Purity, Body, and Self in Early Rabbinic Literature. DR. S Mira Balberg
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 the situation: while the source of impurity A (in this case, Jill), which made the liquid (the moisture on Jack’s hands) impure, could not have made C (the loaf) impure on its own, the liquid that contracted impurity from A and transmitted it to C affected C as if C had contact with A itself.58
The same principle, as Joseph Baumgarten showed,59 is traceable also in the Qumranic legislation: the Temple Scroll points out that any moist stains of wine or oil in the house of the dead must be scraped off, and the reason for this is evidently that these stains can convey corpse impurity to whoever touches them even after the house itself had been purified.60 The “duplicating” force of liquids to convey impurity is probably also at play in the ruling that newly admitted members to the community are prohibited from touching communal liquids for two whole years (whereas they are allowed to touch communal food after only one year).61 Both rabbinic and Qumranic texts, then, point to what seems to have been an established view in early Judaism,62 according to which liquids serve as transmitters that create a connection between two things that otherwise cannot affect each other in terms of impurity.63
(ii) Food. Another new mode of transmission of impurity that we find in the Mishnah, in which impurity is “duplicated” in such a way that a person can be affected by a source of impurity without having direct contact with it, is the consumption of impure food (to be clear, not nonkosher food but rather kosher food that had contact with a source of impurity). The rabbinic principle is that one who consumes impure foods or drinks becomes as impure as the food or drink she consumed: for example, if a loaf of bread was touched by a menstruating woman, the person who then eats this bread becomes impure as if she touched the menstruating woman.64
The very notion that impure food—that is, food that itself contracted impurity from another substance—can convey impurity to the one who eats it is completely unprecedented in the Priestly Code. There are, however, several indications that this notion was already accepted in certain Jewish circles during the Second Temple period. Most famously, Jesus’ dispute with the Pharisees on the washing of hands in Mark 7:1–23 seems to suggest that the Pharisees were concerned with the possibility that if they touched their food with impure hands they would render it impure and thus render themselves impure, as we can infer from Jesus’ response, “There is nothing outside a person which by going into him can defile him.”65 In addition, while we do not find any explicit statements in Qumranic literature regarding the result of the consumption of impure foods, we do find warnings that impure persons must be careful not to engage with produce or communal food,66 and that one must not eat any food touched by an impure person.67 Such warnings do indicate, although not conclusively, that the view that impure foods are capable of conveying impurity to those who consume them was not limited to rabbinic or protorabbinic circles.
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