Which shines a bright light, or lamp, onto the topic, and perhaps into the eyes of the Jew shocked to hear that parah adumah is God, or his Shekinah, since, paradoxically, the dirty Christian, with unclean readings of the Torah, but, who, the Christian, perhaps has his understanding made clean by parah adumah, implies that God, Shekinah, was taken from the temple precinct, taken outside the gates of Jerusalem, like a leper needing to be cleaned (with cedar, scarlet wool, and hyssop) before he could come back insides ---and is slaughtered as a sacrifice, his very blood becoming the purifying flow through which those unclean can be made clean, those born dirty at the first birth, goyim and Christians, can enter into this particular mikveh and be born-again clearer than the clean-ness of those come through the mikveh inside the gates of Jerusalem. Mishnah Parah claims the waters of niddah מי נדה, the menstrual blood of Shekinah, are cleaner than the waters of Jerusalem's mikveh. How can that be? What does that even mean?
According to Jewish scripture
(Mishnah Parah), the
waters of niddah, the menstrual blood manufactured from the red cow, is cleaner than the water of the typical
mikveh used to purify a Jewish
niddah, i.e., a Jewish menstruant. This distinction is extremely important in understanding the blood-paradox caught up in the cross-member, and the cross-hairs, of this discussion. We'd need to understand both waters to have any chance of distinguishing between them. And knowing the nature of one should shine a light on the other.
The thread,
Holy Water, Holy Cow, Holy Crap, (made into an
essay) dealt with the nature of the water of the typical
mikveh. The essay ended with the question this one is trying to answer: how on earth can any water be cleaner than the water of the
mikveh? What does the suggestion there is such a thing imply?
The essay noted above explains how just like the supernal
mikveh related to
Shekinah's menstruation (and womb), the commonplace
mikveh represents the typical womb, such that the "waters" are the menstruation blood. But this makes the cleansing associated with the traditional
mikveh use menstrual blood just like the
waters of niddah associated with the
parah adumah. How can a Jewish woman's menstrual blood be clean טהור when menstrual blood is supposed to be unclean טמא? And for the Jew who would be appalled at the idea of menstrual blood being clean, one need only appreciate that the very water used to make anything clean is called "menstrual blood" מי נדה.
Without covering ground already covered in the thread on Holy Water and the Holy Cow (and his holy crap), suffice it to say that understanding how the menstrual blood of a Jewish woman can be clean merely requires understanding how the blood of circumcision is clean טהור rather than unclean טמא. Since blood represents death, and the corpse is the symbol of death, we can know that the organ cut and bled in
brit milah, ritual circumcision, is the first corpse of humanity. Rabbi Hirsch explains that "unclean-ness" isn't so much related to a corpse, as a corpse is symptomatic of the problem of death in the human race.
Death didn't exist when
ha-adam came from the womb of Shekinah, when he was cloned from her menstrual blood. It didn't exist until the desecration that takes place in Genesis 2:21, where
ha-adam's female body (cloned from Shekinah's blood) is cut, opened up, and the wound is covered up by sewing the labial flesh together (the penile-raphe) to form the first phallus. What Abraham removes, symbolically,
ha-adam had added, really: the fleshly corpse gallivanting not as what it is, the tree branch of death, but as though it were the very delivery mechanism of life, which it ain't.
Since the phallus is the living-corpse that transfers death in every pregnancy where it opens up the earth, or the flesh, or the veil of the virgin temple, the death of the phallus, far from representing any ole death, is the death of death itself, and thus the birth of everlasting life, of clean-ness from the sin of
ha-adam that brought about death in the first place, the garden.
Since
brit milah, ritual circumcision, represents the death of death, that blood, the blood of the first corpse, is, ironically, or paradoxically, the life-blood of everlasting life. The death of death isn't like any other death. The death of death is the birth of everlasting life.
Ergo, where circumcision is appreciated as a wedding ritual, performed by the father-in-law, under the
chuppah, the post-
chuppah menstruation of the Jewish woman represents the same thing as the circumcision blood of the male. Not only does his emasculation (at the hands of the father-in-law) render the living corpse dead, but since this corpse is not only the emblem of death, and thus uncleanness, but the source of both, the death of the phallus renders the womb of the Jewish bride clean as the driven snow; and thus the blood of menstruation is no less clean than circumcision blood after circumcision.
Part and parcel of this is the fact that once the signifier of masculinity is destroyed, the male flesh, the distinction between the blood of the groom, and the blood of the bride, is also extinguished, such that both bloods are the same, and both bloods are eternally clean.
Which is merely a circuitous path back to the big question. If circumcision renders the womb of the Jewish bride clean, and thus her womb represents the traditional
mikveh, why would the blood, menstruation, of
Shekinah, be required, and how is it supposed to be cleaner than the blood of the Jewish bride after her groom has sacrificed his masculinity to make her and he equal under the law, and before God?
John
