100.04 Buttress and Elaboration (pps.69-72)
hard cover page 69
100.04 Buttress and Elaboration
God’s life-giving powers flow from the very highest degree of Holiness—from His Own Presence— down to the flesh-and-blood, cause-and-effect world in which we human beings live.
-Scherman237
Leviticus 12:l-4 presents the rule that when a woman gives birth she descends in purity.238 Moreover, when a woman gives birth to a daughter she descends twice the level of purity that she descends when she gives birth to a boy. The Or HaChaim explains that this perplexing formulation teaches us that during pregnancy a woman achieves a higher level of holiness, since she is carrying another life.239 The conception of a daughter who will maintain within herself a greater creative potential, raises her to a higher level of holiness. After the potential leaves her womb, her level of purity descends. Inasmuch as a female fetus represents a higher level of potentiality, upon the birth of a girl the mother’s level of purity descends doubly. For potential creation is indeed holy. And the level of creation potential is directly related to the level of holiness.
The cosmic fate is interlinked with the fate of God, the universe, and man.
Remember the former things of old:
That I am God, and there is none else;
I am God, and there is none like Me;
Declaring the end from the beginning,
And from ancient times things
that are not yet done.
-Isaiah 46:9-10
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——————- NOTES ——————-
237 Scherman, “An Overview: Kaddish,” p. xii.
238 Specifically, when a woman gives birth to a male she becomes “impure” for seven days; to a female, fourteen days (Leviticus 12:6).
239 Or HaChaim, Leviticus 12:2.
~continued~
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