with the source incorporates a whole new array of participants into the rabbinic impurity system. The realm of impurity is no longer confined to the sources of impurity and to objects and persons in their immediate vicinity, but consists of a number of concentric circles. At the center stands the primary source of impurity (“the father” in rabbinic terminology); at the circle that surrounds it stand persons and objects that had direct contact with the source (“first of impurity”); at the next circle stand those that had contact with those who had contact with the source of impurity (“second of impurity”), and so forth. The farther the circle from the center, the less likely the contraction of impurity is to be perceived as a noticeable event by a person in that circle: for instance, while a person would presumably be aware that he touched a menstruating woman, a priest is hardly likely to be aware that the person who brought him a heave-offering touched a menstruating woman, and thus that the heave-offering too is impure.

      Whereas the graded system of impurity is guided by the view that an object or person can be affected by the source of impurity in an attenuated manner even without having direct contact with it, other principles of transmission of impurity in the rabbinic system put forth the notion that indirect contact with a source of impurity can sometimes generate the same degree of impurity as direct contact. The Mishnah enhances the transferability of impurity to include forms of indirect contact in two ways: first, by suggesting that in some instances impurity can be “duplicated” in such a way that even something twice-removed from the source contracts impurity as if it touched the source itself; and second, by notably expanding the biblical modes of conveyance of impurity. Whereas the second development cannot be traced in Qumranic writings and seems to be uniquely rabbinic, the first development apparently has its roots in the shared purity discourse of the Second Temple period, and its echoes can be found in Qumranic legislation. I therefore address the notion of “duplication” of impurity first, and then turn to the expansion of biblical categories of contact.

      Duplication of Impurity.(i) Liquids. A central principle in the rabbinic system of purity and impurity is that liquids have the power to duplicate impurity ad infinitum. That is to say, if impure liquids have contact with any object, they make this object impure as if it had direct contact with the source that initially made the liquids impure. To illustrate this simply, if Jill (A) touches Jack (B) while Jack’s hands are wet, and Jack then touches a loaf of bread (C) with his wet hands, the loaf of bread (C) becomes impure as if Jill (A) herself touched this loaf of bread. This unique quality of liquids is presented in several rabbinic passages with the cryptic idiom “those that made you impure did not make me impure, but you made me impure” (metam’ekha lo tim’uni ve-ata timetani).⁵⁷ In this idiom, the object that contracted impurity (in the example suggested above, the loaf) is depicted as complaining to the mediating liquid about the absurdity of СКАЧАТЬ