“And HaShem spoke to Moshe saying. Speak to Bnei Yisroel,
saying, when a woman conceives and gives birth to a male child she will be
ritually unclean for seven days, as the days of her menstrual flow, she will be
unclean.”
VaYikra 12:1-2
When a woman conceives. Rabbi Simlai said: Just as
the creation of mankind came after that of every animal, beast, and bird in the
work of Creation, so too his teaching is explained only after the teaching
regarding animals, beasts, and birds.
~ Rashi on VaYikra 12:2
Drawing on a midrash in Vayikra Rabba, Rashi attempts to
explain why the laws governing a woman’s impurity after childbirth are placed
where they are – right after the laws identifying kosher and unkosher animals,
fish, birds, and insects and right before the detailed laws of how to diagnose
and deal with a person who contracts Tzara’as (a condition similar to leprosy).
The midrash draws a parallel between our parsha and the story of creation, in
which Adom and Chava are created after all the animals.
Juxtaposition is one of the factors used to measure
significance and relationship between different laws offered in the Torah.
Viewed from another angle, the different topics seem to be curious companions –
what we should and should not eat (kosher), the punishment for interpersonal
sins, often involving speech (tzara’as), and the impurity of a new mother.
Perhaps one simple message is that we should not belittle the emotional
challenges and difficulties facing a woman with a new born – like the food we
eat or the way we comport ourselves to our neighbors, a new mom struggles to
make the right choices for herself and her baby. We may idealize the new mother
or delude ourselves that parenting will come ‘naturally’ for her. The
juxtaposition of verses may be instructing us that the woman’s choices and
options aren’t so simple and she deserves great respect for the seemingly
simple things so she will do to properly raise the child and sustain herself in
the process.
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