I read that women are unclean for two weeks after giving birth to a girl and seven days after giving birth to a boy. What does it tell us?
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3Maybe the term "unclean" should be replaced with "teme'a" and linked to en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tumah_and_taharah. Uncleanliness seem to imply there is something objectively wrong with a women who gives birth.– David PerlmanCommented May 17, 2011 at 10:53
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2@David I think we should leave it as it is in the question, since that's how the question is often posed. The answers can take care of defining terms properly.– Isaac Moses ♦Commented May 17, 2011 at 12:36
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See here for a 3-part class on the impurity associated with childbirth by Rabbi Yossi Paltiel: insidechassidus.org/spring/251-parsha-tazria/…– MenachemCommented May 5, 2013 at 3:14
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3The naive (in the philosophical sense) answer is "for the same reason that they are clean longer." The Torah doubles both periods.– YitzchakCommented Feb 19, 2015 at 20:44
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And now the question has also been asked with different vocabulary, so the duplicate wasn't immediately apparent. So, both bases are covered there now.– Monica CellioCommented Apr 21, 2015 at 14:31
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6 Answers
I recommend that you take a look at the commentary of R' Samson Raphael Hirsch on Leviticus 12, and in particular 12:5. I'll try to summarize the pertinent points here, but I won't do his beautiful thoughts and words justice.
The "uncleanliess" you're referring to is "tum-a." According to R' Hirsch, tum-a is a mental condition that would prevent a person from participating in holy practices with the correct mindset. In particular, many types of tum-a cause this problem by afflicting a person with the illusion that people are trapped by the physical world and have no genuine free will. One can't participate in the holy service, in which one dedicates some aspect of oneself to God, without a complete sense that one is approaching God out of free choice. The paradigm of this type of tum-a is contact with a human corpse, which can give a person the depressing impression that people have no more value than this inanimate body.
In the process of giving birth, a woman necessarily surrenders to the overwhelming physical process and thus is intimately subject to the illusion that she is an unfree object of natural forces rather than the holy, volitional being that she is. Until enough time has passed for the depressing effects of this spiritual trauma to ebb, she needs to take a break from holy offerings that require a whole spirit. That's the tum-a that she experiences. The first stage of such recovery takes seven days.
That's for the mother. Of course, the child who's born also goes through a traumatic physical process and what's more, needs to be inducted for the first time into the world of free-willed submission to God. For this purpose, we have different processes for a son and for a daughter. For a son, we do circumcision (12:3), which R' Hirsch says represents "the free willed moral subordination of our physical bodily sensuality under the laws of God" (see his commentary on Genesis 17 for more).
For a daughter, the mother goes through the tum-a recovery period for a second time. It will be the mother's job, in addition to serving as a free-willed moral Jewish Woman in her own right, to also serve as a model of that role for her new daughter. "... and at the birth of each fresh daughter has doubly to arm herself, for the child and for herself, to tread the lofty path of purity and morality up to the heights preached by the Sanctuary of God."
answered May 17, 2011 at 2:03
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K'le Yakar (to Vayikra 12:2) says something I don't understand, but it might be along similar lines to RSRH's.– msh210 ♦Commented Jul 11, 2012 at 4:50
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@DoubleAA judaism.stackexchange.com/questions/ask, and I'll look up R' Hirsch's explanation for you. :)– Isaac Moses ♦Commented Apr 21, 2015 at 17:27
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I'd hope that the two explanations are related enough to be worth throwing in this post too. If they aren't, that's a big enough problem with both to be again worth noting in this post.– Double AA ♦Commented Apr 21, 2015 at 17:30
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1@DoubleAA well, it wouldn't invalidate any answers, but it'd devalue all of them, making them into half-answers. I think it'd probably be a nicer move to ask a new question and cross-link.– Isaac Moses ♦Commented Apr 21, 2015 at 17:39
One way to look at Tuma is that it is a lack of holiness. When a women gives birth she has less life inside her, and thus less holiness.
When she gives birth to a girl she lost more holiness than with a boy because the girl inside her also has the capacity to grow life.
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Was she extra pure before giving birth? Shouldn't she now return to normal?– Double AA ♦Commented May 5, 2013 at 2:37
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So you're agreeing with my comment, just noting it's the process of falling which causes the tuma.– Double AA ♦Commented May 5, 2013 at 2:41
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@DoubleAA I don't think there is a "baseline" of holiness. i.e. no such concept of extra pure, normal, etc. But loosing some (falling) causes Tuma.– ArielCommented May 5, 2013 at 2:51
The gemoro niddah 31b asks this question. The gemoro answers that tuma is dependant on when she will accept her husband back again. Rather a new notion for it. That the idea of tuma is to stop her being available for her husband so that he should not be able to 'force' or 'pressurise' her into it. And for a boy where everyone is pleased it is after seven days and for a girl fourteen.
The status of "tumah" is not meant to imply sinfulness, degradation or inferiority. On the contrary, it emphasizes, in particular, the great level of holiness inherent in woman's G‑dly power to create and nurture a new life within her body, and the great holiness of a husband and wife's union, in general. Since a woman possesses this lofty potential, she, also bears the possibility of its void. http://m.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/510244/jewish/Ritual-purity-after-birth-of-males-and-females.htm
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2Welcome to Mi Yodeya. I like where you're going with this, but would you mind fleshing out what you meant in your last sentence by summarizing what is in the link. A brief summary might better encourage people to go to the link. Commented Mar 27, 2014 at 20:11
It tells us that she should be impure for the same amount of time for giving birth to either a boy or a girl. But that her time of impurity is cut short when giving birth to a boy so that she may rejoice in the brit milah and celebrations without worry of impurity.
Source when i get home.
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3But then why is the time of purity (Dam Tohar) halved as well for a boy? What happens after 40 days?– Double AA ♦Commented Sep 22, 2015 at 16:50
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@DoubleAA i didn't address that as the post when i replied to it asked the following: "I read that women are unclean for two weeks after giving birth to a girl and seven days after giving birth to a boy. What does it tell us?" If the question becomes edited to include the rest of the days, i will edit my answer accordingly.– AaronCommented Sep 22, 2015 at 17:17
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@Aaron I don't know if the question has gone through editing, but I would like to know what your answer is, or would be, to the question in the comment: "Why is the time of purity (Dam Tohar) halved as well for a boy? What happens after 40 days?"– ninamagCommented Apr 5, 2019 at 7:41
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@Aaron did you ever get home? You wrote, "Source when i get home." I would appreciate a source to your answer.– ninamagCommented Apr 5, 2019 at 7:46
Maybe uncleaness isn't the issue in a literal sense but in biological terms. It takes time for a woman's hormones to level out before she can safely conceive again without producing a child with abnormalities or birth defects. So she's unfit for intercourse during this time.
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4Does it take longer for the hormones to level out after birthing a female?– Double AA ♦Commented Sep 22, 2015 at 15:50