Parasha: Tazria · Aliyah: First (Chesed)

דבר …לאמור. "Speak…to say." Why does the word לאמור have to be repeated here, seeing verse 1 ended with the word לאמור, "to say?" Perhaps the reason is that this commandment is addressed primarily to women. The word לאמור after "the children of Israel," is a warning to the women to pay special attention to this legislation. We may also explain this extra word לאמור in accordance with Torat Kohanim on this verse which explains the words בני ישראל as excluding Gentiles. The word לאמור stresses that it is a privilege for Jewish women to be given this legislation. Had they not been on a spiritually higher level than their non-Jewish counterparts they would not have been considered as having suffered impurity through such a natural process as giving birth. [seeing that their spiritual level had been temporarily eclipsed by the need to focus on purely bodily functions, the mothers need to purify their bodies to make it fit again for their spiritual functions. Ed.]

אשה כי תזריע וילדה זכר, a woman who brings forth seed by giving birth to a male child, etc. Why did the Torah not simply write: אשה כי תלד זכר, "when a woman gives birth to a male child, etc.?" The words כי תזריע appear superfluous. Our sages disagree about the reason. Torat Kohanim on our verse writes that these words tell us that contrary to expectations a woman who was already pregnant before this legislation was revealed to the people is also subject to it, whereas she does not contract impurity if she gave birth just before this legislation was revealed. Anonymous sages state that when the baby is delivered by caesarean incision the mother does not contract impurity. The fetus has to exit from the same place where the seed entered. Rabbi Shimon holds that even if an indeterminate mass is delivered, i.e. some fetus clearly unable to live, the mother does contract impurity and has to bring the required offerings. He does not accept the view that if a woman gives "birth" by caesarean incision that she is not subject to the legislation in our chapter. Why did the Torah use the future tense in the words כי תזריע, and switch to the past tense writing וילדה instead of ותלד? We find that the Torah does use the word ותלד when describing the birth of a female child in verse 5! Although there are numerous instances when a form of the past tense of the verb is used by the Torah to describe something in the future, the Torah does not switch tenses unnecessarily without trying to draw our attention to some additional meaning. Furthermore, why does the Torah write וילדה, "she gave birth," instead of אם ילדה זכר, "if she gave birth to a male child as a result," seeing there is no certainty that she will indeed give birth to a male child rather than to a girl? One could answer the last question by saying that the word כי in כי תזריע is equivalent to the word אם, "if," and that this word belongs to the latter half of the verse. This is a forced explanation, however.

Our sages in Niddah 31 as well as in Berachot 60 are of the opinion that if the woman achieves orgasm first during marital intercourse the baby born from such a union will be male, and that the Torah here informs us of this biological fact. This is why the Torah wrote וילדה זכר as something that is definite. While it is true that Rabbi Tzadok arrived at this conclusion exegetically from Genesis 46,15 ואת דינה בתו, the fact is that the Torah made the birth of a male child dependent on an experience of the mother, and the birth of a female child on the experience of the father during their union. The verse in Genesis does not provide a reason for this linkage to the respective experience of father and mother during their union. [The author of Torah Temimah comments on that verse that the scientific aspect of the matter was an established fact for our sages; they knew that when two factors have to combine to create something it is the last factor which determines the nature of the product. Hence, if the male has spent his reproductive effort before the woman, the result will be a female child corresponding to the reproductive power of the woman. We do not "learn" this from that verse; the verse only alludes to something already known. Ed.] In our verse the Torah explains the reason for this fact of life, namely that the crucial factor is who spends his reproductive power first. The Torah did not need to add the word "first" in our verse for even if the mother were not to expend her reproductive power first she does have to spend it in order to produce a child of either gender. This is why the Torah also had to write the verse in Genesis 46,15 so that from the two verses combined we would know what factors determine the sex of a baby. [The word ואת, "and in addition," in that verse in Genesis indicates that Leah was last in spending her reproductive power during the union that led to the birth of Dinah. Hence the child was a female. Ed.].

The Torah managed to include still more information in these few words. In Psalms 139,5 David says: "you have created me both last and first." This line is explained by Bereshit Rabbah 8,1 as referring to two separate creations of man. His body was created at the very end of the six days of creation whereas his spirit had been created already in the first verse of the Torah prior to the creation of the light, when the Torah described the spirit of the Lord as hovering over the deep. We are told by the Zohar Kedoshim page 80 that the nature of the soul or personality of a baby is determined by the thoughts of the father and mother during marital union. If the parents entertain unworthy thoughts during such a union the personality of the baby will tend to be attracted to spiritually negative forces, whereas if the thoughts of the parents during their physical union are worthy this will be reflected in the children of such unions. Consider carefully what we are told in Berachot 10 and the Jerusalem Talmud Sanhedrin 10,2 about what happened to the children of the pious king Chizkiyah who had married the daughter of the prophet Isaiah. [the regular text of the Talmud does not have this; parts are found in Eyn Yaakov Ed.) According to the Talmud there the reason that Menashe and Ravshoke, the sons of that union, became such heretics was some unworthy thoughts entertained by Chiskiyah's wife at the time the child was conceived. (supposedly she fantasized about the servants of Merodach Baladon king of Babylon) If we accept this, the most important part of the "birth," i.e. the fusion of soul and body takes place already at the time of conception. Not only that, but the thought which precedes ejaculation of the semen has a determining influence on the tendency of the baby's character development. This would be the mystical aspect of the words כי תזריע וילדה, the nature of what will be born is determined at the time of conception. After that period it is already too late to reverse what occurred at the time of the union between father and mother. The term לידה, birth, is therefore applicable to a process which is a long way from becoming visible. Once we have appreciated this we will have a better understanding of Genesis 12,5 where the Torah speaks of personalities נפש which Abram and Sarai made in Charan, i.e. due to their union as man and wife. Although Sarai had not given birth to a physical child in those years, the thoughts that she and her husband entertained while they tried to conceive children produced the kinds of souls which became G'd fearing individuals in other bodies. This does not contradict the truth of the statement that the sex of the child is determined at the time of conception. The Torah wrote the word זכר, male, as a hint that already during the moments when the bodies of the parents join in marital union they have it within their power to determine the sex of the child which will be the result of such a union by dint of the thoughts which they entertain at that time. These will enable them to draw down from heaven a male soul. (or "a soul from the part of heaven inhabited by male souls").

The verse contains an allusion to other psychological factors which are part of the process of conception, i.e. the physical union between man and wife. A woman is neither obligated to have children, nor does she as a rule volunteer to beconme pregnant, an experience she finds often painful, fraught with many discomforts and danger to her health culminating in the excruciatingly painful experience of giving birth. In fact, there are women who avoid getting married in order to avoid the experience of pregnancy and birth. If the woman does get married, the feelings she entertains during marital intercourse are frequently limited to gratifying her physical pleasure during such intercourse. According to Gittin 49 a woman's desire in this respect is greater than that of her husband. [according to the author this is the meaning of the statement in the Talmud that "her urge to get married is greater than that of her husband." Ed.] In our verse the Torah hints that if a woman enters marriage although she is not commanded to do so, this will be accounted for her as a meritorious deed, as if she were a male and had fulfilled the commandment to procreate incumbent upon the male. The Torah writes: אשה כי תזריע, that when a woman is active in joining in an activity which will result in the birth of a baby, i.e. she engages in intercourse in order to have children, and not in order to satisfy her biological urge, she may have a son. If the Torah had merely written אשה כי תלד זכר," when a woman gives birth to a male child, etc," we would have understood that the process described above occurs as a result of any mating between husband and wife irrespective of their thoughts at the time. As it is, the Torah teaches how a woman can acquire the stature of a זכר, male. The reason the Torah has to add the word וילדה is to tell us that she attains that level only if the thoughts she entertained during intercourse also result in the actual birth of a child. Perhaps this is also part of the meaning of the word לאמור in verse 2, the need for which we had questioned earlier. The sequence of לאמור אשה, suggests that Moses was to tell the women how a woman may attain a spiritually superior niveau; she will do so by volunteering to have children and by entertaining lofty thoughts during the process of conception. Perhaps this is the mystical dimension of Proverbs 10,1; בן כסיל תוגת אמו; "a foolish son is his mother's sorrow." A son who is not up to the expectations of his mother may well be the outcome of the kind of thoughts the mother did not entertain when she conceived him.

The verse also contains an allusion to the כנסת ישראל, the Jewish people as a conceptual entity. We find that this term is applied to women in such verses as Isaiah 54,5: כי בעליך עושיך, "for He who has made you will espouse you;" the prophet also continues: ואשת נעורים, "and the wife of your youth;" the prophet Hoseah describes the relationship of G'd and כנסת ישראל in Hoseah 2,21: וארשתיך לי לעולם, (G'd speaking to His bride) "I will betroth Myself to you forever, etc." Isaiah 50,1: "where is the bill of divorce I have given you?" There are more such verses to be found scattered throughout the Books of the Prophets. וילדה זכר, "and she gives birth to a male child, etc." when viewed from a moral-ethical vantage-point, the Torah reveals that when the מזריע the initiative for the husband-wife relationship with G'd originates with the Jewish people, the כנסת ישראל, then the product of such an initiative will be a male child, זכר, the entire nation will attain the highest spiritual level. The word זכר, male, is hyperbole for the highest moral-ethical achievenment. In Sanhedrin 98 and Shemot Rabbah 15 the superiority of the ultimate redemption to the redemption at the time of the Exodus from Egypt is described. The ultimate redemption is perceived there as the corollary of Israel distinguishing itself by the performance of good deeds, etc. The prophet described the Exodus in terms of Israel being "naked and nude" (Ezekiel 16,7). Clothing is perceived as a layer of מצות and good deeds covering our bodies. The inadequacy of the Jewish people at the time of the Exodus is underlined in Deut. 4,34 where G'd describes the Exodus as wrenching one people from the midst of the same people, something that made it legally difficult for G'd to justify taking the Israelites out of Egypt when He did. That redemption has been described only in female terms and that is why it did not endure in the end and the Temple was destroyed. Not so the redemption of the future which will occur as a direct result of Israel's merits. First and foremost among those merits is Israel's preoccupation with Torah as described in Deut. 31,21 something that will never be forgotten even during a protracted period of exile. The Torah continues: וטמאה, the mother contracts ritual impurity as a result of giving birth. Here the Torah alludes to the way G'd initiates a process which culminates in the rehabilitation of Israel so that it will attain a spiritual level that qualifies for the description זכר. The "days" mentioned here are to be understood as seven years similar to Genesis 24,55 where Laban and his mother wanted Rebeccah to delay her departure by ימים, i.e. a year. The years which are viewed as the חבלי משיח, the birth-pangs of the Messiah, last for seven years during which Israel will be refined spiritually in preparation of his arrival. He will make his appearance during the eighth year. On the eighth day, at the beginning of the eighth day (year), the baby is to have its foreskin removed, i.e. the concept of a foreskin which acts as a barrier between man and G'd will be removed from the universe. We read in Zachariah 13,2 that G'd will destroy the spirit of impurity from the earth. This will occur during the eighth year. It is well known that conceptually the foreskin is identical with the forces of the קליפה, the spiritually negative emanations. When the Torah wrote the word וטמאה, describing the state of the mother, this is a simile for the afflictions experienced during the birth-pangs of the Messiah.

וביום השמיני, and on the eighth day, etc. Why did the Torah have to instruct us to circumcise a male baby on the eighth day, something that has been legislated already in Genesis 17,12 prior to the birth of Isaac, even? If all the Torah wanted was to tell us that the rite of circumcision must be performed by day and not by night, or that the importance of circumcising the baby on the eighth day is so important that the Sabbath may be violated in order to fulfil this commandment on time (compare Shabbat 132), why did G'd not include this information in Genesis?

Perhaps the reason G'd did not mention all this to Abraham at the time was so that people should not think that only the patriarchs were allowed to violate the Sabbath in order to circumcise the baby on the eighth day, seeing they had not yet been commanded to observe the Sabbath as a day of rest and that therefore the observance of the Sabbath was not so important. However, the Israelites, who were warned in Exodus 31,14 not to violate the Sabbath on pain of execution, were not expected to circumcise their babies on the Sabbath. The Torah repeated the legislation here in order to include the detail that the Sabbath was not to take precedence over circumcision on the eighth day. While it is true that the Talmud in Chulin 101 states that the legislation about גיד הנשה was legislated at Mount Sinai, the Torah decided to record it in Genesis 32,33 to inform us of the reason for this legislation. Similar considerations may have motivated the Torah in recording the legislation about circumcision already in Genesis 17,12 though it was commanded to the Jewish people collectively at Mount Sinai. All of this still enables those who want to, to argue that there is reason to be more lenient about the date of the circumcision prior to the revelation at Mount Sinai than afterwards.

Furthermore, we may assume that what the legislation revealed to Abraham in Genesis 17,12 means is that it is as binding as if it had been revealed at Mount Sinai and that therefore the Torah did not need to add any details to that legislation when the Israelites stood at Mount Sinai. G'd did not need to write a special verse to tell Abraham to perform circumcision even on the Sabbath as he would have understood this on his own just as he understood many other מצות which were never spelled out to him. The reason he would have considered the circumcision legislation as overriding the Sabbath legislation is that G'd had not bothered to command him specifically to observe the Sabbath, but He had commanded him specifically concerning the circumcision. In fact, if G'd had spelled out to Abraham that the circumcision on the eighth day overrides the Sabbath legislation, every exegete would have written reams of paper wanting to know why G'd had bothered to do this, seeing that Abraham could have arrived at this by simple logic. Seeing G'd did not tell Abraham, He had to tell the Israelites who, after all, had been commanded to observe the Sabbath and who could not have arrived at these details by using logic as could Abraham at the time.

Let us now turn to why the Torah wrote this piece of legislation immediately after the law about the mother who gave birth contracting a kind of ritual impurity lasting for seven days similar to the menstrual impurity. The Torah simply wanted to explain why the circumcision of the baby has to be delayed for seven days (compare Shabbat 135). This is the reason that the Torah wrote וביום השמיני, the letter ו indicating that the timing was related to what has been described previously. The Talmud in Niddah 31 elaborates further, suggesting that the "whole world should not be rejoicing when the baby is introduced to Judaism while its mother is depressed being ritually impure." Devarim Rabbah 6,1 writes as follows: "why does the baby have to be circumcised on the eighth day after its birth? G'd exercised His mercy on the baby waiting until it was strong enough to endure this operation. Just as G'd exercises His mercy on human beings He did so on animals and this is why a new born animal may not be offered as a sacrifice until the eighth day after it has been born (compare Leviticus 22,27).

How do we know that the baby attains a certain amount of physical strength by the eighth day after its birth? It appears that we have to rely on the Zohar both in our Parshah as well as in Parshat Emor where it is explained that the experience of a single Sabbath in its life confers such additional physical strength upon both the baby and the new-born animal. The Sabbath experience provides what is called כח חיוני, a life-sustaining force. You will also find the comment of Bereshit Rabbah 10 that prior to the first Sabbath the universe was in a very unstable condition. It was only the Sabbath which helped stabilise the entire universe. This is what the sages meant when they said that the experience of a Sabbath helps stabilise the vital signs of new-born babies and animals. The letter ו in the word וביום also links the impurity of the mother to the circumcision experience of the baby, i.e. if the baby's mother is meticulous in her observance of the laws pertaining to menstruating women, her baby's chances of living long enough to experience circumcision and not being harmed by it are improved.

Our verse may also be explained in terms of Tanchuma Tazria 5 where we have the following statement: "The Roman Governor Turnus Rufus asked Rabbi Akiva whose actions were more pleasing, G'd's or man's? Rabbi Akiva answered that man's actions were more pleasing. Turnus Rufus asked why the Israelites circumcised themselves? Rabbi Akiva said he had known that Turnus Rufus would ask him this and this is why he had said immediately that man's actions were more pleasing. Rabbi Akiva brought both ears of corns and white flour proclaiming: "the former are representative of G'd's works, the latter are representative of man's works. Are not the latter nicer than the former?" Thereupon Turnus Rufus wanted to know why G'd commanded circumcision instead of creating man without a foreskin? Rabbi Akiva replied that the whole reason for Torah legislation is in order to refine human beings as we know from Psalms 18,31 'the word of the Lord is refining;' Rabbi Akiva did not content himself with the example of the ears of corn versus the finished product, the scone or roll, seeing that the improvement necessary in order to convert ears of corn into flour is intended to add to man's enjoyment and man therefore is motivated to convert ears of corn into flour. This cannot be said of his body. Man does not feel that the foreskin is a hindrance to his physical perfection. There was a reason therefore for G'd Himself to create man without a foreskin if that was His will. Why did He leave this to man instead of doing it Himself? Rabbi Akiva therefore answered Turnus Rufus that G'd's laws are designed to refine man. This appears to be a very enigmatic answer for someone like Turnus Rufus. A pagan of the type of Turnus Rufus does not understand the concept that man has to attain his relative perfection by means of carrying out G'd's commandments. He therefore accepted the answer at face value. We Israelites, G'd's favourites, have to examine the matter on a different level. One of the remarkable things is the fact that whereas in nature we observe that nature's products reproduce themselves true to existing features, i.e. the farmer having achieved a certain strain of wheat, for instance, will find that if he sows seed of that strain they will reproduce themselves identically, the same is not true of circumcised Jews producing children without a foreskin. All our evolutionary studies ought to dictate that after thousands of years of male Jews living their lives without foreskins, their children should be born without foreskins! Even if we were to argue that once one has been born with a foreskin the laws of mutation will ignore such a fact and he will reproduce children with a foreskin, why did someone such as Moses who was born without a foreskin (compare Sotah 12) not produce children without foreskins?

Let me enlighten you in matters of G'd's instructions to us. We have learned that the foreskin symbolises evil, its very presence drawing attention to hidden characteristics. Man's entire body is a sheath for the personality it hides within. The sheath reveals information concerning what is inside it. G'd told the Jewish people that by removing the visible evidence of evil within them, i.e. the foreskin, they would be able to diminish the power of evil hidden inside their bodies also. If the Gentiles were to do the same, the effect would not be the same as their entire personalities are the outgrowths of spiritually negative forces, as represented by their foreskins. When the prophet Jeremiah 9,25 refers to all Gentiles summing them up as "foreskins," this is very significant. It is a well-known fact that Adam possessed perfect health, that his body created by G'd Himself lacked any particle of impurity; as a result he had no foreskin which could symbolise any hidden impurity. When the Talmud Sanhedrin 38 describes Adam as "pulling" on his foreskin after he committed the sin of eating from the tree of knowledge, this is a way of saying that he had developed a foreskin. After Eve had eaten from the tree of knowledge, she too developed signs of physical impurity reflecting the fact that her personality had absorbed input by the forces of impurity. In her case the external sign of such impurity which corresponded to the foreskin in Adam was the menstrual blood. The Talmud Eyruvin 100 describes no less than ten curses Eve suffered as a result of her eating from that tree. Man's sin impacted on nature as a whole. Starting after the sin, the earth began to produce fruit covered with many peels, the husks of an ear of grain being one example of such קליפות, "peels.

Proof of all this is that man cannot enjoy bread until he has first removed these peels from the kernel of grain. He can convert it into flour only after having removed the outer husk. In fact, the grain has to undergo no less than 10 stages of refinement before we can serve it up as bread (compare Shabbat 73). These ten stages correspond to the ten curses we mentioned earlier (compare Zohar Pinchas page 243). This is why when the time comes which is envisaged by the prophet Zachariah 13,2 the earth will once again give forth rolls or scones, ready to eat. This is what Rabbi Akiva had in mind when he contrasted the rolls with the ears of corn. The reason that nature (G'd) does not produce perfection nowadays is not G'd's inability to do so but man's interference in the mechanism G'd had provided for nature. As a result, when man procreates at a time when he is already minus the foreskin, the forces represented by the foreskin have not thereby been vanquished; they are still as active as ever in our universe and man is nourished daily by products which have been influenced by all the spiritually negative forces which are rampant in nature. As a result, the seed which ultimately develops into a baby, has been inhibited by all these negative forces in our world preventing it from developing into a human being minus the foreskin. As to Turnus Rufus' second question that if G'd does indeed want man to be circumcised why had He not created him so, this question was based on his ignorance of the relationship between spiritual inadequacy and the resultant inadequacies in nature.

Alternatively, Turnus Rufus was aware that man's external appearance, i.e. that tangible aspects of man reflect some of his intangible parts inside of him; he thought that such stains on man's character as were reflected by his exterior had been given to him by G'd at birth. He believed that when G'd ordered for man to remove his foreskin, the character stains which his foreskin reflected would be removed from him by G'd. Rabbi Akiva gave him a general answer concerning the purpose of the positive and negative commandments. Having a foreskin is not indicative of a single stain on one's character or even a single inadequacy which has become part of human nature. Rather, it is a reminder of basic inadequacies which man is troubled by ever since Adam ate from the tree of knowledge. Inasmuch as man caused these inadequacies, he must labour to overcome them. G'd does not do it for him. Rabbi Akiva explained that all the positive commandments combined are designed to refine man, i.e. to gradually remove the stains which are part of his being a creature born of woman. Performance of each positive commandment restores some of the spiritual light which has become encapsuled in a "peel" as a result of eating from that tree. The negative commandments on the other hand, are the agents which remove the sickness which adheres to man's soul ever since first man allowed such diseases to become part of him. The whole process of rehabilitation is best described in Proverbs 6,23 כי נר מצוה ותורה אור, "performance of a single commandment is equivalent to providing the kind of light given by a single candle, whereas the performance of all of the Torah's commandments (not given to a single individual to perform) provides "Light", i.e. will restore the light which existed when Adam was in גן עדן." It is not G'd who does all this; G'd gave man the commandments as tools in order to enable him to find his way back to "paradise lost." Seeing Adam had contaminated all future souls, it is up to each human being to rehabilitate himself individually. I have dealt with the subject in my commentary on Genesis 4,7.

Furthermore, if we were to allow G'd to remove all these impediments man faces nowadays, the whole concept of reward and punishment which is the philosophical basis of Judaism would be negated. How can one expect to be rewarded for gifts given to us by G'd? To sum up: the fact that we are born with a foreskin is the result of spiritual damage caused to man's soul as a by-product of his sin. This spiritual damage is reflected in an outgrowth of his body, i.e. the foreskin. G'd ordered every male Israelite to excise the visible part of this evil from his body. Having done this his soul will also be on the road to recovery. This is why the Torah stresses וביום "and on that day," etc. There was already the need for the mother to purify herself from the impurity contracted through giving birth. Now there is the added commandment to remove the foreskin from the baby. G'd commands concerning both these rehabilitative steps simultaneously. This is the meaning of וביום השמיני, "and on the eighth day, etc." Seeing that the sin of Eve had been greater than that of Adam, man is able to remove the physical reminder of his impurity with one stroke i.e. the foreskin does not grow back [as distinct from normal skin Ed.], whereas woman experiences menstrual bleeding at regular intervals.

Perhaps another reason why G'd commanded that circumcision should be performed on the eighth day, not sooner and not later, was because on that day G'd judges the mother who has to count seven days of impurity from the moment the baby left her womb. The baby is perceived as having left a grave [simile for the mother's womb. Ed.] hence the baby itself has become contaminated by contact with the impurity suffered by its mother. Seeing that circumcision is equivalent to G'd revealing His name to man as I have hinted in my commentary in Parshat Vayera where G'd visited Abraham after he had circumcised himself, He wanted to wait until the seven days during which cleansing from that impurity occurs have passed. On the eighth day the baby is fit to be circumcised.

ימול בשר ערלתו. "the flesh of his foreskin shall be circumcised." We understand this in terms of what we have already mentioned, namely that the foreskin is a tangible symbol of the קליפה, the spiritually negative part of the emanations. The Torah hints here that the ritual of circumcision consists of three stages. They are called: מילה, פריעה, מציצה; 1) the removal of the foreskin itself; 2) the splitting of the membrane and pulling it down; 3) the sucking of some blood from the place where the foreskin has been cut. The word ימול refers to the cutting of the foreskin. The פריעה does not involve cutting that membrane and is alluded to in the text by the word בשר. This rite insures that the foreskin will not grow back. The word בשר suggests "dead meat." The מציצה consists of removing blood which had been contaminated by the two parts of the foreskin which have been removed. This blood was considered as part of the foreskin and has to be removed alongside with the foreskin. This ritual is alluded to in the text by the word ערלתו, his foreskin.

There is an interesting analysis of the concept of קליפות, peels, in an appendix to the first volume of the Zohar page 262. The "peels" surrounding the kernel "sanctity" are compared to the four peels surrounding the walnut. The comparison is based on Solomon speaking of the גנת אגוז, in Song of Songs 6,11. 1) There is an outer shell which is bitter in taste, eventually dries out and falls of its own accord. 2) There is the hard shell. 3) There is the flexible type of shell which separates different edible parts of the nut from one another. 4) There is the thin peel which adheres to the fruit itself and is edible when attached to the fruit. This inner peel is not considered so despicable unless it is separated from the edible part of the nut. When we contemplate the ritual of circumcision, we think in terms of three peels. The foreskin itself is somewhat like the outer shell of the walnut. The membrane we fold back during what is called פריעה corresponds to the hard shell of the nut which is broken before one can get at the edible part. Finally, the act of מציצה, the sucking away of contaminated blood, corresponds to the inner peel of the nut which separates edible parts from one another. It too has to be removed in order to enable us to eat the nut without hindrance. Man still remains with the last "peel" the one that we described as not totally despicable while it is attached to the edible part. Zohar part one, page 78, refers to this part as the peel which is attached to a boy until he reaches the age of 13. Until that time he is still considered as possessing some kind of ערלה, foreskin in the allegorical sense, seeing he does not yet have an antidote to the evil urge he has been born with. To carry the simile a little further. Just as every fruit-bearing tree is considered by the Torah as ערלה during its first three years of existence, so man, who is compared elsewhere by the Torah to the tree in the field, is considered as still possessing some ערלה until his בר מצוה. Once he enters the fourteenth year of his life he is קדש הילולים, all his products (deeds) may become holy unto G'd.

Another way of looking at our verse may be parallel to what is written in the תקוני הזהר section 24, folio 69. The commandment of circumcision consists of three levels. The highest level of this commandment is the circumcision of the children of the righteous, the children of the living G'd. Their circumcision is an experience comparable to revelation of G'd's very name to them. They will consider the experience as if G'd's holy name had been engraved on their very flesh which had thus become sanctified. The next lower level of the circumcision experience is that experienced by the average person. For such people the experience of circumcision is equivalent to their having become a sacrificial offering to G'd. The third level of circumcision is when children of forbidden unions are circumcised, people who are evil and hated by G'd. When people like that perform the ritual of circumcision it is as if they donated part of themselves to the original serpent, as if giving it dust which is its bread, i.e. these people feed the forces of evil (compare Tikkuney Hazohar folio 10). These three levels of the circumcision experience are alluded to in the Torah by the words ימול־בשר־ערלתו. The first word ימול may be understood as יו׳ד מול, G'd (יו׳ד) is perceived as present by the person being circumcised. The word בשר is a simile for the meat-offerings, i.e. the person being circumcised conceives of himself as being sacrificial meat. The word ערלתו is a simile for the people whom G'd hates being circumcised. The word "his foreskin" is a reference to the unworthy part of man which in reality is part of Satan. Unworthy people are perceived as donating those parts to Satan when they undergo circumcision. As a result of these considerations we find that G'd commanded all three levels of our people to undergo the ritual of circumision so that a Jewish court would not be able to say that there is no point in performing circumcision on the body of a ממזר, a "bastard" (the product of a union between partners who are forbidden to be joined in marriage on pain of the Karet penalty). The reason the Torah wants the foreskin of such a bastard removed is to weaken the Satanic forces active within such a person. This is so even though such a male is not allowed to marry a Jewish girl even after he has been circumcised. Once his foreskin has been removed this (innocent) victim of the sins of his parents has a chance to perfect his personality and to strengthen all the positive elements within him. This is why our sages in Horiot 13 are on record that a ממזר who is a Torah scholar takes precedence in matters of personal honour over a High Priest who has not studied Torah.

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 a bisexual 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.

Alternatively, the fact that the position of the word תלד is interpreted by Torat Kohanim as including אנדרוגינוס, bisexual children, may reflect the fact that the author of Torat Kohanim holds a view similar to that expressed in Bikkurim 4,5 that such a creature is considered as in a category by itself. [The author proceeds to analyse this problem; the interested reader is referred to the original. Ed.]

והקריבו לפני ה׳ וכפר עליה; and he shall offer it before G'd and make atonement for her. Concerning the offering of the sheep as a burnt-offering the Torah said והקריבו, whereas concerning the turtle-dove as the sin-offering the Torah writes וכפר עליה, "and he will make atonement for her." Torat Kohanim write that the two sacrifices are not both dependent on each other in order to fulfil their respective tasks but that only one depends on the other. I do not know therefore which of the two sacrifices is indispensable, and this is why the Torah said והקריבו, he will offer it up. Had, the Torah only written these words I still would not have known which one of these two sacrifices was indispensable; therefore the Torah adds the words וכפר עליה to tell us that the sin-offering is indispensable. Perhaps the exegesis is derived from the fact that the Torah could have simply written והקריבם, "and he is to offer them up." The fact that the Torah spent all these extra words teaches that the two sacrifices are not of equally indispensable nature.