Parshas Tazria-Metzora / Yom HaAtzma’ut 5783
Read the first few pesukim of Parshas Tazria, and you’d have no sense that giving birth to a child is a cause for celebration. The opening pesukim of the parsha detail the various korbanos the new mother must bring and outline the various states of purity and impurity she will pass through as a function of childbirth.
It’s all rather mystifying. Having recently been blessed with a new baby, it hardly captures the feelings of joy and elation of bringing a new child into the family and the outpouring of love, food, and mazel tovs coming our way from friends and family. How, exactly, is the Torah framing the experience of bringing a new life into the world?
One of the most challenging aspects of the halachos the Torah presents is why the mother becomes spiritually impure at all. Spiritual impurity is something typically associated with death—as in touching a dead body, dead animal, or certain other creatures—or at least with the missed opportunity for life—as a woman experiences at each menstrual cycle. Blood that could have supported life renders a woman temei’ah when it leaves her body. Why, then, does giving birth to a living child do the same?
Perhaps this phenomenon actually does fit into the same framework the Torah has already constructed around tum’ah. Ritual impurity is the state that the body enters when it becomes separated from life. The tum’ah experienced at childbirth is even greater than that of menstruation because the mother becomes detached not only from that which could have been life, but from that which actually developed into a life. The tum’ah is not in any way sorrowful; it simply reflects a reality of the mother once holding life within her, that now has departed for the world beyond.
Perhaps this approach can shed further light on another mystery of Parshas Tazria. Why does the Torah prescribe two weeks of impurity for giving birth to a girl, yet only one week for a baby boy? If the tum’ah of childbirth is a function of becoming disconnected from the life that once grew inside the mother, it actually makes perfect sense. Whereas giving birth to either a boy or a girl detaches life from the mother’s body, giving birth to a girl means becoming separated from a life that itself can support a life.
What the mother experiences in terms of tum’ah actually helps to accentuate the miracle of what has been created. A new life has been created, and that life is full of promise, full of potential. Indeed, this new life will hopefully beget more life one day.
Implicit in this understanding is that a major part of what is being celebrated when a child is born is not what they are, but what they can become. Yes, a baby is a new life. But what has been accomplished at the point that the mazel tovs stream forth and the feelings of simcha begin to wash over the parents? To no small degree, it is the potential of what this child may grow up to do and to become.
There is the hope that this baby will grow up to develop good middos, to daven, to learn Torah, to give tzedakah. And, hopefully, to become a mother herself.
When should this all be celebrated? When it happens? When those achievements actually become a reality? Yes, then, too. But long before, as well. The very birth of a child is a simcha because of all the potential latent within them. We need not wait for the potential to become a reality to begin to give thanks, express gratitude, feel simcha.
The State of Israel will turn 75 years old this week, which, in the scope of Jewish History, makes it something smaller than a newborn infant. To be sure, in its short existence, Medinat Yisrael can already boast an impressive resume of accomplishments that should make any religious Jew’s jaw drop and eyes moisten. Providing safe access to our People’s holiest sites, facilitating the establishment of hundreds and hundreds of yeshivos and seminaries, creating a safe and high-quality standard of living for millions of Jews to simply live in the Holy Land.
But perhaps even more thrilling is the potential. We may have become fixated upon the version of the Yemos HaMashiach that provides for a Bais HaMikdash to descend from the sky. But Chazal provide another version of things as well, one that the Rambam apparently favors in his treatment of the matter at the end of Mishnah Torah, where he quotes: “אין בין עולם הזה לימות המשיח אל שעבוד מלכיות בלבד—There is no difference between this world and the Messianic Era other than subjugation to foreign powers alone.”
If the Age of Mashiach looks a lot like the world as we know it today, we’ll need roads, and farms, and desalination plants, and a national water carrier. We’ll need buildings, and gas stations, and bus terminals. The infrastructure—the Yishuv Eretz Yisrael—that has been facilitated by 75 years of a Jewish government in Eretz Yisrael carries enormous potential. And that potential is something to be recognized and celebrated.
Whenever we’ve taken our family to a playground in Israel, I can’t help but feel stirrings of simcha. Both because of the life and vitality that has already taken root, but also because of the potential for more life, more development, more accomplishment in the future.
The State of Israel is no utopia. From a halachic vantage point, it is a highly unfinished product. But I can’t help think that my new daughter is, too. So much more to grow, so much more to become. But I don’t need to wait for it all to actually happen. I thank Hashem now for the gift she already is, and for all the potential that lays ahead.