sphere of the sacred worm

Surprise! Tonight was our second double feature of this year's parsha cycle and BOY does the two portions go places.
Continuing our current discussion of cleanliness and uncleanliness in Leviticus, we explore the following topics:

• Pregnancy: we get an interesting peek into some contemporary medical knowledge around how they thought the fetus developed, as well as another commonly cited discussion from Ibn Ezra used to support abortion rights, how there are three partners involved in childbirth, and the question of why a woman who gave birth would need to offer a sin offering in particular
• Leprosy (110 verses, unskippable): in addition to the variety of skin conditions you'd expect, we learn that cloth, animal skins, and even houses can contract leprosy. Some of the sages argued that those could only do so in Israel as a sort of manifestation of sins that would occur after certain conditions were met. We also learn that male pattern baldness is fine.
• Ejaculation: the sages have a lot of descriptions of the color and consistency of cum in this one. Really funny to read when you're transfeminine and none of the descriptions given describe your cum.
• Menstruation: we don't get descriptions of menstrual blood here, though they may have gotten it out of their system during the pregnancy discussion earlier in which they compare the blood issued by a woman to her "seed" due to the aforementioned medical theories of the time.

A recurring conversation we had was: who are these actually for? When and why would they become relevant? A lot of what we came back to is that these seem mostly relevant for the priesthood and their families, given much of these are noted to be about respecting the sanctity of the Holy Place. There was also a lot of discussion about the sort of implied medical rationale behind some of these rules, but also about how the medical rationalization is actually pretty misleading if you treat it as a sort of general principle for interpretation. Incidentally, the house leprosy was interesting because it sort of sets up a concept of building codes, namely that a house needs to not have weird shit growing in the walls to be habitable, which we drew back to some earlier discussions that were had about slavery and worker's rights in previous parsha.

Anyways, time for some quotes.

We weren't kidding about the old medical theories, but also Ramban informs us that it takes three to make a kid and then proceeds to only name two. Why does the woman give a sin offering after birth? According to Ibn Ezra, it's because when they give birth they swear off sex because fuck this Ramban describes the seed of women and makes it sound sick as hell a scaly affection, you say 👀 There was also a ritual that was described when purifying leperous people and objects involving two birds, cedar, pure water, and hyssop, where one bird was sacrificed and the second bird was dipped in a mixture of the water and blood alongside the cedar and hyssop before being let free. It was really interesting to see a more explicitly sort of mystic rite that occurs outside the bounds of how temple sacrifices are typically carried out! Also really wild because it provides thematic and textual support for how I named one of my tabletop characters that I never knew about before.

Meanwhile in the haftarah, I found my twitter handle and a strong statement on the nature of horses

Today... we actually didn't have study! It's unfortunate, but a natural consequence of having traveled 10 or so hours to Indiana and then back again to witness the total solar eclipse on 4/8. It's a shame, because while most of tazria is about leprosy, it's got some interesting ideas going on about what precisely can even get leprosy; next week, we'll get into some more of those ideas as well as some of the weirder rituals behind it.

In the meantime though, let's talk a bit about blessings.

With one notable exception, it is a Jewish practice to recite blessings before performing mitzvah¹ or after witnessing certain kinds of thing; the general idea is that they function to sanctify life and bring glory to G-d. The composition of bracha also serves as a bit of a fun exercise in coming up with praises and recognizing the place of G-d in everyday life; they all follow a specific pattern, so there's a number of commonly accepted bracha in use. Once you get the hang of the structure though there's a certain joy in applying them and, in my experience, composing entirely new ones as needed.

So, what is the proper blessing for witnessing an eclipse of any sort?

There are two common blessings for witnessing the wonders of nature- one for small scale wonders, like beautiful trees, animals, or people, and one for large scale wonders, like mountains or lightning or landscapes. It is clear to me that an eclipse would be considered a member of the second category, so the following bracha would be used:

בָּרוּךְ אַתָּה אֲדֹנָי אֱלֹהֵינוּ מֶלֶךְ הָעוֹלָם עֹשֶׂה מַעֲשֶׂה בְרֵאשִׁית²

Barukh atah Adonai eloheinu melekh ha’olam, oseh ma’aseh v’reshit.

You are blessed, our God, Ruler of the world, Source of creation.

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1. the blessing for the lighting of the shabbat candles occurs after the candles are lit rather than before because the blessing also serves as a recognition that you are within the time of shabbat; since you invite in shabbes when lighting the candles, it's considered more correct to perform the blessing afterwards rather than before.

2. taken from ritualwell, but commonly available online wherever bracha for the wonders of nature may be found