Leviticus 12:1-8

A woman who becomes pregnant and gives birth to a son will be ceremonially unclean for seven days, just as she is unclean during her monthly period. On the eighth day the boy is to be circumcised. Then the woman must wait thirty-three days to be purified from her bleeding. She must not touch anything sacred or go to the sanctuary until the days of her purification are over. If she gives birth to a daughter, for two weeks the woman will be unclean, as during her period. Then she must wait sixty-six days to be purified from her bleeding. These are the regulations for the woman who gives birth to a boy or a girl. She is to bring two doves or two pigeons, one for a burnt offering and the other for a sin offering. In this way the priest will make atonement for her, and she will be clean.

Tonight I had the unique experience of meeting someone who believes this. He was not familiar with this Levitican law, but preached obedience to others, and affirmed that they are the word of his lord, as given to Moses.

When I pointed this text out to him, he skirted it for awhile, saying that my heart was hardened to his lord... but when I asked him, simply, if this was the word of his god, he said yes. He simply could not allow for the possibility that society of the time wrote its laws into its holy texts. He sees only god, speaking to his people, and saying that a when a girl is born, she makes her mother unclean for twice as long as a baby boy.

He sees only that his god said that the act of giving birth is a sin that must be atoned for (and only by the woman). Of course you must remember, he said, that Jesus died for our sins, in fulfillment of prophecy. And the part about the baby girl isn't about sin, it's about cleanliness.

Indeed! About the very unclean nature of woman! The nature that makes the act of giving birth to one twice as unclean as that same act producing a male! By virtue of her sex, not her acts or associations, she is unclean.

I'll look into it, he said, but I don't see what the problem is.

Oh, if the problem is not so immediate that it should wrench his heart as it did mine, then it is even more serious!

The problem is that he agrees with a statement, even believes it firmly to be the word of his lord, a statement that he would (hopefully) never agree with otherwise. That by virtue of it being in this book, he rescinds his ability to judge, he denounces his conscience; not to mention the fact that there is no physical difference between giving birth to a male and giving birth to a female that makes one or the other more "unclean."

That it is possible to do so...

My heart is very far from being hardened. My heart is sickened and dismayed. This act of abandoning conscience and civilization, of disregarding fact (of course, they say, you have your facts and I have mine) and following blindly something which you would never accept as right otherwise; these actions lead to so much suffering. Reading the Gulag, I wondered at this mindset taking so many people, in so many ways... because the state authority says it, there must be something there, although it violates my conscience and my reason, I will follow anyway, or at least I won't attempt to dissuade anyone else from doing so; but I thought it to be far removed. Every day, my heart is wounded, because every day I see people abandoning their consciences, reason, identities and humanity for the sake of ideology!

I can't conclude, I can't stop rebelling against this! I can only feebly entreat... How? Why? And survey our bloody history, wary of the consequences we continue to be unable to thwart, and unable to reconnect even one mind with its own heart, and humanity.