Purity and Dietary Observance in Early Judaism

Concerns with purity fill a large part of the biblical book of Leviticus. Many of the biblical purity regulations relate to what is sometimes called “ritual impurity”: a sort of contamination associated with certain objects, substances, and people, such as a human corpse; certain bodily discharges; and people with skin disease. Biblical law mandates that ritual impurity be avoided by those who have contact with the Tabernacle or Temple, where God’s immanent presence is understood to dwell.

The laws of ritual purity continued to be observed and developed in the Second Temple period, and some became sources of disagreement among Sadducees, Pharisees, Essenes, and early Christians. During this period, we find the emergence of immersion pools, or mikvaot, as means of purification. In the late Second Temple period and the years following the Temple’s destruction, certain groups extended ritual-purity regulations beyond the Temple context to include the handling of food, liquids, vessels, and clothing. This may be understood as an attempt by nonpriests to participate symbolically in the rituals of Temple-based priestly piety and to treat their own tables as altars in miniature. The tannaim elaborated an extensive system of ritual-purity rules, most of which proved too cumbersome to perform beyond small groups of pietists referred to as ḥaverim, “fellows” or “associates.” (It is unclear whether the term refers to groups that existed only in the Second Temple period or in the tannaitic era as well.) However, outside the topic of menstrual impurity, these rules are barely elaborated in the two Talmuds.

Both biblical and postbiblical texts also apply the concept of purity to aspects of life that extend beyond Temple worship and continued to be relevant after the Temple’s destruction. Certain types of meat, including pork, that the Bible describes as impure are forbidden for consumption (see Leviticus 11:2–23, 41–42 and Deuteronomy 14:3–21), and rabbinic texts also develop additional dietary regulations, including a prohibition against mixing milk and meat. The biblical sexual prohibitions were also maintained, including the prohibition against sex with a woman in a state of menstrual impurity, and rabbinic texts include extensive discussions of when a woman is considered menstrually impure and therefore prohibited to her husband.