![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Masechet Keritot Daf 8
Sep. 9th, 2019 11:51 amDaf 8
Start of a section that demonstrates the conceptual difficulty of titling the Masechet Keritot...
The classical chatat offering is an offering given when one accidentally commits a sin that if done intentionally would incur karet. But there are a number of other cases where one is obligated to bring a chatat offering by the Torah, and the following mishnayot deal with some of those other cases. So again, it seems like this should be Masechet Chatat, not Masechet Keritot.
The first set of chatat offerings discussed are those that a woman offers as part of a post-pregnancy purification ritual. It's... uncomfortable to a modern Orthodox feminist to think of these as sin offerings, what sin has a woman committed by giving birth?
There are various choices for resolving this discomfort. We can say that, as I said above, chatat offering is a catch all for achieving different kinds of objectives, that there is no relationship between a chatat offered for a chet b'shogeg and a chatat offering post-pregnancy just because they are mechanically the same offering.
Or we can say that there is a conceptual connection, and it shows that we are thinking about chatat offerings in the wrong way that we think it a bad thing that pregnancy incurs a chatat offering. Perhaps the thing to focus on is that a chatat offering is a device that offers metaphysical purification. In the case of a chet b'shogeg, the point is that there's nothing morally wrong about doing a chet b'shogeg, but nonetheless having that act on your hands puts you in a state that needs purification, and similarly there's nothing morally wrong about giving birth, but it puts you in a metaphysical state that needs purification.
Or we can say that maybe there is something sinful involved in pregnancy. Not in the sense that you've deliberately committed a sin or done something morally wrong, but that giving birth is putting one in direct contact with powerful divine energies of creation and life and death, and that exposes one to the consequences of that closeness to God. Pregnancy is an act of heightened kedusha and all that entails. And while you're in that state, acts that aren't necessarily prohibited can still result in violation of God's order, and that needs an atonement before a woman can return to normal life after pregnancy.
Or we can say that the Torah's ideas about pregnancy and a woman's role in society do not seem consistent with our modern ideas, and that's a tension that we need to struggle with. And perhaps our modern society's ideas about gender roles are not perfect either.
Start of a section that demonstrates the conceptual difficulty of titling the Masechet Keritot...
The classical chatat offering is an offering given when one accidentally commits a sin that if done intentionally would incur karet. But there are a number of other cases where one is obligated to bring a chatat offering by the Torah, and the following mishnayot deal with some of those other cases. So again, it seems like this should be Masechet Chatat, not Masechet Keritot.
The first set of chatat offerings discussed are those that a woman offers as part of a post-pregnancy purification ritual. It's... uncomfortable to a modern Orthodox feminist to think of these as sin offerings, what sin has a woman committed by giving birth?
There are various choices for resolving this discomfort. We can say that, as I said above, chatat offering is a catch all for achieving different kinds of objectives, that there is no relationship between a chatat offered for a chet b'shogeg and a chatat offering post-pregnancy just because they are mechanically the same offering.
Or we can say that there is a conceptual connection, and it shows that we are thinking about chatat offerings in the wrong way that we think it a bad thing that pregnancy incurs a chatat offering. Perhaps the thing to focus on is that a chatat offering is a device that offers metaphysical purification. In the case of a chet b'shogeg, the point is that there's nothing morally wrong about doing a chet b'shogeg, but nonetheless having that act on your hands puts you in a state that needs purification, and similarly there's nothing morally wrong about giving birth, but it puts you in a metaphysical state that needs purification.
Or we can say that maybe there is something sinful involved in pregnancy. Not in the sense that you've deliberately committed a sin or done something morally wrong, but that giving birth is putting one in direct contact with powerful divine energies of creation and life and death, and that exposes one to the consequences of that closeness to God. Pregnancy is an act of heightened kedusha and all that entails. And while you're in that state, acts that aren't necessarily prohibited can still result in violation of God's order, and that needs an atonement before a woman can return to normal life after pregnancy.
Or we can say that the Torah's ideas about pregnancy and a woman's role in society do not seem consistent with our modern ideas, and that's a tension that we need to struggle with. And perhaps our modern society's ideas about gender roles are not perfect either.