Torah Study: Tazria 2022/5782

Encyclopedia Judaica:
Hayes, Christine. "Purity and Impurity, Ritual." Encyclopaedia Judaica, edited by Michael Berenbaum and Fred Skolnik, 2nd ed., vol. 16, Macmillan Reference USA, 2007, pp. 746-756. Encyclopedia Judaica, link.gale.com/apps/doc/CX2587516200/GVRL.judaica?u=grjc&sid=bookmark-GVRL.judaica&xid=9fd63cde. Accessed 28 Mar. 2022.
PURITY AND IMPURITY, RITUAL (Heb. וְטָהֳרָה טֻמְאָה, tumah ve-toharah), a symbolic system according to which a pure person or object is qualified for contact with the Temple and related sancta (holy objects and spaces) while an impure person or object is disqualified from such contact. Ritual impurity arises from physical substances and states associated with procreation and death, not in themselves sinful. Ritual impurities are in general permitted (if not unavoidable or obligatory) and in this they can be distinguished from moral impurities, which arise from prohibited acts. Both types of impurity are denoted by Hebrew terms of defilement (forms of tame) but context and associated terms indicate that different kinds of impurity are intended.
Ritual, or permitted, impurity is distinguished by the following features: (1) it is contagious, transferred from one person or object to another in a variety of ways, such as physical contact or sharing space within a covered area; (2) impurity contracted from a source of ritual impurity is impermanent and can be reduced and removed by some combination of ablutions, time, and/or the performance of specified rituals; (3) ritual impurity can defile sancta and must be kept separate from it. More severe forms of ritual impurity can also defile common (non-sacred) objects as well, and thus may require isolation or exclusion.
By contrast, moral impurity arises from the commission of certain heinous sins, specifically idolatry, bloodshed, and sexual transgressions. These sins are said to generate a moral impurity that symbolically defiles a range of sancta including the land of Israel itself and the sanctuary. In addition to originating in sin, moral impurity differs from ritual impurity in that it is not contagious (one does not contract impurity by touching a murderer), and it is not generally removed by rituals of bathing, laundering, and the like. Moral impurity is sometimes removed through a process of atonement. In some cases, a repentant sinner may bring a sacrificial offering to purge the sanctuary of the defilement caused by his sins. In severe cases, however, moral impurity is absolved only with punishment and/or death. The Yom Kippur rite is designed to purge the sanctuary of the defilement caused by unrepentant sins of the community at large.

Many scholars have noted that the physical substances and states labeled impure, and thus deemed to be anathema to God, are associated with death and procreation. The God of the Hebrew Bible does not die and does not have sexual relations. These are characteristic of humans. To be eligible to approach the sanctuary, God's residence among the Israelites, humans must separate from that which makes them least God-like: death and procreation. The ritual purity laws requiring separation from sources of impurity are thus essential to the frequent priestly exhortation to be like God (imitatio dei) and to strive for holiness.(EJ, continued)

Ramban on Lev. 13:2
According to Berachot 5 the only skin afflictions which may be viewed as G’d’s reminder to improve our lifestyle are the four kinds mentioned in our chapter. While they are not classified as afflictions revealing G’d’s love for the person thus afflicted, they are however, described as מזבח כפרה, as “an altar serving as stepping stone to atonement for the character weakness that the afflicted person has to overcome.” G’d does not employ any other medically well known skin diseases as His instrument to call us to order for various sins committed. והובא, anyone who goes to a place to be attended to is not referred to as “coming,” בא, but as being brought, i.e. הובא. Compare Psalms 45,15. The passive mode of the transitive form והגישו אדוניו in Exodus 21,6 is ונגשו אל המשפט, “he his being brought to.”

The cessation of most of the laws of impurity and purity in the contemporary era is the consequence of a prolonged process, which is only in part connected with the destruction of the Temple. Already in rabbinic times, the laws of ẓara'at in houses was weakening and even in the laws concerning the meẓora a clear trend to limit and lighten their impact is noticeable (Neg. 3:1–2; 5:1; "Any condition of doubt in leprous signs is deemed pure," in opposition to the rule: "Doubts in Torah law are decided stringently"; cf. 7:4). The law that when a meẓora enters the synagogue "they must make for him a partition ten handbreadths high and four cubits wide; he must enter first and come out last" (Neg. 13:12 and cf. Tosef., Neg. 8:2) is not directed especially to the era of the Temple. The laws of scale-disease were not in force in Babylon in the geonic era, as can be inferred from the summary of an unknown gaon: "Nowa-days if a disciple or scholar is meẓora, he is not thrust forth from the synagogue or bet midrash, for there is not now the law that thy camp shall be holy" (Sha'arei Teshuvah, no. 176 and S. Assaf (ed.), Teshuvot ha-Ge'onim (1942), 123)....
Purification from corpse impurity was possible as long as purification-offering water prepared from the ashes of a red heifer was available. Mishnah Parah 3:5 claims that some red heifers were burnt in Second Temple times. Some of the ashes of the red heifer were distributed to each of the priestly courses (mishmarot – Par. 3:11) and Israelites were sprinkled with it (Tosef., ibid., 3:14). In Galilee there may have been purification-offering water even in the time of the amoraim (Nid. 6b; see also TJBer. 6, 10a). With the cessation of purification-offering water, all Israel are assumed to have incurred corpse impurity. Priests are forbidden to contract corpse impurity even today (Sh. Ar., YD 369), but even so they are not pure, since they cannot guard against impurity from a metal utensil overshadowed by a corpse (see comm. Samson of Sens to Ḥul. 4:8). These facts have consequences also in the lawsof terumah and ḥallah (ibid.; Sh. Ar., YD 322:4), and are the reason for the prohibition against entering the Temple area even nowadays (Yere'im ha-Shalem, no. 297; Magen Avraham to Sh. Ar., OḤ 561:2).
Hayes, Christine. "Purity and Impurity, Ritual." Encyclopaedia Judaica, edited by Michael Berenbaum and Fred Skolnik, 2nd ed., vol. 16, Macmillan Reference USA, 2007, pp. 746-756. Encyclopedia Judaica, link.gale.com/apps/doc/CX2587516200/GVRL.judaica?u=grjc&sid=bookmark-GVRL.judaica&xid=9fd63cde. Accessed 28 Mar. 2022.