and as such it can serve as a symbol for any group or society: it is a self-contained, well-defined unit, whose only vulnerable points are its points of exit and entry, that is, the orifices, and it is through these exit and entry points that impurity makes its way from and into the outside world.15 Several scholars of purity and impurity in ancient Judaism largely adopted Douglas’s paradigm, albeit sometimes with the necessary reservation that Douglas’s location of the bodily drama of impurity at the orifices applies only partially to the biblical scheme (in which the only orifices that are closely identified with impurity are the genitals, and other orifices do not play a role in the impurity system).16 A close examination of the rabbinic “body of impurity,” however, strongly challenges the Douglasian paradigm of impurity as a breach of bodily boundaries, since it reveals a body that can hardly be said to be well bounded in the first place. Rather than depicting the body that contracts impurity as a neatly enveloped entity into and out of whose orifices impurity oozes, the rabbis depict the human body as an extremely fluid entity whose boundaries are constantly transformed, and which becomes impure not only through penetration but also and especially through direct and indirect touch. This depiction of bodily boundaries as highly unstable, I suggest, is informed by central mindsets and ideas in Graeco-Roman medical discourse, and speaks to the way in which the rabbis integrated frames of thought from their surrounding intellectual culture into the system of impurity they inherited.
How does one’s body become impure, then, in the mishnaic scheme? If we leave aside for the moment cases in which impurity transpires independently in one’s body due to a physical condition, the Mishnah makes clear that the primary way in which one becomes impure is through contact with a source of impurity, either direct physical contact or indirect contact that the rabbis construe as direct contact, such as shift or overhang. Penetration through an orifice, to be sure, is one possible form of contact: for example, a menstruating woman makes a man who has intercourse with her impure, and impure food renders the one who eats it impure. The most common and prominent form of contact through which impurity is conveyed, however, is what we may call “surface contact,” that is, touching the source of impurity, whether another person’s body or another person’s bodily fluids, a dead animal or person, and so on. And yet the question remains: How exactly does surface contact transmit impurity from one entity to the other, in such a way that one body changes as a result of touching another? What is the nature of the process that the rabbis have in mind when depicting the contraction of impurity?
We might have been compelled to dismiss this question as unanswerable and to determine that the rabbis are simply adhering to the notions of impurity contraction they inherited from the Pentateuch, if it were not for several passages in the fifth chapter of tractate Zavim of the Mishnah. This chapter, which concludes the mishnaic tractate dedicated to the impurity of genital discharges, presents a series of five rulings regarding the way impurity is transmitted through various forms of contact. These rulings help reveal an underlying perception of contact between bodies as a form of physical connection, in the course of which two bodies become one and partake in the same qualities.
These five rulings discuss the degree of impurity of a person who had contact with a primary source of impurity, and put forth a curious distinction: during the time of contact itself, that is, as long as the secondary contractor is still touching the source, the degree of impurity of the toucher is identical to the degree of impurity of the source. Only after the two have separated, and the secondary contractor is no longer touching the source, does his or her impurity become “once-removed” and attenuated (that is, weaker in its force and shorter in its duration) in accordance with the paradigm I presented in the previous chapter. To put this simply, for as long as one is physically attached to the source of impurity, they both share the exact same level of impurity, and the secondary contractor functions like the source itself. The following two mishnaic passages demonstrate this principle:
One who touches a man or a woman with genital discharge, and a menstruating woman, and a parturient, and person with scale disease, and a litter and a seat [of the aforementioned people]—makes two impure and disqualifies one. Once he has separated himself—he makes one impure and disqualifies one. The same is the case for one who touches, one who shifts, one who carries, and one who is carried.17
One who touches the emission of a man with genital discharge, and his saliva, and his semen, and his urine, and menstrual blood—makes two impure and disqualifies one. Once he has separated himself—he makes one impure and disqualifies one. The same is the case for one who touches, and for one who shifts. R. Eliezer says: it is also the case for one who carries.18
The general purpose of these passages and those that follow them is to divide different sources of impurity into different categories according to the mode of contact through which they convey impurity. The most obvious form of contact is direct physical touch (maga), but there are also two forms of indirect contact: carriage (masa), in which one can become impure by either carrying the source of impurity or being carried by it, and shift (heset), in which one can become impure by either causing the source of impurity to move or being made to move on account of it. Those divisions notwithstanding, the same basic rule applies in all cases: at the actual moment of physical contact, whoever touches the source of impurity “makes two impure and disqualifies one.”19 This is the mishnaic manner of saying that whoever touches these sources of impurity has the same force to convey impurity as the source of impurity itself, that is, it becomes “a father of impurity” that makes whatever it touches a “first” of impurity, whatever touches the “first” a “second” of impurity, and whatever touches the “second” disqualified for use (if it is a heave-offering).20 For example, if Jill is menstruating, and Jack touches Jill, then for as long as he is touching her, Jack is impure in the same degree as Jill. If he touches a bowl at the same time that he is still touching Jill, the bowl will become impure in the once-removed degree; if the bowl contains flour, the flour will become impure in the twice-removed degree, and if the flour will then touch a heave-offering it will disqualify it. Thus Jack makes two (the bowl and the flour) impure, and disqualifies one (the heave-offering). In contrast, once the source of impurity and whatever touched it are no longer in contact, the toucher’s impurity is attenuated in such a way that it is rendered a “first of impurity” that “makes one impure and disqualifies one.” That is, if Jack touches the bowl after he separated himself from Jill, he will make the bowl “second of impurity,” and if the bowl will be used to contain a heave-offering, the heave-offering will be disqualified. Thus Jack, once separated, makes one (the bowl) impure and disqualifies one (the heave-offering).
By distinguishing the force of impurity at the moment of contact from the force of impurity after separation, a distinction that has no trace in biblical or postbiblical purity legislation, the rabbis indicate that in the realm of impurity physical contact should be understood as connectivity. The moment of contact is a moment in which the items in question are one in terms of their ritual impurity status, as though the source of impurity annexes the thing that has contact with it and makes this thing a part of itself. In other words, for the rabbis impurity is not transmitted as much as it is shared. This notion, according to which physical contact turns different objects into one in terms of impurity so that they all share the same impurity status, can be illuminated through the following passage, which concerns the way in which pieces of dough contract impurity from one another:
If a piece of dough was “first” (that is, impure in the once-removed degree), and one attached other [pieces of dough] to it, they are all “first.”
If they were separated, [the piece that was initially impure] is “first,” and all the rest are “second” (that is, impure in the twice-removed degree).
If [the initial piece] was “second,” and one attached other [pieces of dough] to it, they are all “second.”
If they were separated, [the piece that was initially impure] is “second,” and all the rest are “third.”21
As this passage clearly indicates,
