These verses confront us with a big question: why is the woman considered impure when she gives birth to a child? Nine months of patience, dreams, projects, illusions have gone by; a new baby is born. Isn’t this phenomenon a true miracle?

Actually, what is difficult is to understand what the concept of impurity means, what is the Torah referring to when it uses this term. There are many interpretations on the subject. A way to better understand this concept is by observing what other phenomena are considered impure in the Torah.

The impure par excellence, for Torah as well as for rabbinic thought, is the deceased person, considered Abi Abot Hatumah (maximum source of impurity). Another situation viewed as impure is the woman while in her menstrual period. At first sight, these situations do not seem to have any relation with one another, but nevertheless, if we dig deeply into them, we will find that they have something in common. The woman in her menstrual period (Nidah) undoubtedly is changing her state: she goes from a fertile period to a momentary infertile period; something dies and something will be born again. The person who dies ends his life cycle, and we don’t know what new situation he will be facing next. This also happens to the woman who bears a child. When a new member is born, the family grows; it is no longer the same family. No doubt, a stage ends and a new one begins in the family dynamics.

We could then consider impurity as not something related with illness or dirtiness, but rather as the ending of a stage, our confrontation with our own mortality and purification, as the birth of something new in ourselves. Somehow we learn from this concept that we are born and die many times in our life. When something ends, a new dimension is born.

The fact that tradition prescribes in all three cases the immersion of the body under water is interesting. In the case of the person who dies, the Taharah is performed, ritual bath of the body before it is buried. In the other cases, people immerse in the Mikveh. Some other situations exist wherein the immersion ritual is customary. The person who converts to Judaism must submerge in the Mikveh; without a doubt, something ends and something new begins in the life of the convert: an obvious change of identity before society. Also the bride, the day before her wedding, submerges in the water, leaving behind her single life in order to begin her new married life.

Immersion in the mikveh is a ritual, and as all rituals, it is not a simple act but rather an act entailing a transcendental meaning. Immersion symbolizes rebirth. As Aryeh Kaplan writes in his book “Waters of Eden”:

“In some sense, water represents the placenta of creation. When a person immerses in the Mikveh, he is locating himself where the world is yet to be born, submitting himself to God’s creative power.”