Tamei?
And the Lord said to Moshe, Speak to the priests the sons of Aharon, and say to them, There shall none be defiled (יִטַּמָּ֖א) for the dead among his people.
If you did not know you had exposure to the dead, would it affect you?
Is the halacha purely based on what we consciously know we have experienced?
In other words: if we know we are tamei, then we are. And if we do not know, then we are not? So being tamei is really a reflection of our conscious state of mind, more than than direct lived experience? Is this right?
Imagine being able to gift selective amnesia on a victim of horrible trauma. That victim might have undergone rape or combat, or any manner of things that would cause any reasonable person ongoing PTSD. But if they were somehow able to erase the experience, then they would be as if they had never suffered. So in many ways, ignorance is a blessing. An event that might otherwise scar, will leave no mark if it was somehow forgotten?
The word, tamei, is first found with Dinah. Indeed, the word appears three times in the Dinah episode, and then it is not mentioned again until deep in Leviticus. The Torah’s usage of the word clearly connects the specific laws of spiritual limitation with the episode of Dinah. Do the instances in Genesis help explain and justify the laws found further on?
Is the concept of tuma and taharah the reflection of the reality that people feel somehow wrong when they undergo certain experiences? It may be, for example, that they have come in contact with something that is tamei – a dead animal or person, or specific bodily emissions. It might be something big (like rape) or something small, like touching a lizard. There are connotations affiliated with tamei, with things that remind us of our mortality or animal physiology; the things in life that tell us that we are ultimately not purely spiritual beings, that we can be hurt and that we will eventually die.
So if being tamei is at least partially about awareness, then when we fixate our weaknesses, failures, and mortality, can we no longer elevate and connect with the spiritual, holy goals that G-d commands us to aspire to? Is that the challenge with so much of life: focusing on making the most of our opportunities, instead of obsessing on our background and events that we can do nothing about? Dinah was not necessarily ruined because she was raped, but between herself and her family, it seems she never was able to move beyond it. Are a dead animal and Dinah both tamei because both lose their potential?
If this is the case, then why do any rituals work to correct being tamei? And what do they have to do with it?
The Torah tells us that waiting a preset amount of time is usually a key element in shedding the status of being tamei, as is the use of the ritual bath, to feel reborn and newly tasked in the service of G-d. In the case of being in contact with death, we use the Red Heifer/parah adumah ritual to symbolically reconnect to life before death, to the recreation of mankind in the Garden.
Is there a deep underlying meaning to these rituals? Or are they effective solely because they can help us move on from whatever it is that damaged our potential in this world? Do we have to believe in the power of a ritual in order for it to work?
Zona?
They [Cohanim] shall not take a wife that is a harlot, or profaned.
It should be noted that in the text, zona does not necessarily suggest a woman who sells herself (though Judah thinks Tamar is a zona and contracts with her in Gen. 38). Zona is first used when Shechem takes Dinah, and her brothers take revenge, explaining to their father: “Should our sister be treated like a harlot/zona?” (Gen. 34:31) In this first use of the word, Dinah’s comparison to a zona suggests that she is treated as a loose woman, as someone who has either surrendered to her own desires, or those of the man. In other words, a zona is not in control of herself or of her situation.
Why does this matter? Is it connected to making someone powerless? After all, destroying someone’s sense of self surely also harms their ability to have holy relationships?
If so, is telling someone else “you are a victim” a crime similar to rape? Does it removes that person’s ability to consciously be in control of her own life. Is this what the modern world does to our young people?
So don’t be controlled by outside forces is really a command to be in control of ourselves, to govern our animal instincts and not the other way around. Is this the commandment of the fringes (which men – not women – wear):
That shall be your fringe; look at it and recall all the commandments of G-d and observe them, so that you do not follow after your heart and after your eyes that lead your zona.
Is this because, when we look down at our own bodies, we are meant to be jolted back toward what we should be thinking about? Are we not supposed to use our minds to control our bodies, not the other way around?
The Torah describes zona as not merely physical lust, but also the desire to worship external gods, the gods who never demand that you change or grow or accept responsibility:
I will cut off from among their people both that person and all who zona in going zona after Molech. And if any person turns to ghosts and familiar spirits and goes zona after them, I will set My face against that person, whom I will cut off from among the people.” (Lev. 20:5-6)
This kind of zona is about spiritual desire toward natural deities, worshipping natural forces. Is it integrally linked with celebrating our own unfettered lusts:
You must not make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land, for they will zona after their gods and sacrifice to their gods and invite you, and you will eat of their sacrifices. And when you take [wives into your households] from among their daughters for your sons, their daughters will zona after their gods and will cause your sons to zona after their gods. (Ex. 34:15-16)
…
While Israel was staying at Shittim, the menfolk profaned themselves by zona with the Moabite women, who invited the menfolk to the sacrifices for their god. The menfolk partook of them and worshiped that god. (Num 25:1-2)
Note the connection between physical attraction and the slippery slope into paganism. Does it not sound awfully familiar to us today: the “liberation” of America was followed with growing pagan earth-worship? Once we accept that it is our nature, not our conscious morality, that is in charge of our lives, then we end up honoring and worshipping nature? Hedonism and paganism go hand in hand, do they not?
So is it correct to say that to be Jewish means to always try to be better than our desires, and to see narcissism and hedonism as antithetical to all that is good and holy?
Does being zona mean a loss of faith, a loss of confidence that we are meant to be capable of making our own decisions and bearing the consequences for our actions? When the people do not believe that they can, with G-d’s help, conquer the land, when they lose courage in the face of unfavorable odds, G-d accuses them of behaving like people who give in to zona behavior – behavior in which we are governed by our animal instincts and not our relationship to G-d, where we are managed by fear and not faith.
While your children roam the wilderness for forty years, suffering for your zona, until all of your corpses are [buried] in the wilderness. (Num 14:33)
When people decide to be “true to themselves,” and pursue their lustful urges, do they then become governed by those lusts, and they become helpless victims? Once a person concedes that they are not in charge of their own lives, then they instinctively seek to appease the great natural deities who control the fates of mere mortals, devolving directly into classical paganism. The consequences of applauding whatever “consenting adults choose,” is that our world becomes corrupted as well; people turn to worship Mother Earth in all its forms, and abandon what the Torah tells us?