Simone deBeuvoir reads the Torah

Welcome to Madlik. My name is Geoffrey Stern, and at Madlik, we light a spark or shed some light on a Jewish text or tradition. Along with Rabbi Adam Mintz, we host Madlik Disruptive Torah on your favorite podcast platform and now on YouTube. We also publish a source sheet on Sefaria, and a link is included in the show notes. This week’s Parasha is Tazria-Metzora.

The book of Leviticus introduces the laws of personal purity with the laws of childbirth, and we explore the unique perspective that the Hebrew Bible and rabbinic sources have on gender and sex. So join us for the “Second Sex.” A few weeks ago, we did a personal care episode. It’s only natural that we should do a sex episode. It was bound to happen. You know, I was thinking back to our rabbi, Rabbi Riskin, and the lectures that he used to give at Lincoln Square Synagogue. Once, before Shmuli Boteach wrote a book that we might reference later called “Kosher Sex,” Rabbi Riskin gave a five-part series, I believe, on sex in the Bible. So we are following a good tradition.

Adam Mintz [1:58 – 2:04]: I remember those lectures. We all ran to listen to Rabbi Riskin.

Geoffrey Stern [2:04 – 4:43]: That’s right. It was a catchy title. So we are in Vayikra 12, and we have finished with the Laws of Sacrifices and we’re moving to the purity, the personal purity of human beings, of people. And it says, speak to the Israelite people. Thus, when a woman at childbirth it says, “isha ki tazria ve’yalda zachar,” bears a male, she shall be impure seven days, she shall be impure as at the time of a condition of menstrual separation.

In prior episodes, Rabbi, we’ve talked about why there is a difference when you have a girl child or a male child. But I just got stuck on the first word, which is the name of the parasha, “Tazria.” “Tazria” is kind of superfluous. It says when a woman gives birth, it could say “isha ki yalda zachar.” But it adds this extra word of “Tazria.” Fox, in his translation, says at childbirth, “Hebrew tazria” brings forth seed. “Zerah” is the seed of something.

If we go to Rashi, Rashi says, if a woman has conceived seed, Rabbi Simlai said, even as the formation took place after that of every cattle, beast, and fowl when the world was created, so too the law regarding him is set forth after the law regarding cattle, beast, and fowl that were in the previous chapters. So what they’re doing, Rabbi, is they’re saying, just as in Genesis, the creation of man, man and woman followed the creation of the animals, so too in Leviticus, the treatment of purity regarding men and women follows the treatment of animals.

But in so doing, they really link what we’re reading here today to what would be called “Maaseh Bereishit,” to Genesis creation, the genesis of human life. And I think that is kind of fascinating because we’re going to find that the rabbis focus on just this pasuk to talk about what is. Is it the seed of the male? Is it the egg of the woman? This is the pasuk that they use as a launching pad to discuss embryonics. It’s kind of interesting.

Adam Mintz [4:43 – 4:46]: Fantastic. Okay, I’m ready now.

Geoffrey Stern [4:46 – 6:33]: I noticed in Sefaria they introduced a new commentary maybe a year or two ago, and it’s called the Torah, a woman’s commentary. I look at it from time to time as I look at all of the other commentaries that we use. But I thought in this particular instance, I really should give it a hard and close look, because who better than women should be talking about the purity of woman, childbirth of women, the menstrual cycle?

So they write Hebrew “tazria,” which is the name of the parasha, the verb refers to a woman producing an offspring. They too go to Genesis 1:11. It means produce seed or bring forth seed. In that case, it’s regarding trees. The collective noun “zerah” from the same root refers to offspring when used for persons. We all know about “Zerah Amalek,” the seed, the children of Amalek, to seed when used in agricultural contexts.

And they bring examples of women where the word “zerah” is used. They notice that typically in the Bible, when it talks about “zerah,” as in “Zerah Amalek” and others, it’s a male-focused term, but the truth is, it is gender-neutral. Then it quotes Baruch Levine, one of the scholars that we’ve been quoting throughout the book of Leviticus, and it says he translates the clause with “tazria” as when a woman is inseminated.

That rendering, says this commentary by women, however, does not sufficiently highlight the active role of the woman in this parasha. So, Rabbi, let the games begin. We already have…

Adam Mintz [6:33 – 6:36]: Oh, that’s a very interesting little comment there.

Geoffrey Stern [6:36 – 7:07]: Well, it’s all here. What they’re pointing out is that we are talking about the purity status of human beings, or Israelites, if you will. And we start with a woman; that needs to be recognized. Number two, the woman is doing something. Something is happening to her. She is anything but passive in this regard. So I give them credit for pointing that out to us. And again, so many of the rules that have to do with personal purity…

Geoffrey Stern [7:07 – 7:38]: Relate to women. So I like where they focus us. I want to pick up for a second on this agricultural metaphor for “zerah.” In Psalms, it talks about letting men sprout up in towns like country grass. There is clearly an association of mankind growing, rebirthing, and sprouting that the Bible loves to use.

In Ezekiel, where it’s talking about the politics of the state of the Israelites, and it talks about when you dwell on your own soil and they defile their ways and their deeds, that you became like impure, like a menstruous woman. It makes the association between perverting the soil and menstruation. It talks about that my wrath is on you…

Geoffrey Stern [7:38 – 8:08]: And you become scattered, scattered amongst the nations. Here, interestingly, “scattered amongst the nations,” Rabbi, is “vayizrub’aritzot” k’dar kam. You are sown like seeds around the world. That’s the metaphor of sowing one’s seed, so to speak. On the flip side, when we come back to the land of Israel, it says, then you will dwell in the land that I gave your ancestors, and you shall be my people, I will be your God.

Geoffrey Stern [8:39 – 9:09]: And when I have delivered you from all your impurity, I will summon the grain and make it abundant, and I will not bring famine upon you. So not so much is the focus today on just having food to eat; it’s the rebirth, the regrowth on the land using agricultural motifs. My favorite is the prayer when we say in the Shmone Esrei three times a day, “mechalkel chayim bechesed.” This

Geoffrey Stern [9:09 – 9:40]: Is the prayer that has to do with rebirth. It has to do with the dead coming alive. But it has in it this amazing phrase of “Umatzmiach Yeshua,” which is to give deliverance should sprout like a plant. So I think that this concept of giving seed, planting seed, and a woman giving birth is not only a continuation of Genesis,

Geoffrey Stern [9:40 – 10:10]: But it’s also a continuation of the future and the potential to be redeemed. So I’m setting the stakes very high as we look at this one verse, and we try to understand how the rabbis understood this sense of birth and what it means, where the impurity comes from, possibly the difference between having a boy or a girl.

So what are your thoughts before we start delving into the minutia?

Adam Mintz [10:10 – 10:33]: Talk about. Right. I mean, the fact that it makes it into the liturgy shows how fundamental. And it doesn’t only make it into the liturgy; it makes it into the liturgy in the first two blessings of the Amidah. So I think umatz miyakishua, you’re right. The deliverance to sprout forth. That’s an amazing phrase. So that’s great that we start off that way.

Geoffrey Stern [10:34 – 11:04]: Fantastic. So the Ibn Ezra work focuses on ishaqi tasriya, a woman be delivered. That’s an interesting translation right there. But he says, after Scripture concludes the law of clean and unclean food, it deals with human uncleanliness. The Torah starts its regulations of human uncleanliness with the woman who gives birth because human life begins at birth. And I would say human birth begins with women.

Geoffrey Stern [11:04 – 11:35]: Many say that if the woman produces the seed first before the male, then she gives birth to a male. However, when the male produces the seed first, the result is a female. We will get to Rabbi Riskin’s interpretation later. We’ll get to that later. But the point is that the whole definition of the child is defined at that moment of procreation and at that moment of birth.

Geoffrey Stern [11:35 – 12:06]: So it says, scripture therefore states and bear a man child. And then he starts doing something interesting. And many of the commentaries do this, start going into the science of the day. The wise men of the Greeks similarly believe that the seed is of the woman. The seed of the male congeals. All of the child is created out of the blood of the woman. Note the meaning tazria. To be delivered means will give seed for a woman is like the ground.

Geoffrey Stern [12:06 – 12:37]: So we’re starting to characterize the contribution of the male and the contribution of the female. We’re starting to characterize the woman as the ground, something that we saw a second ago. It becomes kind of fascinating. And we also start looking at science because what they’re trying to do is take this very biological moment and draw theological understandings from it. So Nachmanides says, with regard to the implication of the verses, the rabbis have said, and again, he quotes this, the women amidst seed will bear.

Geoffrey Stern [12:37 – 13:08]: So the intent of the rabbis was not that the child is formed from the woman’s seed. For although the woman has generative organs, like ovaries, like those of the man, yet seed is not formed by them at all. Or if it is formed, that seed is not thick and does not contribute anything to the embryo. Rabbi, the rabbis use the term she emits seed with reference to the blood of the womb, which gathers in the mother at the time of the consummation.

Geoffrey Stern [13:08 – 13:38]: He starts getting into and quoting the rabbis’ understanding of who makes what contribution to the birth and the characteristics of every child. He says, in the opinion of the rabbis, the child is formed from the blood of the female and the white semen of the man. And both of them are called Zerah seed. Thus the rabbis have said there are three partners in the formation of man. The male emits the white semen from where are formed the sinews, the bones, and the white substance in the eye.

Geoffrey Stern [13:38 – 14:09]: The female emits red section, with which are formed the skin, the flesh, the blood, the hair, and the black substance in the eye. So it’s fascinating. This is a color-coordinated explanation. Anything that has to do with white is male. Anything that is red, and maybe when blood congeals, it gets darker, it starts to turn black, is the woman. Here again, the opinion of the doctors as to the formation of the embryo is also the same.

Geoffrey Stern [14:09 – 14:40]: In the opinion of the Greek philosophers, however, the whole body of the child is formed from the substance of the blood of the mother, with the father only contributing that generative force that is known in their language as hyly. I would say catalyst. He is the catalyst which gives form to the matter. The reason I kind of quote these is that all of the rabbinic tradition, and I would say even non-Jewish, scientific, mythological tradition, puts a lot of baggage on how the child is formed in how that characterizes the sexes, how it characterizes, you know, he said there are three partners.

Geoffrey Stern [14:40 – 15:11]: He didn’t mention God, the soul. This is a kind of a pivotal moment in understanding who we are. Before we open it up to discussion. In Genesis, the same Ramban who says, it’s not good that man should be alone. It says, it does not appear likely that man was created to be alone in the world and not beget children. Since all created beings, male and female, of all flesh, were created to raise seed. The herb and the trees also have their seed by them.

Geoffrey Stern [15:11 – 15:41]: But it is possible to say that it was in accordance with the opinion of the rabbi who said, Adam was created with two faces, male and female persons combined, and they were so made that there should be in them an impulse causing the organs of generation to produce a generative force from male to female, or you may say seed, in accordance with the known controversy regarding pregnancy. And the second phase was a help to first in the procreative process.

Geoffrey Stern [15:41 – 16:12]: And the Holy One, blessed be He, saw that it was good that helpmate stood facing him. This is the meaning of what is said. I will make him a helper otherwise to him. So what Ramban is saying, Rabbi, is it’s spring outside, and you and I are walking, and we’re seeing bees that are pollinating plants. Plants have both male and female inside of them. Procreation does not need necessarily different sexes or different beings. So Ramban here too is saying there could have been different ways. The way God wanted it was to have us to be distinct and then to come together. But it didn’t have to be that way.

Adam Mintz [16:38 – 16:39]: Right.

Geoffrey Stern [16:39 – 16:49]: Fascinating. So this is kind of interesting. How important do you think? I mean, I think in modern terms, we don’t find this discussion all that important.

Adam Mintz [16:49 – 17:08]: Well, I was going to say that this is not a modern discussion. This is about creation. This is about what God intended male and female to be. The idea that du partsufim, that there are man was made with two faces is an amazing idea. Right?

Geoffrey Stern [17:08 – 17:39]: Yeah. And I think what it does is where we kind of talk about this in terms of theology or philosophy or conduct, is we say, yes, we could have been one, united. But so much about life is finding your other half, is uniting that which is broken. We do look at this and draw and extrapolate. I think those of our listeners who are into the Kabbalah, there’s so much in the Kabbalah. Whether it’s the Shekhinah is the female force, or if you’re Tefillin, the long one (strap) is the male, the short one (strap) is the female.

Geoffrey Stern [17:39 – 18:10]: In many of our traditions, these gender definitions do have an impact. And I think what’s fascinating is, number one, that Ramban is showing that there were other alternatives, there were other traditions. And I think you’re right as a modern. But I think we’ll find that the rabbis, too, took with a grain of salt what other people were saying, which is drawing very hard and solid, I would say, lessons from this. So let’s go on a little bit more. We are talking in our parsha.

Geoffrey Stern [18:10 – 18:40]: First, it says if a woman gives birth to a boy, she’s impure what, for 60? And if she gives birth to a girl, it’s only 30 days. That’s been a discussion that we’ve had in episodes past. But it does raise the question of what determines the sex of the child. So the Gemara in Berakhot says, is prayer effective for that purpose? Can you pray? I hope my child is a boy.

I hope my child is a girl. Rabbi Yitzchak, son of Rav Ami, said the tradition teaches that the gender of the fetus is determined at the moment of conception. If the man emits seed first, his wife gives birth to a female. If the woman emits seed first, she gives birth to a male. As it is stated, quoting our verse, when a woman omitted seed, tazria zerah and bore

Geoffrey Stern [19:11 – 19:42]: a male, from what are we dealing here? We are dealing in a case where they both emit seed simultaneously. So when can you pray? Only if. So I don’t know if there are any other interpretations of this, but Rabbi Riskin, in that lecture that he gave many years ago, he was talking about when do climax? And he was saying that the rabbis pinned onto this pasuk a really revolutionary approach to sexuality, where

Geoffrey Stern [19:42 – 20:13]: way before the modern psychologist invented or discovered the G spot, so to speak, the rabbis understood that women had sexual needs as well. And whether they believed that that was determining, a determining factor, or I think, Rabbi Riskin, whether they wanted men to be cognizant, men who they assumed would want to have to sire a boy, a male. This way they would pay more attention

Geoffrey Stern [20:13 – 20:17]: to the needs of their wife.

Adam Mintz [20:17 – 20:28]: See, that last piece is Rabbi Riskin’s. That was his creative thing, that since men want boys, they need to be concerned about their wives.

Geoffrey Stern [20:29 – 20:38]: So do you think that was his chiddush (innovation)? And let’s go back a step further. Is this talking about climaxing, or was it.

Adam Mintz [20:38 – 20:52]: I don’t know. It was very creative on Rabbi Riskin’s part. I don’t know if it’s in the Chumash or it’s just in Rabbi Riskin’s head. That’s why Rabbi Riskin was so creative because you’re not quite sure, but it was a very creative idea.

Geoffrey Stern [20:52 – 20:57]: Well, I mean, we’re talking about the Brachot, what Brachot learns, right?

Adam Mintz [20:57 – 21:01]: Yeah. What it means. Right, but it’s Brachot on the pasuk, right?

Geoffrey Stern [21:01 – 21:01]: Yes.

Adam Mintz [21:01 – 21:03]: Playing on the verse.

Geoffrey Stern [21:03 – 23:19]: Isha mizraat techila. You know, maybe it has to do with, you know, what came first. Did the sperm impregnate the egg? Did the egg impregnate the sperm? I gotta believe. I couldn’t find in any of the commentaries that they actually questioned what it meant. So I’m just gonna go with Rabbi Riskin’s interpretation of it. And therefore I opened up the book called “Kosher Sex” by Shmuley Boteach, and I wondered, what did he have to say about this subject? But before we go into what he’s saying, again, I want to make the point that what the rabbis are doing here, if they’re doing what Rabbi Riskin attributes to them, is they are not describing necessarily what they feel happened. What they’re trying to do is lead the discussion. What they’re trying to do is impact the way we live. And that becomes kind of fascinating because this is not written in stone. These are myths, these are suppositions, and it’s really a question of how we take them and what we do with them. So Shmuley Boteach writes, under Jewish law, a wife’s contentment is the key to sexual harmony, as sex is the most central element of marriage. The Bible in fact records three fundamental unqualified rights a woman possesses; food, clothing, and conjugal rights. But only if either husband or wife withholds sex from the other over a period of time are they immediately dubbed to be mored or moredet. It is a cause for divorce. You can get divorced if either one of the partners in a marriage says the other one is withholding sexual relationships. This is because ona, sexual rights, is the essence of marriage, says the rabbis. And to withhold romance and sex is the cause of physical pain, full destruction. So I think what he is correctly arguing is that in rabbinic law there was a sensitivity, I think, way before its time, towards the needs, the sexual needs of both partners. Would you agree with me on that?

Adam Mintz [23:20 – 23:30]: I would agree with you on that. And that is more kind of the simple explanation. The pshat to Rabbi Riskin. Rabbi Riskin has a chidush. Boteach is just telling you what it says.

Geoffrey Stern [23:31 – 24:23]: Yeah. Because we all know for those of you who have been to a Jewish wedding, you can also get married in three ways; Shtar, kesef, v’ona. You get married with a ketubah, that’s a contract. You can get married with money by a purchase, by the transfer of ownership, that is the ring and ona. If you notice, at an Orthodox wedding, after the ceremony, the couple goes into yichud, they have to be alone long enough time that if they wanted to, they would consummate the marriage. So this really is not a supposition, not theology. This is written into our rabbinic law and rabbinic texts. And I give Shmuley Boteach a credit for popularizing this, especially when 20 years ago, when he wrote the book, it was still part of the kind of sexual revolution. People were talking about these things.

Adam Mintz [24:23 – 24:24]: Right.

Geoffrey Stern [24:25 – 24:56]: So I think that becomes fascinating. And what I’d like to do is to segue to this book by Simone de Beauvoir about “The Second Sex.” And it was written in the 40s, as I said, the Vatican felt it was threatening to the biblical concept of what the static roles of men and women are. What I was blown away

Geoffrey Stern [24:56 – 25:27]: with was that the first chapter in the book is, and I have a link to it in the show notes. It says, “Facts and Myths, Part 1, Destiny. The Data of Biology.” That even in the 40s, Rabbi, you and I can say it’s not a modern conversation. But even in the 40s, people were trying to define the role of male and the role of female based on the perception of how consummation,

Geoffrey Stern [25:27 – 25:58]: how birth, how a child is conceived, and what she writes, that the respective functions of the two sexes have entertained a great variety of beliefs. At first, they had no scientific basis, simply reflecting social myths. It was long thought, and it is still believed in certain primitive matriarchal societies, that the father plays no part in conception. Ancestral spirits in the form of living germs are supposed to find their way

Geoffrey Stern [25:58 – 26:28]: into the maternal body. With the advent of patriarchal institutions, the male laid an eager claim to his posterity. It was still necessary to grant the mother a part in the procreation, but it was conceded only that she carried and nourished the living seed. This is this metaphor of Haaretz. You just planted the seed. The man sowed the seed into the ground. She quotes Aristotle. Aristotle fancied that

Geoffrey Stern [26:28 – 26:58]: the fetus arose from the union of sperm and menstrual blood. Maybe this is what our rabbinic commentaries were quoting. Woman furnishing only passive matter, while the male principle contributed force, activity, movement, life. Hippocrates held to a similar doctrine, recognizing two kinds of seed, the weak or female, the strong or male. The theory of Aristotle survived through the Middle Ages and into modern times. Then she quotes the Platonic myth

Geoffrey Stern [26:58 – 27:29]: and I really encourage you to read the whole chapter. It’s a PDF in the show notes because it’s fascinating because here is a woman who is trying to move us from ancient mythology into modern times. She pretty much quotes some of the stuff that our rabbis are quoting. And she says that St. Thomas proclaims women as incidental beings, which is a way of suggesting, from the male point of view, the accidental or contingent nature of sexuality. So

Geoffrey Stern [27:29 – 28:00]: really, these did have an effect to the point where a book such as “The Second Sex,” that would question that could throw all of these things askew. And she starts to talk some amazing different ways of thinking about this.

And she says, I can only suppose that in such misty minds there still flow shreds of the old philosophy of the Middle Ages, which taught that the cosmos is an exact replication of a microcosm. The egg is imagined to be a little female, the woman a giant egg. So there is this. What is it? Ontology recapitulates cosmology. This sense of what happens between the personal, a man and a female, extrapolates the whole bereshit, the creation of the world, as our commentary said. She says, the truth is that these notions are hardly more than vagaries of the mind. And here’s where she starts to talk.

Geoffrey Stern [28:30 – 29:00]: I think that her midrash is just fascinating. She says there are two interrelated dynamic effects of life: it can be maintained only through transcending itself, and it can transcend itself only on condition that it is maintained. We may conclude, then, that the two gametes play a fundamentally identical role. Together they create a living being, which both of them are at once lost and transcended. So the male sperm is on the move, but it only can transcend itself by planting into the static seed.

Geoffrey Stern [29:00 – 29:31]: The static seed is static; it’s not going anywhere. It can only transcend itself through the growth created by the sperm. She is obviously a French philosopher who is deep into the dialectic. But the point is, she uses this explanation and this kind of commentary on how the fetus is created to say the following. And this is how I would like to end. And this is the idea that I think Rabbi Riskin put into that rabbinic text, and that we are left one. And that is basically that it’s up to us to draw our own conclusions from how we are formed. Who are the authors of who we are.

Geoffrey Stern [30:01 – 30:32]: But in those mythologies, we are talking about creation of the world. We’re talking about redemption. We’re talking about where impurity comes from, is impurity When we stop producing, is it a punishment? When we just sow our seed in Galut, all of these things become kind of fascinating. But I think the takeaway is that we start with when we talk about human purity and human holiness. We start with the woman conceiving and giving birth, and then how we interact with that and how we kind of characterize that in terms of growth, which means moving from impurity to purity.

Adam Mintz [30:45 – 31:04]: It’s fantastic. I mean, what you see here, you talk about Rabbi Riskin, Shmuley Boteach, and a French philosopher from 1949, and you see, they’re really all sensitive to the same thing. And the source of all that is the Chumash. You can’t beat it.

Geoffrey Stern [31:04 – 31:06]: Chumash and ancient man.

Adam Mintz [31:06 – 31:12]: We study ancient texts because rabbinic tradition is interpreting that. Ancient, ancient man.

Geoffrey Stern [31:12 – 31:18]: Yeah. And we have the power, and I would say, the obligation to interpret it and reinterpret it.

Adam Mintz [31:18 – 31:26]: Amazing, amazing topic. Fantastic. Everybody, enjoy the parasha. It’s a double parasha this week, and we’ll see you next week. Shabbat shalom.

Geoffrey Stern [31:26 – 31:28]: Shabbat shalom. All the best.