[Sca-cooks] Mrs Levy again

[Laura C. Minnick]

At 07:30 AM 9/9/02 -0400, you wrote:
>> > As I read the Old Law, yes. Touching something unclean makes you
>unclean,
>> > and then you will swell up and be dead until morning... oops, wrong
>Cosby
>> > bit. At any rate, there's lots of jiffy keen instructions for cleansing
>> > after touching the Unclean- be it pork, misc. carrion, a menstruating
>> > woman, etc. And then you have to go and get the priest to declare you ok
>> > again...
>>
>> Do you have to pay the priest/rabbi each time he does this? Or do
>> you pay an annual fee or something? I mean some of this sounds real
>> difficult to avoid, especially if you are a women.
>
>No. In fact, for most ritual uncleanlinesses, one does NOT need to be
>"certified" clean.
>
>Remember that a rabbi is NOT a priest; he is not an intercessor with G-d, he
>has no real religious authority. The rabbi's authority is LEGAL - he only
>interprets the Law.

Except I was not talking about modern practice, but the _old_ law. You
know, the stuff Certain Persons use to currently excuse discrimination
against persons such as yourself? (IMHO if they want to discriminate
against gays on that basis, they should be consistent and ban eating of
shellfish, wearing of mixed-fiber clothing, etc.) Modern-day rabbis are not
the same creature as the priests and Levities...

>Most ritual uncleanlinesses can be obviated by prayer, sometimes fasting,
>and immersion in a ritual bath called a mikveh. There is no "fee" to use the
>mikveh in most cases, but the community as a whole is responsible for its
>maintenance and support. (And yes, in the modern world, there is often an
>annual membership fee.) Women are required to bathe in the mikveh monthly
>after their courses; men only need to visit a couple of times a year unless
>they do something that makes them unclean.
>
>Avraham

A specific example of a 'fee' however was (again, old law) the cleansing
after childbirth. Not only was the time of uncleanness different (if you
gave birth to a boy, seven days. For a girl, forty) but the sacrifice was
on a sliding scale, from the perfect white lamb, to a couple of doves for
the poor. I can just imagine some guy chasing birds, saying "C'mon dear
Birdie... come to papa... C'mon! I want to sleep with my wife again!"...

'Lainie
-perverse imagination coupled with many, many years in Sunday School and
too many Sunday mornings, bored out of my skull during sermons, but finding
fascinating and purient reading material in Leviticus and Deuteronomy...
___________________________________________________________________________
"If you take cranberries and stew them like applesauce it tastes much more
like prunes than rhubarb does." Groucho Marx, _Animal Crackers_