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

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СКАЧАТЬ the source of impurity causes something else to move from its place, even without direct contact.⁷⁴ The quintessential example of this is a case in which a man with genital discharge is placed on one side of a scale and foods and liquids are placed on the other side of the scale: if the man’s weight tips the scale and causes the foods and liquids to move, they are rendered impure.⁷⁵ As several passages in tractate Zavim powerfully portray, the meaning of this form of contraction is that almost every daily activity in which a pure person and an impure person both partake, even without touching each other, can cause the pure person to contract impurity. To take just two examples:

      If a man with genital discharge and a pure man sat together in a boat or a raft, or rode an animal together, even though their clothes do not touch—[the clothes of the pure person] are impure on account of treading (teme’in midras, that is, impure as if the impure person physically trod on them).

      If they both sat on a beam, on a bench, on a railing of a bed, or on a pole while those are wobbly, if they climbed a tree that is unsteady . . . [the pure one’s clothes] are impure. (M. Zavim 3.1)

      R. Yehoshua says: If a menstruating woman sat with a pure woman in the same bed—the cap at the top of [the pure woman’s] head is impure on account of treading.

      If she sat in a boat, the items at the top of the mast are impure on account of treading. (M. Zavim 4.1)

      As these passages make clear, the notion of impurity contraction through shift makes the very physical presence of impure persons so powerful that the repercussions of indirect contact with them are identical to the repercussions of direct contact. In other words, the concept of shift-impurity inscribes everyday activities and interactions with a heightened potential of impurity: one need not only be careful whom one touches, but even with whom one sits, works, plays, rides, and so forth.

      (iii) Bodily fluids. While the biblical text makes it clear that persons with genital discharges are impure as such, and that mere contact with the external surface of their bodies suffices to convey impurity, it also implies that the most immediate source of impurity in these cases is the genital discharge itself. The rule that whatever the person with genital discharge sits, lies, or rides on is as impure as the person herself strongly suggests that the genital emissions were seen as the actual cause of impurity.⁷⁶ The rabbis make this point explicit, determining that menstrual blood and abnormal genital emissions convey the same kind of impurity as the persons who emitted them, but they also maintain that the innocuous bodily fluids of impure persons, namely, their urine and saliva, convey the exact kind of impurity as the impure persons themselves.⁷⁷ This idea is not entirely without biblical precedent, since the Priestly Code does mention that if a person with genital discharge spits on another person, the other person becomes impure.⁷⁸ But whereas the Priestly text seems to envision spitting as a form of direct contact with the impure person, the Mishnah maintains that even if one encounters the bodily fluids of an impure person in the street, and the impure person him- or herself is nowhere in sight, contact with these fluids conveys impurity. Unlike menstrual blood and genital discharges, saliva and urine are commonly found in the public domain. Since it is impossible to trace the original “owner” of these fluids and to discern whether he or she was pure or impure, the marketplace and the street are viewed in the Mishnah as potentially laden with impurity, as we will see in greater detail below.

      The extreme transferability of impurity in the Mishnah, which is expressed in the graded system of impurity, in the principles of “duplication,” and in the expansion of biblical modes of transmission, generates a radically new perspective on purity and impurity and their place in everyday life. This perspective, which is almost completely absent both from the Priestly Code and from the writings of Qumran, is that of the “innocent passerby,” that is, of a person whose body or possessions might contract impurity as a result of various daily interactions and encounters without his or her even being aware of it. The emergence of this new perspective in the discourse of purity and impurity, at the center of which stands not the unusual or noteworthy situation of the source of impurity but the person going about his or her most quotidian activities, constructs the mishnaic discourse of purity and impurity as fundamentally different from what preceded it.

      In view of the various principles presented above, it becomes clear that in the Mishnah, unlike in the Priestly Code or in Qumran, the contraction of impurity is construed as a default. The effect of impurity in its rabbinic construction is so far-reaching, and the inadvertent contraction of impurity so probable, that the management of impurity becomes an ongoing daily task for anyone who wishes to remain pure. The concern with impurity, as I will now turn to show, thus profoundly shapes the very experience of everyday life in the mishnaic discourse.

      MAPPING THE EVERYDAY AS A REALM OF IMPURITY

      Above I presented a number of prerabbinic and rabbinic principles that significantly increase the transferability of impurity, thus transforming the biblical picture in which impurity is confined in its scope and limited in its repercussions to a picture in which impurity is ubiquitous and widely effective. In what follows, I will demonstrate the extent to which this new picture of impurity shapes the mishnaic depiction of everyday encounters and activities, in such a way that impurity is constructed as an all-pervasive presence and a perpetual concern. As I will suggest, it is against this picture of impurity as ever-present and as a defining component of one’s daily life that we can begin to understand how the way in which one manages one’s body and one’s possessions in terms of impurity became, for the rabbis, a critical site for reflections on and construction of one’s relations with the material world and with oneself.

      Before proceeding, however, I wish to make clear that by referring to a “concern” regarding impurity, I am not implying in any way that the rabbis or their contemporaries were afraid of impurity. Practically speaking, there is no danger in impurity: if one contracts it, one simply performs the ritual instructions for purification, which for the most part include no more than a quick visit to an immersion-pool. In general, I believe that the category of fear is entirely inappropriate for explaining ancient purity systems. As Robert Parker astutely put it, impurity “is not a product of the ill-focused terror that permanently invests the savage mind, because that terror is an invention of nineteenth-century anthropology.”⁷⁹ Nevertheless, I find it self-evident that the contraction of impurity was seen by the rabbis as disadvantageous and undesirable, and that the effect of impurity was seen as a detrimental one, although by no means as acutely dangerous. It is difficult to know what, if any, the practical repercussions of a status of impurity in the tannaitic period were; but whether or not a ritual status of impurity actually meant exclusion from certain activities or places, it is clear that the concept of impurity served for the rabbis as a marker of harmful and unwanted effect. Concern with impurity is not tantamount to panic about impurity; rather, it is simply a state of being constantly conscious of the prospect of contracting impurity and of trying to avoid it to the best of one’s ability, while still considering it to be, at times, unavoidable. This is essentially the state of mind depicted in the Mishnah.

      Doubtful Impurity: The Certainty of Uncertainty

      The extreme transferability of impurity as it was construed in the rabbinic system inscribes the entire lived world with the potential presence of impurity. In the rabbis’ view, every random object that was found on a street corner could have been touched by an impure person, thus becoming impure and thus acquiring the ability to further transmit impurity to anyone and anything that touches it. Every person one comes across—unless specifically known to be scrupulous in the observance of purity—could be a source of impurity that would make whatever she touches impure. For the rabbis, then, to interact with the human and material world was to risk the chance of contracting impurity.⁸⁰ Nowhere is the overall perception of the human and material environment as impure by default more explicit than in tractate Tohorot of the Mishnah, which sets guidelines for those who attempt to maintain a reasonable level of purity (presumably, mainly in order to have their meals in a state of ritual purity) within an overall impure world.⁸¹ СКАЧАТЬ