Parashat Tazria: Gender and Purity Laws

(1) Blessed are You, Adonai, Ruler of the Universe, Who sanctifies us with commandments and commands us to be engrossed in the words of Torah.

Speak to the Israelite people thus: When a woman at childbirth bears a male, she shall be impure seven days; she shall be impure as at the time of her condition of menstrual separation.—

אשה כי תזריע וילדה, “when a woman has fructification of seed and has given birth as a result;” the regulations about to be discussed apply only when she gives birth naturally from the womb, not by caesarean invasive procedure. Rabbi Shimon holds that a baby born by caesarean section is considered as having been “born,” and that its mother is obligated to offer the same sacrifices that the mother of a baby born from the womb has to offer. The only difference between such a baby and the one born from the mother’s womb, is that if it is firstborn male, its father does not have to redeem it by paying a priest five shekel. (Sifra)

A certain elder said to Rabbi Ami: I will explain to you the reason for the statement of Rabbi Yoḥanan. As the verse states: “If a woman bears seed and gives birth to a male, she shall be impure seven days, as in the days of the menstruation of her sickness she shall be impure” (Leviticus 12:2). This indicates that even if a woman gives birth to an offspring that is similar only to the seed that she bore, i.e., if the offspring liquefied and became similar to semen, the woman is impure with the impurity of a woman after childbirth.

Rav Sheizevi says: A tumtum who was found to be male is also not circumcised on the eighth day, if his eighth day occurs on Shabbat, although the mitzva of circumcision on the eighth day generally overrides Shabbat prohibtions. As the verse states: “If a woman bears seed and gives birth to a male then she shall be unclean seven days; as in the days of the impurity of her sickness shall she be unclean. And on the eighth day the flesh of his foreskin shall be circumcised” (Leviticus 12:2–3), which is interpreted to mean that he is not circumcised on the eighth day, in the event that it occurs on Shabbat, unless he is recognized as a male from the moment of his birth.

ואם נקבה תלד, and if she gives birth to a female child, etc. Why does the Torah not describe the birth with the word וילדה as it did in the case of a male child? Torat Kohanim write: "how would I have known that the legislation of impurity due to giving birth applies not only in the case of a female child being born but also if a child of undetermined sex or an [intersex] child had been born? The Torah writes אם נקבה תלד וטמאה, "if she gives birth to a female she is ritually impure" to teach us that the basic ritual impurity depends on the birth process not on the sex of the baby being born." I most certainly do not want to dispute what Torat Kohanim has written, but I do want to add something to that comment. Perhaps the author of this comment arrives at his conclusion by the failure of the Torah to write simply וכי תלד נקבה, "if she gives birth to a female," with the verb at the beginning of the sentence instead of at its end. This latter sequence of the words would have indicated that what the woman gave birth to would result in her becoming ritually impure only if the baby was definitely female. As it is, the wording allows also for babies of indeterminate sex.