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

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СКАЧАТЬ for the rabbis impurity is an ongoing reality, whereas for their predecessors it is a noticeable event. In the mishnaic discourse, then, the injunction “try to be pure” has bearing not only on the way one conducts oneself after intercourse, for example, or after handling the dead, but also on the way one walks in the street, the way one interacts socially, the way one buys food in the market, the way one mends clothes, and so on. The concern with impurity encompasses every aspect of the mishnaic subject’s life, and is manifested in all his actions.

      Since the injunction “try to be pure” is the normative pivot of the Mishnah’s discourse of impurity, it seems evident to me that when the rabbis elaborate on the various daily activities and behaviors that make the contraction of impurity likely, they also implicitly discourage certain activities and behaviors and endorse others. To take two simple examples, by drilling the notion that things left unattended are immediately taken to have become impure, the Mishnah discourages its subjects from leaving things unattended, and by making the point that one who eats impure food becomes as impure as what one eats, the Mishnah discourages its subjects from consuming food of whose origin and purity they are not certain, or for that matter from dining with persons of whose purity they are not certain. In constructing a world in which even the most mundane and banal actions have repercussions in terms of impurity, the rabbis also construct an idealized subject who conducts himself with heightened awareness of these repercussions, and whose effort to avoid impurity and maintain his body and possessions in a state of purity underwrites every minute aspect of his life. In other words, the rabbinic discourse of purity and impurity not only constitutes a picture of the lived world, but constitutes—and prescribes—a way of being in the world.

      In light of the rabbis’ construction of a way of being in the world through their impurity discourse, and in light of their emphasis on the behaviors and actions that the individual takes on in the course of his daily engagement with impurity, we can gain further understanding of the two counterintuitive rulings discussed above. As we have seen, impurity is the default in a case of doubt, but only in situations in which one has some control over the environment in question (that is, the private domain) or over the transmitters or contractors of impurity at hand (ones who “have a mind to be asked”). Whenever this is not the case, and one has no control over the situation, the rabbis dismiss the possibility of impurity unless one knows in certainty that it has been contracted. The rabbinic decision consciously to disregard situations in which one might be considered impure by default because of circumstances that are entirely beyond one’s control speaks to the rabbis’ directed attention to the actions and choices of the individual, more so than to questions of the probability and likelihood of impurity. Simplistically put, the rabbis can ignore the possibility of doubtful impurity in situations that are beyond one’s control because these situations cannot be seen as manifestations of one’s commitment to purity and of one’s choice of a way of life.

      Does this mean that the rabbis turn impurity into a completely artificial construct, a “nominalistic” concept as scholars like to call it,¹²⁶ which only serves to assess one’s intentions and actions and thus can be tweaked and toyed with as the rabbis desire? Certainly not. Let us be reminded that the rabbis’ lenient rulings that I described above pertain to cases of doubt, that is, to cases in which no decision can be reached based on the facts alone, and therefore a formal legal consideration is warranted. A case of uncertain impurity is no different from a case of disputed property: in both cases the rabbis assume that there is a factual truth out there (one contracted or did not contract impurity, one is or is not the owner), but this truth is not accessible, and thus a formal overarching principle must be applied to solve the case (for example, “in a case of doubt in the public domain, [it] is pure” or “disputed property will be shared”).¹²⁷ More generally, as I will point out in various junctures in this book, I do not see any way in which the rabbis’ emphasis on subjectivity, thought, and intention detracts from the “realness” of impurity.¹²⁸ What this emphasis does do, however, is establish the self as a new focal point in the discourse of impurity. The mishnaic self, it should be made clear, does not control the workings of impurity as such: he only controls, to a limited extent, how his own body and his own possessions operate in the realm of impurity. As the following chapters will show, it is in this limited space of control, in which the relations between the self, his body, and his environment are actively constituted, that the rabbis are most avidly interested, and where the most innovative aspects of their impurity legislation emerge.

      2

      Subjecting the Body

      A reader who is accustomed to associating the concepts of purity and impurity with states of mind or heart, as one who is versed in Jewish and Christian liturgical or moralistic literature might be, could perhaps be surprised by the extent to which purity and impurity in the Mishnah pertain strictly to material entities. In the Mishnah there is no such thing as impure thoughts or pure intentions, an impure soul or pure love. Rather, the rabbinic realm of impurity consists only of concrete physical objects, visible and palpable, which are made impure through direct physical contact with material sources of impurity (or through particular bodily situations), and which dispose of their impurity through a series of distinctly physical actions. As Jonathan Klawans showed in detail, in their halakhic writings the rabbis “compartmentalized” the entire range of moral and behavioral meanings of purity and impurity that can be found in the Hebrew Bible (for example, the notion that the land becomes impure as a result of murder or that evil doings make one impure), and presented instead a systematic view of impurity as an entirely natural phenomenon.¹ Indeed, the rabbinic preoccupation with impurity as a pervasive and ever-present possibility, which I described in the previous chapter, is directed solely toward one’s engagements with the material world and not toward one’s actions, thoughts, or inclinations, except for actions, thoughts, and inclinations that, as I will argue in the sixth chapter, have to do with the management of ritual impurity itself. Human beings, needless to say, can contract and convey impurity in this system only insofar as they are themselves material objects, namely, only insofar as they are bodies.

      It should be noted, however, that “the material world” in which impurity transpires and with which one’s engagement must be carefully monitored, according to the Mishnah, is in fact quite limited in terms of its constituents. I have already mentioned that the primary sources of impurity are very few in number and that the rabbis do not add any further sources to those mentioned in the Priestly Code, but there are also only a few kinds of entities that are capable of contracting impurity upon contact with one of these sources. For one, no natural element that has not yet been processed by human beings can contract impurity. Fountains, rocks, soil,² trees, air, and so forth are completely beyond the reach of impurity and are all categorically pure.³ Similarly, all living animals (except for humans) are completely “immune” to impurity—they cannot contract it and cannot transmit it further. Finally, anything that is firmly connected to the ground is categorically pure, which means, for example, that houses cannot contract impurity.⁴ In short, the only things that are susceptible to impurity are human beings, artifacts (that is, inanimate objects processed by humans), liquids (drawn or contained by humans), and foodstuffs.

      The ongoing management and monitoring of impurity that, as I argued, underwrite the daily life of the mishnaic subject as constructed by the rabbis can thus be examined through the lens of the relations between the subject and these four elements. Put simply, the effort to stave off or at least be cognizant of ritual impurity manifests itself in the manner in which one interacts with or approaches the bodies, artifacts, liquids, and foods in one’s environment: in the manner in which one watches them, handles them, exposes them to the touch of others, and so on. However, a closer look at the ways in which the rabbis parse, subclassify, and develop each of these four categories of things susceptible to impurity reveals that these categories themselves are profoundly shaped and defined by human subjectivity. The mishnaic subject not only determines (to the extent that this is in his control) whether and how to have contact with potentially impure things, but also determines—if only to a СКАЧАТЬ