Imu: Welcome to Meaningful Judaism, where we try to answer why we do what we do in Jewish life. In this podcast, we search for meaning by diving deep into the Torah text. Meaningful Judaism is a product of Aleph Beta Labs, and I am your host, Imu Shalev.

Aleph Beta scholar Beth Lesch is back with me for Part Three, the final part of our kashrus series.

Beth Lesch: Hey, everyone.

Imu: So Beth, we already did an episode about not eating milk and meat together. We talked about whether we’re even allowed to eat meat, and we talked about shechita (ritual slaughter) and kisui dam (covering the blood). What's left for us to discuss is which animals we’re allowed to eat and which we’re not allowed to eat.

Beth: Exactly. Why are cows and sheep and goats kosher, but pigs aren't, right? Like, if you take a pig, you shecht it according to the laws of kosher slaughter, and you are careful not to mix it with milk, it is still never going to be kosher. And not just pigs, you know, but pigs are the most famous of the non-kosher animals.

Imu: Right, and I feel like we should talk about the pig, right? Why can't we eat bacon? And I'm not suggesting that we all really badly want to eat bacon, but I'm also not not suggesting it, right? Like I grew up in a pretty big Jewish community and it's not like there was a lot of bacon around everywhere, but on TV, right? Like, remember those commercials with, like, the sizzling bacon?

Beth: Oh, yeah, right. It drops down from the ceiling onto the bun. 

Imu: It looked so good. I felt like I could almost smell it. And like, in all of the cooking shows, one of the cheats that the chefs use is, they add bacon to everything; a savory dish with bacon, or a muffin with bacon, or a donut with bacon. I don't understand how that works, but everyone agrees on TV that bacon makes everything better.

Beth: So I personally don't have such a craving the way you're describing it. First of all, there's a lot of bacon substitutes. My husband always asks me to make him beef bacon for his birthday, although actually on the package it says beef fry.

I kind of feel like, if God is asking me not to eat pig, there's plenty of other things to eat. I can not eat pig. So I don't really struggle with this restriction. It's more, I just find myself being curious; like, why doesn't God want us to eat bacon? Like, God doesn't want us to eat yummy foods? Is that it? How did God decide that cows are kosher but pigs aren't? Like, what's the reasoning there? Is there a reasoning there? And Imu, since this is an episode of Meaningful Judaism, I'm guessing that you have a theory about the meaning behind why some animals are kosher and others aren't.

Imu: I do have a theory. What I want to do is go on this journey of discovery through the Torah to find it. But there is something important that I want to mention up front, which is that the theory is a little more speculative than what we've shared in the other Meaningful Judaism episodes.

Beth: Okay, but you're going to show me textual evidence to prove your argument?

Imu: Oh yeah. I'm going to show you textual evidence, but I'm not sure about that word, “prove.” I think the evidence is suggestive, and I've built the best theory that I possibly could. I personally find it very exciting and persuasive, but I think I'd leave it up to you and to the listeners to decide if it's something compelling and meaningful to you as well.

Beth: I appreciate that. Thank you for your honesty. With that caveat on the table, let's dive in.

Imu: So the way I want to do this, Beth, is to kind of share with you what were the pieces I saw. Like, how did I put this theory together, and just recreate my journey; walk you through it step by step.

So I was looking for the deeper meaning behind kosher and non-kosher animals, and I went to the Biblical text in search for answers, and the place that I thought to go was Parshat Shemini, the section in Leviticus where we learn about which animals are kosher and which aren't. And so I'm looking around for some sort of explanation and…nothing.

Beth: Right. I mean, it’s just lists of, like, these are the animals you can eat, these are the animals that you can't, these are the signs, you know, chews cud, split hooves. But it doesn't seem to say why.

Imu: Exactly. So I'm just reading the verses carefully, kind of scouting for some sort of clue, and something does jump out at me, or maybe the absence of something jumps out at me. It's a word that I'm fully expecting to see in this section and it's not there, which I actually found really shocking. That word that's not there is “kosher.”

Beth: The kashrut section of the Torah doesn't use the word “kosher?”

Imu: Yep. The Torah never says pigs aren't kosher. Actually, the word “kosher” doesn't appear in this chapter or anywhere in the Chumash, The Five Books of Moses. Kosher, what it means is “suitable” or “proper,” and the Rabbis do use that word to describe permitted foods, but it's not how the Torah characterizes things at all. Instead, the Torah uses a totally different term or a pair of terms, tamei and tahor, which are usually translated as “impure” and “pure,” although it's very tricky to translate. What the Torah says is: אֶת־הַחֲזִיר…טָמֵא הוּא לָכֶם — The pig is tamei, he is impure, and you shouldn't eat it (Leviticus 11:7). 

Beth: Hmm. That's really interesting, because I associate the words tamei and tahor with all kinds of other laws that have nothing to do at all with what we can and can't eat.

Imu: Right? So here I am reading this chapter, looking for clues. And to me it's like, well, maybe that's a clue. Like we're in Vayikra (Leviticus); there's greater context here. Vayikra is the book about tumah and tahara. We're going to go on and read about all kinds of other things that are tamei and tahor. So I said to myself, it really looks like the Torah's reasons for why we can't eat certain animals is bound up intimately with these concepts of tumah and tahara.

Beth: It's like the Torah is telling us that if we want to understand why we can eat cows but can't eat pigs, it's a matter of tumah and taharah, and we have to understand those concepts.

Imu: Exactly. So what I wanted to do is something that our listeners probably didn't expect when they hit the play button on an episode on kashrus, but we're going to pivot a bit and deep dive into the concepts of tumah and tahara. We need to do that if we're going to understand kashrus.

Beth: Okay, so, Imu, that makes a lot of sense, and I am game to talk about tumah and taharah, but we will get back to kashrus, right? Like, we'll get back to this question of which animals we can and can't eat?

Imu: Yeah, I promise we'll get back there and I hope that, when we will, we'll be ready to see some things that we weren't able to see before.

So let's start with the basics. Beth, what do you know about tumah and tahara?

Beth: When you are tamei, you're in a state of tumah. It means that you can't do certain holy things. You can't bring a korban, a sacrifice. You can't eat a korban, you can't visit the mikdash, the Temple. If you're in the state of taharah, that's the opposite; then you can do those things. And there are these various purification rituals that allow a person to move from the state of tumah to the state of tahara.

Imu: How does a person become tamei in the first place?

Beth: Lots of ways. The classic example is, when you touch a dead body, you become tamei. Also, if you get tzara’at, this weird skin disease, you're also tamei. Certain other diseases, if a woman has her period, when a woman gives birth, a man who has a seminal emission…there's this whole long list.

Imu: Okay, good. So those are the basics of somebody who's tamei and tahor, but let's get into the translation of those words itself. Typically, people translate them as “purity” and “impurity.” But as I said a minute ago, it's pretty tricky to translate it that way.

Beth: To slap this label of “impure” on someone, it suggests that they sinned, that they, you know, they did something that they shouldn't have done, but that that's not the case at all. I mean, you get tamei from touching a dead body, right? So if you are preparing a dead body for burial, that's a mitzvah, but that makes you tamei. When you get your period, you didn't do anything wrong; it's natural, it's out of your control, but it still makes you tamei. There is reason to think that, you know, tzara’at is a case where you did something wrong to bring it on, but most tumah does not result from prohibited actions.

So when you look into it, it seems that being tamei, it's not that it's spiritually un-ideal; like, you know, “Nu, nu, nu, you shouldn't have become tamei.” It's more like, “Okay, if you are in this state, then don't do these things.” It's morally neutral. And when we translate tumah as “impurity,” it doesn't quite seem to capture that.

Imu: So what's the essence of tumah? Like, if the essence of tumah isn't that you've sinned, you know, and you get like a slap on the wrist and you can't do certain holy things, what is the essence of tumah? We have all these different categories: If you do this, you become tamei; if you do this, you become tamei. But what ties them together? Have you heard any answers that speak to that? 

Beth: Yeah, I have. I've heard an answer that is sometimes attributed to Rav Shimshon Raphael Hirsch, although I think Rav Hirsch's formulation is a bit more nuanced than the popular conception, but the idea is that tumah is the state of having encountered mortality.

Imu: Good. 

Beth: It's a brush with death. 

Imu: Beautiful. We at Parsha Experiment did “brush with mortality,” so… 

Beth: “Brush with mortality,” I was mixing —

Imu: Encounter with mortality, brush with death, brush with mortality. They all work. 

Beth: Encounter with brushes.

Imu: Right, the idea is that tumah somehow has to do with death; that when we confront death, that puts us in a state of impurity, or tumah, and there's no moral issues with that. But somehow, you know, God's presence doesn't tolerate our brushes with mortality. So we have to go outside the camp, do some ritual, bring us back in when we can be in our more pure state.

Beth: I appreciate that definition because if you think about some of the examples of people who are tamei, one of the classic examples is someone who's literally come into contact with a dead body. So that one's pretty obvious. But even all the other examples: you know, a woman who's menstruating, a woman who has her period, and in what sense is that a brush with mortality? But when you think about it, the period, it's like it was the potential for life, and that egg, you know, and the uterine lining is leaving your body.

So kind of with all of the examples, you can squint a little and all of a sudden see how they are, in fact, expressions of that same kind of phenomenon, which is cool. 

Imu: Yeah, it is. I think it's a much better definition than “pure” and “impure,” but there are still some challenges with that definition. And I think these challenges — I don't mean to pile on questions, but I think they're actually clues to an even more nuanced understanding of tumah and tahara. So let me level a couple of them and make us a little uncomfortable.

So one of my first issues, you know, with the definition of tumah being a brush with mortality or, you know, relating to death in some way is: God is the source of all life, right? But he's also the source of all…? 

Beth: Death. 

Imu: He's the source of all death! 

Beth: He’s also the source of all death. So why would it be problematic? Why would God and death not mix? Why would it be that if you've had a brush with death, that you somehow can't be in God's presence? 

Imu: Right. That part doesn't seem to make a whole lot of sense. As if, like, God finds death somehow offensive. 

Beth: Uh-huh. 

Imu: He made up death! 

Beth: Okay, so you're not doing what I thought you were going to do, which is, like, “Wait, if you think about one of these cases, it doesn't quite fit.” You're saying, like, — 

Imu: I'll get there. That's where I'm going to go next. 

Beth: Okay, cool.

Imu: Yeah. I mean, that next thing that you're talking about is — I think this is the most commonly brought up exceptional case. 

Beth: Mm-hmm.

Imu: The case of the yoledes (birthing woman), right? A woman who gives birth is tamei, and she's not just a little tamei. She's, you know, one of the longest cases of tumah. That case doesn't make a lot of sense if you see tumah as being a brush with mortality. And the reason why — 

Beth: Which is not to say that if someone paid you a million dollars, you couldn't come up with a reason. 

Imu: Oh, I could, and we did, by the way, like when David Block and I recorded our piece on Parsha Experiment back in 2016. We have a reason, and it's not just our reason. Many commentators say the same thing. They argue that a woman who is in childbirth is, you know — it's a very dangerous situation, especially — 

Beth: Yeah. That's something that we've lost touch with.

Imu: Yeah, I mean, and we even haven't, by the way. It's still dangerous. And so, sure, like, you can argue that it is a brush with mortality because it's a dangerous thing to do. On the other hand, she brought a life into the world. So I'd expect it to either cancel out, or cancel out some of the days of tumah. Like, why is she sitting in, like, the most tumah of anybody?

Beth: I appreciate these questions. The conversation that usually gets had about tumah and tahara is, like, “Oh, you think tumah and tahara means ‘pure’ and ‘impure’? Wrong. That's not sophisticated enough. Let me reeducate you. What it actually means is it's a brush with mortality, it's ethically neutral, dot dot dot.” So you're climbing on top of that and you'll be like, “Wrong. Let me give you a more nuanced version. It's this…” So —

Imu: I don't think I'm going to declare, “Wrong.” I think tumah certainly is about a brush with mortality, but I think that there's some nuance there, and that's what I'd love to argue. 

All right. I've got—I still have two more objections to this theory. 

Beth: To the “tumah as a brush with mortality” theory?

Imu: Right. So we talked about how it doesn't quite add up that God has a problem with death; God is the source of death. And we talked about the yoledes, the one who gives birth, as another objection.

Beth: What else you got?

Imu: Here's another one: When you think about how kosher and non-kosher animals fit into this, the theory doesn't quite work. We saw in the verses that we read in the Torah, “Don't eat these animals. They’re tamei.” Now, if tumah is caused by an encounter with death, then the Torah seems to be saying, “Don't eat these animals because there's something deathy about them.” I have a problem with that, though, which is, what do we do to our tahor animals in order to eat them?

Beth: Oh, we kill them. Wait, so what I think I hear you saying is, if the essence of tumah is that there's something deathy about it, and the Torah comes along and says, “Don't eat animals that are tamei,” so presumably the Torah wants us to stay away from deathy-ness somehow when we're eating animals. But we don't do a very good job at all of staying away from deathy-ness when we eat animals, because in order to eat any animal, we have to kill it.

Imu: Exactly. So if a ham which is a dead pig is tamei, and a hamburger which is a dead cow is tahor, it's way too simple to say that tamei means deathy and tahor means lifey.

Beth: Oh, that is a good objection. 

Imu: And my final objection is actually about the word tahara, not really so much about the word tumah. If tumah is death, then the opposite of that word should be life, right? Maybe it's tumah and chiyus (liveliness), right? Tumah and something lifey. But the word that's used is tahor or tahara, which, you know, we classically understand as “pure” or “clean” or something like that, and I don't think that's the best definition of that word.

 And I actually was reading a story that we did read in Meaningful Judaism before, that I noticed actually might shed light on a better definition of the word tahara and will hopefully give us a better understanding of what tumah and tahara mean in general. I'd love to take you to that story. 

Beth: I’m just going to remind you that you did invite me here for a kashrus discussion, so I'm not leaving until I get an answer about kosher animals. But yeah, if you are saying that studying this story is going to help us get there, then I trust you. Let's do it.

Imu: So the story is in the strangest of places. There's this encounter where Moshe, Aharon, Nadav, and Avihu go up a mountain to meet God, and it says they see God, whatever that means. So I'm going to actually have you read and translate some verses with me. Come to Exodus 24, verse nine. 

Beth: I'm coming, I'm coming. וַיַּעַל מֹשֶׁה וְאַהֲרֹן נָדָב וַאֲבִיהוּא וְשִׁבְעִים מִזִּקְנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל — They've gone up. Who's gone up? It's Moshe, Aharon, Nadav and Avihu, Aharon’s sons, and the 70 elders. And: וַיִּרְאוּ אֵת אֱלֹקי יִשְׂרָאֵל — they saw the God of Israel. That's already trippy. 

Imu: Yep. 

Beth: וְתַחַת רַגְלָיו — And underneath His feet, כְּמַעֲשֵׂה לִבְנַת הַסַּפִּיר — it looked like something made out of sapphire stone, וּכְעֶצֶם הַשָּׁמַיִם לָטֹהַר — and it was like the essence of the sky. I want to say לָטֹהַר, tahara. 

Imu: There’s that word. We'll hang out and translate that word in a second, but just to follow through here, what's happening is there's a rock or something carved, and it's like this big brick of sapphire under God's feet. Again, we don't need to understand what any of this really means, but the text is trying to —

Beth: That's a relief, because I don't understand what it means.

Imu: The text is trying to give us some adjectives or some sense to understand what that rock looked like. And it says that it was so blue, it was like the sky in its tohar. It’s not hard to translate in context. What would you say that word means?

Beth: Hmm.

Imu: It doesn't mean, “not death.” 

Beth: Right, right. Okay, so it was so blue, it was like the very essence of the sky regarding its…the word that's coming to mind is “clarity.”

Imu: Yeah, exactly. Like, if we're talking about a gem, it's rated in terms of its clarity, right? So this sapphire was so clear, it was like clear, blue sky, and I think we can even do one better than “clarity.” What I would say is “transparency.” You have a sapphire; if it has imperfections, if it has something that kind of stops the light from passing through it, it's going to look more cloudy. But the text is saying it was so perfectly pure in its color because the סַּפִּיר, the sapphire had its tohar, it was the quality of clarity. What gives a gemstone its clarity is its transparency, the extent to which light can perfectly pass through that stone. 

Beth: Mm-hmm.

Imu: First of all, you with me so far? 

Beth: I'm with you, I'm with you. It's clear, what you're saying is clear...just some tahara humor for you.

Imu: You know, everyone could use a little more tumah/tahara humor. 

Beth: It's funny because we started out by rejecting the translation of tahor as “pure,” but now I’m thinking maybe it’s actually not such a bad translation after all, but just not the way that we're used to thinking of that word. Not pure as, like, spiritually awesome and holy and free from sin, but pure as in, there's nothing that's blocking the way, that's stopping the light from passing through. The sapphire was purely blue, it was entirely blue. I think that harmonizes with your transparency idea. 

Imu: Yeah, I think it does. So once I saw that taharah seems to mean transparency, I started to wonder how that had anything to do with tumah and taharah as I was used to thinking about them. Doesn’t tumah have to do with death? How would transparency fit an understanding of tumah meaning death?

So, Beth, once I got there, let me ask you: What would you do next? What would your first step be as a researcher knowing that this word tahara means clear? What would you do next?

Beth: Yeah, so I think I would go back to those cases of tumah and tahara in the Torah and say, you know, okay, so can I take this definition of taharah, meaning transparency, and can I read it into these cases and does it make sense?

Imu: Yeah, and I feel like the first case you’ve got to visit to see and to play with this is death itself, right? Death is avi avot ha’tumah, it is the most tamei thing you could possibly get to. So let's say taharah means, you know, transparent or clear. How would that change our definition of tumah and tahara here?

Beth: You're saying, in what sense is a dead body somehow an expression of a lack of transparency? Okay, let me think about that. Transparent means that I can see through to whatever's on the other side, but what would that even mean, to be able to see through someone's body?

Imu: Yeah, so that’s exactly where my mind went when I started thinking about this. What does transparent mean when we’re talking about a person? When we looked at לִבְנַת הַסַּפִּיר, the sapphire stone, transparency there meant that light was passing through a rock. It was a very literal definition of transparency, like you can see right through that rock and it was perfectly clear. But if we’re going to try and extend this idea of transparency to other cases of tumah and taharah, that really literal definition —

Beth: Yeah, the literal definition is not going to work, obviously.

Imu: Right, because that’s about light being able to pass through something. Otherwise, windows would be the most tahor thing in the world, but that’s not the way it works.

Beth: Right, okay. So maybe it’s not about something being transparent to light per se, it’s about being transparent to something else, letting something else pass through.

Imu: If I had to replace light with something else — like, a dead body is somehow more opaque, and something that is tahor is more transparent. The thing I'm trying to solve for is, transparent to what? What would light be if we were to use that as a metaphor in the context of tumah and taharah?

Beth: So I'm wondering, maybe the light has to do with God. Like, maybe there's some element of the Divine, that it was like we could see it in them when they were alive, and now we can't see it anymore.

Imu: That's where my mind went. Like somehow, maybe you don't see the Divine in a dead body as much as you do in a living human being. That human is somehow more transparent not to light, you don't see through them, but to Godliness, right? We talked about God as a source of life and death. Well, we can very clearly see God's lifey-ness in someone when they're alive; they're more transparent, right? That makes a lot of sense to me.

Beth: But when we encounter tumah, that lack of transparency, it's as if we can no longer see through the person to the source of where their life originally came from.

Imu: Yeah. When we encounter a human being walking around, living, breathing…that, to us, is transparent to God's handiwork. When you see a dead body, it's not always as easy to see, even though objectively they're equally God's handiwork. But to us, to humans, for some reason, one far more transparently testifies to the Divine and the other obscures it.

We were saying, what's God's problem with death? God doesn't have a problem with death, right?

Beth: We do. 

Imu: It's us. Our ability to continue to the source of life is imperiled when we encounter death.

Beth: So the way your understanding it, tumah arises from human psychology. It’s subjective. It's when our sense, human being's sense, that God is our source and the source of everything, is somehow dimmed. Our ability to access that truth, that awareness, is compromised.

Imu: And look, by the way, just to give credit where credit is due, there are other commentators who understand tumah as arising from a psychological reaction, so that part of the theory is not entirely novel. But what I do think is novel is this transparency piece, this notion of tumah as a lack of transparency to God as our source. And what's also novel is how I arrived at the theory, seeing this word tohar in this story, this other section of the Torah, and then kind of following it through.

Beth: So Imu, I'm wondering now: If encountering death causes us to somehow, like, lose touch with the idea that God is the source of life, of everything really, then it seems as if it would be very, very difficult to actually hold on to that pure awareness of God because all of these things that make us tamei, they're everywhere, right? A natural process like giving birth, getting certain diseases. That's a little confusing to me because we said before, when we were talking about the definition of tumah/tahara, that we didn't like the words impure and pure because it felt as if there was some kind of sin involved, some kind of behavior that isn't ideal, and that's not really the case with the kinds of tumah that we were talking about.

But I feel like now we're kind of coming back to that same idea. Like sort of saying, well, if you're tahor then you have this utter clarity, this complete awareness of God as the source of everything. But if your vision is kind of being clouded by coming into contact with a source of tumah, then your awareness of God is diminished. Like that, to me, sounds as if it's not very desirable.

Imu: Yeah, I totally hear the question. Once I'm arguing that transparency has all to do with God-awareness, it almost feels like we've entered back into the moral dimension. Like, who wants to not be aware of God? That sounds like it's a bad thing, but I don't think that that's what we're saying. There is no requirement to be tahor all the time, or even to be tahor as much as possible

Beth: And you take that to mean that God doesn’t want us to have God-awareness all the time?

Imu: Yeah, that actually is what I’m saying. Here, there's this analogy that I think might help with this kind of strange mind bending notion that God would just be perfectly happy with us not being aware of Him all the time; of how perpetual, perfect God-awareness could actually be harmful, could actually kind of ruin the the beauty of the world that God created for us. So let me share this analogy with you.

Beth: Okay, this is a little mind bending, so I'm game for the analogy.

Imu: So this idea may seem a little bit Kabbalistic, and if it's compelling, great. If not, you can reject it. But imagine that we are all in a movie. We're in God's film, and God is shining light onto the film and animating us. And you can have an awareness that you are a character in a movie, or you can lose total awareness that you’re a character in a movie. When you encounter death, and you've lost awareness that you're a character in a movie, death is a horrible thing, right? A friend has died, someone has died. But let's say you, as a character in a movie, have tremendous transparency and clarity, and you realize that God, you know, wrote the screenplay. You're His character. When another character dies, if you are utterly transparent and are nothing other than an emanation of the Will of the Filmmaker, this is how the story progresses. You can't experience that this being is gone. You actually can't experience a sense of loss. There's awareness of unity and oneness to the entire story.

That, I think, on a deep level perhaps, might be what taharah is. And it's not that God demands of us to be utterly and completely aware and to be tahor at all moments. We, as characters in the film, are too invested in our separateness in the film as characters. We don't realize it's a film. We're in, you know, the land of the story, and we think we have our own homes and our own lives and we're our own characters. But the truth is, we exist as emanations of the Filmmaker. That is what being more tahor is like. When you get too invested in the story, that is tamei. You are more opaque.

Beth: I have yet to meet the person who is so spiritually enlightened that, when faced with a loss of someone who's close to them, that they react with the equanimity of one who says, “I can't feel any loss because I know that we're all just projections of God on the screen in this movie house that call the world.” 

Imu: But first of all, how interesting of a movie would it be if the characters walked around all the time being like, “We are but emanations of the Filmmaker,” right? No plot, there's nothing interesting. 

Beth: I wouldn't want to see that movie.

Imu: Right? And second of all, that awareness, that perpetual clarity, it's not even what God expects of us. Of course, we're going to experience loss in our lives and we're allowed to actually get caught up in playing our roles. There is this in-between perspective that seems like God wants of us; on the one hand, engaged in our stories, on the other hand, to have awareness that, ultimately, this is God's story. And I think the Torah is creating a very nuanced spiritual journey for us where we toggle back and forth between various states of clarity.

There's a particular story I have in mind where I think we can see this happening. It's the story of a tragic death in the Torah, and what's interesting is that the entire tumah and tahara section of the Torah seems to be introduced as relating to this story of tragic death. 

Beth: You’re thinking of Nadav and Avihu?

Imu: Yeah, I'm thinking of Nadav and Avihu. That story is all about allowances that God makes for Aharon, for his family to not always engage in purity and clarity of perspective. Moshe actually seems to demand that of Aharon, if you read the story carefully, and Aharon sort of intuits a different way of being, and Moshe and God accept it.

Beth: You're saying that, in that moment when two of Aharon's sons have just been killed, and God doesn't expect him to just bounce back and say, "I am completely at peace. I know that everything comes from God, even death. I accept this." God seems to respect his grief and allow him space.

Imu: Yeah, and I'm pointing out that that's not just a nice story about how God allows us to grieve. That's how the laws of tumah and taharah are introduced. Like, the rest of the book is a reaction to that story.

Beth: What do you mean, that’s where the laws of tumah and taharah are introduced?

Imu: I mean that what we get immediately after the Aharon-Nadav-and-Avihu story are the laws of kosher animals. The Torah is teaching us about tumah and taharah in the context of, there's been this great loss and there are going to be allowances made for that loss.

Beth: So I really appreciate this framework, Imu, because I'm so used to thinking of tumah as a restriction, almost a punishment: “You can't do XYZ.” But it sounds like the lens that you're offering is, oh, maybe there are all of these natural phenomena over the course of our lives. We're going to encounter them, and when we do, it makes sense, in those moments, that our reaction would be to not be as transparent to God.

And God recognizes that and says, “Oh, why don't you take some time? Like, now is not the best time for you to be getting up and making the valedictory speech in the center of the Beit HaMikdash. Like, why don't you take some time to get back to that place?” And that's built into the rhythm of our lives.

Imu: Yeah.

Beth: Okay, Imu, so you’ve just taken me on this whole textual, theological journey to get at the deeper meaning of tumah and taharah, and it’s been very cool, but I’m just remembering the way that we got into this. You said most people think tumah is about a brush with death, but actually that explanation has some problems. And you raised these four objections, and then you proposed a new way to think about taharah as transparency. So if I’m going to accept this new way of thinking about taharah, I want to know, does your theory have an answer for those objections? 

Imu: It had better, so let’s talk about that. So I said that if tumah just results from a brush with death, then you have to explain to me why God wants us to keep deathy things away from Him, away from the Temple, given that God is also the source of death.

Beth: Right, but, I can do this one, if we understand tumah not as a brush with death per se but as an experience of not seeing God as the source of everything, that question melts away.

Imu: Yep, that was our first question, and our fourth question kind of melts away, too.

Beth: What was the fourth question? Oh yeah, you pointed out that tahor is the opposite of tamei, so if tamei means deathy, then tahor should mean lifey. But in that story you showed me, it doesn’t seem to mean that; it means transparent. Ok, cool, that objection is accounted for.

You’re going to have to explain the yoledes one to me. Your issue was, why would the yoledes, the postpartum woman, be tamei, be deathy, considering that she just brought a life into the world? So, fine; if tamei means not aware of God as the source…I don’t know, I’m pretty curious what you’re going to say here, Imu, because I would think that a woman who’s just given birth has a very strong awareness of God as source. Childbirth is a very spiritual experience for a lot of women. Obviously I can’t speak for others, but my experience is that I feel really grateful. It’s like, “Thank you, Hashem, for this miracle, this unbelievable gift.” So how do you see the yoledes as being somehow not transparent to the reality of God?

Imu: So here’s how I think about it, and I admit, this is just my theory. God has just brought this new life into the world. It’s sort of like the light of God should be shining through this child; it’s tahor, it’s clear, it’s transparent. Except that, in my mind’s eye, there’s this shadow. There’s something standing in between the light of God and the child, and that something is the mother. 

Beth: Oh, interesting. The “God as Filmmaker” analogy is helpful for me. In other words, when you're the mother who's just given birth, you don't feel like your child is a character in a movie and God is the Filmmaker, the Creator. You feel like the creator. 

Imu: Yeah. It's not like somebody else cast this child and you’ve got to play the role of mom, right? Like, you brought this child into the world. You know I, obviously have never experienced childbirth and never will, but women are like demigods; like, they have the power to bring life. Adam calls Chava (Eve) essentially “Life Lady,” because she's eim kol chai, she's the mother of everything that lives. And even consider, in her first birth, she has a child. She names that child Kayin, which means “acquisition,” right, or “creation.” 

Beth: Like, “I've done it.” Actually, she says קָנִיתִי אִישׁ אֶת־יְקוָה — I've acquired this child (Genesis 4:1). I've created this child with God, almost like an afterthought. The feeling you get from her language is that she's really focused on own central role in the birth of this child, and she's feeling proud. 

Imu: And again, here, I think tumah functions as a sort of allowance, which is like, you know, you can be proud. Like, you put a lot of effort into carrying this child, into birthing this child. I don't think God expects for you in that moment to say, “I am tahor. I am perfectly transparent to the source of all life in the world. And I recognize it is not I, it is God who hath done this deed.”

Beth: A mother can feel that it's a spiritual experience. She can get up after the birth and give the d’var Torah at the brit or simchat bat and talk about how close she feels with God and how grateful she is to God. But there's a sense in which, even with that happening, that she's forgetting something about the reality and the centrality of what role God is playing in that dynamic.

Imu: Yeah, and I'm not saying that there's any problem with that, and neither is the Torah. There is this tension of humanity as “little creator,” and when we're engaged in creativity, it's like we are gods. And there are mitzvot that rein in that creativity. There are mitzvot that ask you to reconcile your little creativity with that of “Big Creator,” and nest your act of creation under God's creation. And women are given, you know, this period of time to do that reconciliation.

Beth: So really, tumah doesn't have to be connected to death at all. Death shows up in a lot of the cases of tumah, death can lead to tumah because confronting death can cause us to lose touch with our awareness of God as source, but death isn’t the essence of the thing — in your theory, I'm saying. And that's how you can have this case of the yoledes who is super, duper lifey and is still tamei. 

There’s just one question left, I think, about eating animals. If tamei means deathy, then how could there be such a thing as a tahor dead animal? That doesn’t make sense. 

Imu: Right, I think that’s probably the strongest question against the paradigm of tumah as death. If tahor means “not deathy,” it doesn't make sense, but if tahor means something else, means transparent to God as source, then that we can work with.

Beth: So a kosher animal is not less deathy than a non-kosher animal.

Imu: They’re all dead, they’re all the same dead.

Beth: It’s somehow more transparent to God as source, but what does it mean for an animal to be transparent to God as source, and how are the kosher animals somehow more transparent to God as source than the non-kosher ones? 

Imu: So what you are asking is exactly the question that I think the Torah wants us to ask. Back in Shmini, in Leviticus 11, the Torah explains that if an animal has split hooves and it chews its cud, it is tahor and we can eat it. So if tahor really does mean transparent, then we should be able to look at these two signs and see how, somehow, animals with these signs are more transparent to the reality of God. So that’s what I want us to look at.

Beth: We’re finally coming back to kashrus!

Imu: We’re finally coming back to kashrus.

Beth: Yeah, I’m jazzed for that. I don’t know how you’re going to pull this off, but I’m definitely on the edge of my seat.

Imu: Just a caveat before we begin: I admitted at the start of this episode that the material here is a bit more speculative than what we've presented in other episodes, and I just want to reiterate that, especially in this part, as we get into the details of the signs. 

Beth: Got it, got it. So, warning to our listeners: If you find yourself kind of yelling at Imu when you’re listening to this part,like, "How do you account for this detail, Imu?” and, “You don't know anything about animals, you city-dweller!" So Imu, you are on the record being aware that the argument needs some finessing.

Imu: The argument has some bona fide holes, but a lot is just that I don't have the space here to get into all the nuances. But even with that said, I really believe that what I'm about to share is still worthwhile.

And the truth is, we actually have an epilogue coming out that’s going to get into any of the pieces of the theory that aren’t tied into neat, little bows, so you can stay tuned for that epilogue. Okay.

When I was learning this with my chavrusa (study partner) David Block a few years ago, we noticed something really interesting about these signs. And we're going to get into the science for a bit because I think it's really relevant and really cool.

Let's talk about chewing cud. The scientific term for that is that it’s a ruminant, and a ruminant are these kinds of animals that have four stomachs. When a ruminant eats at first, it barely chews its food at all. The food enters the first compartment of its stomach where it's broken down, and then, in the second compartment, the food mixes with saliva and it becomes this thing, this cud. And then the cud comes back up into the animal's mouth, the animal chews it to further break it down. It goes and enters the third compartment where water is absorbed out of the food. And finally, it goes into the last section where it digests its food, much like our own stomachs. 

Now, why am I telling you this? Ruminants have this elaborate digestion because it allows them to eat things that humans can never dream of eating. Ruminants are always herbivores. They’re plant eaters, and they're a very specific type of herbivore, which is unlike many other vegetarian animals who can eat seeds or grains or nuts, just like we can. Ruminants primarily eat raw leaves and grasses which are extremely difficult to digest. Humans cannot eat grass. You would starve. We don't have the ability to break down the sugars that are present in grass.

Beth: I mean, not what my three year old thinks, but go on. Interesting, okay. So you're saying, when the Torah says animals that chew its cud, that's shorthand for saying animals that eat a lot of raw leaves.

Imu: A lot of raw leaves and grass specifically, yeah.

Let's just quickly talk about split hooves. What is the function of split hooves? Well, hooves are the tip of an animal's toe that's covered by a thick, hard keratin coat, and the point of that hoof is to allow an animal to stand and travel for long periods of time.

Beth: Grazing. 

Imu: If you have an animal with hooves, you know that the terrain is going to be grassy areas. Split hooves, they allow the animals to go even a step further. They can be in grassy pastures and flatlands, but they can actually get extra traction when they're running or jumping on rocky terrain. And that gives them protection because they could be vulnerable to predators when they're out in the planes just grazing. So the split hooves allow them to escape across any terrain. So both of these traits, chewing cud and having split hooves, they’re, together, elements that point to a particular type of animal: A grass-and-leaf eating vegetarian.

Beth: So in other words, we're used to thinking of these two signs as being two completely different things. But actually, they really both point to the same kind of animal, the same kind of behaviors, which is that we're talking about herbivores. But not just herbivores; herbivores that eat a lot of grass, that graze over grassy areas for long periods of time.

Imu: What's interesting is, the Gemara (Talmud) actually makes the same point, but in another way. Mesechet Chullin, daf nun-tet, amud aleph (Tractate Chullin, 59a) says that there's another way we can tell if an animal is kosher. If you see that the animal does not have upper teeth, meaning pointed teeth, incisors, then you can know for sure that it chews its cud and has split hooves. Why would that be true? Because upper incisors are for ripping through tough materials like nuts or animal flesh. If an animal doesn't have them, it's because its diet consists of things that don't need them. In other words, they eat grasses and leaves. So it seems like the Gemara also thinks that chewing cud and split hooves together point to a certain type of animal: Grass-eating herbivores.

Consider the diet of these animals in the context of tumah and taharah. Where does your mind go?

Beth: In what sense are animals that have that kind of diet and have those kind of behaviors somehow more transparent to the reality of God, or transparent to source than others? Transparent to God, I'm struggling a little there, but when I think about transparency to source…well, if you have an animal that just eats grass and leaves, it's eating directly from the land. You could say it's eating directly from the source of its food.

It's not like with a carnivore, say, a wolf who eats a lamb who eats the grass. What is the source of the wolf's food? On some level, the source really is the grass, right? The grass provides the nutrition for the lamb and the lamb provides the nutrition for the wolf, but the wolf isn't eating the grass directly. You don't see the grass going into the wolf's mouth. The wolf is kind of opaque to its real food source.

I mean, if you want to get philosophical about it, yes, the plant is sourcing its nutrition from somewhere else. It’s, like, drawing nutrients up from the soil, dot dot dot. But I don't know, there is a symbolism there that resonates. 

I don't exactly know how that ties in with transparency to God, like how does an herbivore make you more aware of God. I think I need your help making that leap.

Imu: Yeah, I think it would be a whole lot more elegant if you could somehow be more aware that these animals, based on what they eat, are more connected to God, and what I’m emphasizing is transparency to source, that you can tell that these animals are more connected to the land. But I think that, in the Torah’s world, that’s fairly equivalent. We are the children of God, but we are the children of God through the land; we are b’nei adam, we are the children of the earth, and we derive our sustenance from the earth. And I think that the more connected we are to the earth, the more we understand our source, the more we appreciate that everything really comes from God. 

I think that the Torah sort of expects us to see the earth as this conduit for spirituality or connectedness to God. But I think that if you're thinking about it in terms of tahara as transparency to source or connectedness to source, then yeah, it does click.

Beth: It feels a little bit mystical for me, but I think I'm sort of coming around to it in my own way. Is it transparency to God? Is it transparency to source? I think there’s a way you can see them really as the same thing. It’s like, the power of this symbolism is that when you start seeing things in terms of source, then the kind of logical or spiritual extension of that is, well, God is the ultimate source of everything, really. Once you start thinking about source, then it all just traces back to God. That’s where your mind goes.

Imu: And what’s incredible is that these animals, animals that chew their cud and have split hooves, the ones whose sustenance comes directly from grass and leaves, it's not just that these animals are not deathlike. It's that these animals are tahor, they are transparent.

Beth: They're testifying, they are reminding us, they're drawing our awareness back to God, back to the Creator of the world.

Imu: Exactly. I actually think there's almost like a biological way in which they are tahor, they are transparent. They have a really interesting relationship to light itself. And here, I'll tell you what my ninth grade science teacher, Mr. Fitzgerald, told us that kind of blew our minds in class, which is that the source of all calories in the human diet is the sun.

Plants have this incredible ability; they have photosynthesis. They have this ability to take the sun's energy in its rays and convert it into sugar, which gives them their fuel for life. The vegetables are consumed by the animals, and then we consume the animals. We talk about being directly connected to source. Things that eat animals are actually interruptions in their connection to source. And we're not arguing that light is God; that's just, you know, the natural way in which God provides energy for humanity. But what the Torah is doing here is saying, if you're not going to be eating plants and be as connected to source as you possibly can be —

Beth: Then the least you can do is one step removed from that, so to speak.

Imu: Correct. You cannot eat carnivorous animals. You cannot eat animals that are getting their sustenance from animals who might be getting their sustenance from other animals in turn. And then someone along that chain chose to eat some vegetation, which is the closest we can get to source in this world; to earth, to sun.

Beth: Wow, wow. This is really powerful for me, especially what you said about Mr. Fitzgerald, your science teacher. It’s really sticking with me, this notion that the sun — it’s sort of the closest that we can get to seeing ourselves as being directly sustained by God. God set the sun in the solar system, turned on that lamp, it shines down upon the earth, its rays come down to the ground, and it’s by that means that everything that nourishes me comes to be. So when God asks me to eat these animals and not those animals, it’s because they eat the grass which eats the sun, so to speak; eats the light that God is beaming down upon us.

And I know perfectly well that the sun’s rays rationally aren’t any more God than the grass or the cow, but it sure feels that way. So when I sit down to eat a hamburger, I’m meant to feel that God is feeding me. It’s all supposed to bring me back to the awareness of that fundamental reality, which is that, at the end of the day, isn’t God providing all of our nourishment?

I have this really evocative image in my mind right now, which kind of doesn’t make much sense but I also really want to share it with you. Which is, it’s as if God is inviting us to experience our eating in this world as, “Oh, you’re hungry? Just step outside. Step outside, look up at the sky, open your mouth, and just drink in the sunlight. And just have the sense that what I, God, am beaming down upon you is all you need.”

Imu: What I thought was elegant about this is, it takes us back to our season opener. It takes us back to our first kashrus episode.

Beth: Wow.

Imu: We showed that it’s not ideal to eat meat.

Beth: But for a whole different reason. Back then, we were talking about not eating meat from the perspective of, how are we not honoring the life of the animal when we do that? But this is another angle which is, how are we not honoring the Creator when we do it?

Imu: I don't see this as another angle at all. I see this as directly connected. If we talk about taharah as your ability to be transparent, to be directly connected to source, and if you see the world around you as transparent and directly connected to source, the last thing you're able to do is kill another being.

You understand that we both have a Creator. I have no greater role than you. I can't kill you because it suits me to kill you, right? We both are emanations of the same Creator. We both have a role in this movie. For me to see myself in a way in which I have some greater role and or that you serve me in some greater way, that is tamei. That means you're taking your role in the movie way too seriously. You actually see yourself as having a life of your own in this world, not directly connected to our shared Creator, to our shared source. 

So God says, “Okay, these animals you can eat. But when you eat animals, there is a ritual where you return the blood, your common blood to the earth. Man has blood. Humans have blood. You are both created of the earth. You return the blood to the earth.” The earth brings forth life in the sense that it gives us. Plants, both animal and humanity is created from the earth and we restore the blood to the earth.

Beth: Wait, let me slow you down. You're saying that kisui dam, the mitzvah that when we are shechting an animal — not all animals but many kinds of animals, wild animals, birds — the Torah instructs us to spill the blood on the ground and cover it up, and when we do that, it's actually a way of promoting taharah because it’s a ritual that symbolically reminds us of the animal's source, the earth. Either because the earth provides food for the animal, so it's its source in that way, or sort of in a mystical sense because the Torah describes that, in Creation, animals were created from the earth.

So really, this value of eating the tahara that we're discovering seems to be at the heart of the laws of kosher and non-kosher animals, that very same value seems to be at the heart of the laws of shechita, of how we slaughter animals. 

Imu: Exactly. And it reminds me of, you know, our second kashrus episode, milk and meat. The milk that comes from this animal, right, you need to recognize its source, which is mother of animal, and you cannot consume the two together. These kashrus laws that we've been talking about, to me, all seem to go in the same direction, which is the recognition of source. 

Beth: It's a kind of grand unifying theme behind all of the kashrut laws.

Imu, don't take this the wrong way, because I loved this. I loved this, and I genuinely think what you shared is fresh and really exciting and has the potential to be meaningful to a lot of people, myself included. But also, it didn't escape me that there are some topics that we didn't touch upon at all, and you admitted to this when we started to get into this section. Like, I still want to know about kosher and non-kosher birds, how do they fit into this? Fish; the scales, the fins.

I think there's also more to the story of why we need to have two signs for the land animals and how those signs interact. And then you can ask, why does the Torah specifically call out animals that have just one sign and not the other, like the pig and camel and the hyrax and the hare? So I know we don't have time in this episode to deal with all of those fascinating questions. For anyone who’s listening who’s curious, we’re going to have an epilogue coming to try to speak to some of them, right?

Imu: Yep, but also kind of give you a peek into some of the scholarship that went behind all the work in this episode. 

Beth: I have a lot of respect for those amongst us who are willing to put a theory out there, because it takes courage doing it knowingly in the face of holes. But it is the only way that we're going to get any closer to meaning. Thanks for showing us how you put the pieces together and then just being transparent about some of its weaknesses.

Imu: If you weren't going to do the transparent joke, I was going to do the transparent joke.

Beth: You can still do the transparent joke.

Imu: The idea here is to be transparent to our source material and to say, you know, this is what I'm seeing in the text. I hope you find it to be compelling and meaningful.

Beth: Yeah. 

Imu: Thank you for taking this journey with me.

Beth: Should we break for lunch? 

Imu: This episode was recorded by me, Imu Shalev, and Beth Lesch.

The scholars for this episode were me, with original scholarship by David Block and Ari Levisohn.

The senior editor was Beth Lesch, with additional editing by Sarah Penso.

Our audio editor is Hillary Guttman.

Our managing producer is Adina Blaustein.

Meaningful Judaism's editorial director is me, Imu Shalev.

Thank you for listening.