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It's the Purity, Stupid: Reading Leviticus in Context (Parashat Tazria and Parashat Metzora)

April 28, 2006 | By Jay Michaelson

Topic(s): Jewish Law

Media Type(s): Torah Commentary

This resource is part of the Torah Queeries collection.

Sexual practices are forbidden not because of the convenient rationales one often hears today, but because they are maasei mitzrayim, acts of Egypt, and thus taboo for Israelites, who are exhorted to live a life circumscribed by distinctions. The prohibitions are part of Leviticus’s “Holiness Code,” which is chiefly about maintaining cultic and ritual purity – not ethics, not family, and not “nature.”

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