Pregnancy is objectively difficult. The experience varies from woman to woman and from pregnancy to pregnancy, but there are common challenges that apply almost universally even if everything is going as expected. During the first trimester, a pregnant woman may have extreme nausea, cravings, and just a very weird relationship with food. I remember that when Kimberly was pregnant with Akiva, she asked me to make meatballs, both because of a craving and because chicken made her feel sick. Ironically, by the time I finished cooking the meatballs and had ever so slightly overcooked the sauce, she could no longer stomach the thought of eating them and I had to eat the whole batch myself.
The second trimester is less painful but still comes with some inconveniences, such as ultrasounds and other tests. The third trimester is probably the most difficult, due to the weight of the baby, the anxiety of making sure that both mother and baby are ok, and the pressure to be ready for the big day of delivery. The labor itself is not only dangerous, especially in rural areas where hospital care is not as accessible, but also painful and can change one’s body in lasting or permanent ways. And while a pregnant woman goes through all of this, her spouse feels no different, physically, than before. It is thus intuitively understandable why some women feel impatience or resentment toward their husbands during pregnancy, especially if they complain about any aspect of it.
The comedienne Ali Wong, in her comedy special “Baby Cobra,” which she performed while pregnant, explained that when her husband would ask her to help with chores such as washing dishes or watering the plants, she would respond:
“I’m not doing anything. I’m busy making an eyeball, O.K.? Are you making a foot? I didn’t think so. You can change the channel yourself”
It is precisely this resentment that חז״ל invoke to explain an anomaly we read at the beginning of פרשת תזריע. The תורה says that when a woman gives birth to a child, she is impure for a week or two and then waits for an additional month or two before she is obligated to bring a set of קרבנות, of sacrifices:
וּבִמְלֹאת יְמֵי טָהֳרָהּ לְבֵן אוֹ לְבַת תָּבִיא כֶּבֶשׂ בֶּן־שְׁנָתוֹ לְעֹלָה וּבֶן־יוֹנָה אוֹ־תֹר לְחַטָּאת אֶל־פֶּתַח אֹהֶל־מוֹעֵד אֶל־הַכֹּהֵן׃
Upon completion of her period of purification, for either a son or a daughter, she shall bring a lamb in its first year for a burnt offering, and a pigeon or a turtledove for a sin offering to the entrance of the Tent of Meeting, to the priest.
Put more simply, she brings a lamb as an עולה and a bird as a חטאת. If she can’t afford a lamb, she brings one bird as an עולה and one as a חטאת because two birds are considered to be affordable.
The תלמוד in מסכת נדה records that the students of רבן שמעון בר יוחי asked him why a woman who gives birth would have to bring a חטאת, a sin offering, if all she did was something positive, or at worst neutral, like having a baby. רבי שמעון answers that during childbirth, a woman might swear not to be intimate with her husband ever again. Afterward, she may regret the oath and wish she never said that. As atonement, she brings a קרבן חטאת.
Intuitively, this seems like a reasonable psychological insight. As we already discussed, pregnancy is really hard and can put a lot of pressure on a marriage, perhaps even causing a woman to feel regret or resentment about being in such a difficult situation. She might blame her husband or tell herself that she will never put herself through this again. However, says Rav Avigdor Nebenzahl, after the baby is born, as challenging as it may be with the lack of sleep, the crying, breastfeeding, etc., parents often realize what a ברכה a child really is. The חטאת is brought as a response to that change in mindset, to atone for trying to end one’s marriage and threaten the future of the family and to realize that a baby should be seen as worth the sacrifice.
However, the גמרא itself questions this solution. After all, asks רב יוסף, not only is the proper קרבן for violating an oath is a lamb or goat, rather than a bird, but if she violates the oath on purpose, she shouldn’t be bringing a קרבן at all! Moreover, if she regrets making the oath, she can just go to a court and have it nullified, rather than have to bring a קרבן at all!
Rav Dovid Zvi Hoffman offers a different theory. He points out that there are פסוקים in both ספר ישעיהו and תהילים that indicate an association between birds and homesickness, the idea of a return home after an absence. Maybe the תורה is saying that just as a מצורע brings birds when he returns to the camp from his illness and impurity, so too does a woman bring a bird when she is no longer impure from pregnancy and can return to the בית המקדש.
Professor Nechama Leibowitz rejects this answer, as well, because it does not account for the fact that she is bringing a חטאת, a sin offering, rather than an עולה, when she did nothing wrong. רבנו בחיי and the כלי יקר suggest that the חטאת is a callback to the reason why childbirth is painful in the first place: the sin of eating from the עץ הדעת טוב ורע, the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. חוה was punished for eating from the Tree by being pulled back and forth between a desire for companionship with a husband, on one hand, and the pain of childbirth that results from that union, on the other. Maybe the חטאת brought after childbirth is a reference to that first sin, an acknowledgment that the pain is meant to atone for it.
Numerous other ideas have been put forth. אברבנל says that since suffering always indicates sin, a postpartum mother offers a קרבן to atone for whatever it is that necessitated the suffering she felt during pregnancy, labor, and childbirth. Rabbi Jonathan Sacks writes that the קרבן חטאת may not be to atone for the woman’s sins but rather for the future sins of her child. On some level, as its parent and teacher, the mother bears responsibility for the actions of the child she has yet to raise. Alternatively, Rabbanit Tali Adler writes that many people take parenting for granted and do not afford their parents the respect they deserve for raising them until they become parents themselves. Maybe the קרבן חטאת is to atone for the failure to empathize with one’s own parents before having a child.
Rav Samson Raphael Hirsch argues that all the examples of impurity mentioned in תזריע require a חטאת for the same reason: the encounter with mortality. Whether it is childbirth, death, menstruation, male bodily emissions, illness in the form of צרעת – all are examples of our human frailty, of our powerlessness over our own fate. Any such experience requires us to bring a קרבן חטאת to remind us that we still have moral freedom and moral responsibility. A bird, he says, is particularly appropriate because it represents weakness and vulnerability.
But I think something is missing in all of these explanations. The set of קרבנות for a יולדת is completely unique in all of הלכה. The גמרא in מסכת כריתות notes that there is a rule about obligatory bird קרבנות: they are always brought as קן, as a next, a pair. They are never brought as individuals. A מצורע’s purification process, the end of a Nazirite period, and the קרבן עולה ויורד brought to atone for going into the בית המקדש while impure are all brought as pairs, one a חטאת and one an עולה. The גמרא in כריתות even says that if someone becomes Jewish and needs to bring the attendant קרבן עולה and can’t afford a sheep, he brings two birds instead. And yet, there is only one case in all of הלכה where a bird might be brought by itself as a חטאת: the postpartum woman. Why would that be? Why not require a pair like everywhere else? Says the גמרא in כריתות:
מִשּׁוּם דְּאִיכָּא כֶּבֶשׂ בַּהֲדַהּ.
Because it has the lamb beside it
This answer is quite strange. What does the fact that there is a lamb brought as an עולה have to do with bringing a single bird as a חטאת? For any other bird offering, the תורה is clear that they not only have to be one עולה and one חטאת but that they have to be of the same species, either שני תורים or שני בני יונה. How could the lamb be combined with a bird? Moreover, the מדרש in תורת כהנים says that if not for the תורה explicitly saying otherwise, we might have thought that if a woman can’t afford the lamb, she brings two birds in place of the עולה in addition to the חטאת. Why would we even consider that possibility?
I think we have to understand the גמרא differently. It is not saying that the lamb עולה can serve as the second bird in a nest instead of an עולה bird, as required in other bird offerings. חז״ל are saying that the קרבן חטאת brought in the context of childbirth is unique in being alone because it is meant to be contrasted with the much larger and more expensive lamb. There is supposed to be a moral message represented by the large עולה brought to thank הקב״ה for the child being juxtaposed to a tiny חטאת bird brought alongside it.
Professor Nechama Leibowitz points out that חז״ל are ambivalent about our attitude toward the nature of human fetal development. On one hand, says the מדרש, it is miraculous that just a few cells of genetic material, the smallest possible physical investment by the parents, could turn into something as magnificent as a baby, like turning silver into gold. On the other hand, עקביא בן מהללאל says that we should always remember that we came from nothing but a putrid drop, from nothing but our parents’ cells. When a child is born, it certainly feels like a miracle, a representation of the magnificence of human achievement. But along with it comes a recognition of our ultimate humanity, our potential for failure, our ability to mess things up.
That is what the כבש לעולה and בן יונה או תור לחטאת represent. We are neither all great nor all wicked, neither damned by Original sin nor destined for perfect righteousness. As Rabbanit Leah Sarna writes, from the moment their child is born, parents feel both intense pride and joy and moments of guilt and shame. Every day is an attempt to afford our child the best while struggling with the fact that we can never live up to the perfection we desire. Nor will our children be all good or all bad – they too will struggle, will fall, and pick themselves up, while we helplessly watch. That is why we bring these קרבנות together – to represent the complexity, ambiguity, and inevitable imperfection of bringing life into the world.
This is not the only situation in which we mix great joy with a small amount of sacrifice and self-effacement. On a wedding day, a חתן, a groom puts ash on his forehead and smashes glass at the end of the wedding ceremony. The תלמוד says that when we build a brand new house, we are supposed to leave one spot on the wall left unfinished. This is to symbolize that in all our joy and excitement, we must not lose sight of the imperfection of our world, the fact that we still do not have the בית המקדש, that משיח has not arrived, that we are still in need of redemption. Similarly, many אשכנזים place roasted meat on the סדר plate but only eat meat cooked on the stove to remind us that our סדר is incomplete without the קרבן פסח. We are happy, we are rejoicing, but we need to have something that softens our enthusiasm, that acknowledges our challenging reality.
As we approach פסח in little more than a week, we will have to find a way to come together at the סדר while our people are at war, while hostages, barring a miraculous deal, remain as hostages of Hamas. We must work together to find something appropriate to do differently, to acknowledge this complex reality. Each family will find its own way, by leaving an empty seat, by adding a תפילה after דיינו, by talking about it as part of our Jewish story. May הקב״ה help us through this difficult time and bring us to an era of undiminished celebration, of redemption of the hostages, of safety for our חיילים, of peace in ירושלים, and of a פסח with all our family home.
דורש לנפשי 