Clearly, the rabbinic impurity discourse and the Graeco-Roman medical discourse are concerned with very different phenomena and establish very different conceptual tools to approach these phenomena. What these two discourses do have in common, however, is an underlying perception of the body as a fluid and mutable entity, which is constantly transformed through its contact with its human and nonhuman environment. It is a fair assessment, in my view, that the rabbis conceptualized the body and the modes in which it is affected by other things and other persons in light of popular medical ideas and doctrines on the body that prevailed in their time.35 This absorption of Graeco-Roman perceptions does not indicate that the rabbis necessarily thought of impurity in terms of hygiene and health,36 but rather that their understanding of the mechanisms through which one body can affect another was largely shaped by the culture that surrounded them. In this culture, the body was anything but a well-bounded or stable entity; rather, it was seen to be in ongoing flux and to be constantly transformed and changed through contact with other persons and things.37 In the concise words of Dale Martin, “For most people of the Graeco-Roman culture the human body was of a piece with its environment. . . . The self was a precarious, temporary state of affairs, constituted by forces surrounding and pervading the body.”38 The rabbinic “body of impurity,” that is, the human body that the rabbis constructed through their impurity discourse, was thus woven from a biblical fabric, but its seams and stitches are recognizably Graeco-Roman.
By understanding the fluid and unstable nature of the body as construed in the rabbinic purity discourse, and especially by realizing how this body is constantly transformed through contact, we may gain further insight into the rabbinic depiction of impurity as a constant concern and daily preoccupation. For the mishnaic subject, ritual purity is by definition a temporary state, because his own bodily constitution is, in an important sense, temporary: as the body rapidly changes, so does, at least potentially, its purity status. Simply put, if the body does not have clear boundaries, it is also exceedingly difficult to protect it.
The Body as a Modular Mechanism
The notion that two separate bodies can become one, which according to my analysis underlies the rabbinic view of the contraction of impurity, indicates that the rabbinic body is not only fluid and unstable, but also to a certain extent modular. That is to say, the individual body can change its qualities and constituency by having other external parts, such as another body, added to it: when the two bodies are connected, they conceptually form (at least in terms of impurity) one shared body, and when they are no longer connected, each of the bodies functions as a separate unit.
In this regard, the human body is no different from other modular inanimate objects to and from which parts can be added or removed. The rabbis refer to such parts that can be removed or added as hibburim, “appendages,” a term they use to discuss things that are detachable from a specific artifact and yet when connected to it function as one unit with it (for example, the drawers of a chest or the handle of a pan). When the “appendage” is connected to the item in question, they form one unit for the purpose of contraction and conveyance of impurity: if the appendage becomes impure, then all of the object will become impure, and if the object becomes impure, the appendage will also become impure. The rabbis of the Mishnah dedicate lengthy discussions to sorting the different components of various artifacts in order to figure out whether and which of these components are “appendages,”39 and they similarly use this term when discussing different components of particular foodstuffs.40 Thus, the same principle that we have seen in regard to bodily contact between persons also pertains to the transmission of impurity from one artifact to another, for example:
If a bed was impure on account of treading (teme’a midras, that is, an impure person stepped or leaned on it), and one appended a mattress to it, all of it (that is, the bed and the mattress) is impure on account of treading. Once [the mattress] was separated, [the bed] is impure on account of treading, and the mattress is impure on account of touching [that which is impure on account of] treading (maga midras).41
The same mechanism of impurity-sharing, then, is evident both in the case of human bodies and in the case of inanimate objects: as long as the two components are “appended,” they function as a single unit in terms of impurity, and they both share the impurity status of the source. Once the physical connection is undone, the “appendage”—whether a person or object—is only residually impure, in such a way that the impurity degree of the person or object is once-removed from that of the source.
The rabbinic view of the human body as a modular mechanism, from and to which things can be removed or added, is evident not only in the notion that two bodies can be “connected” so as to constitute, in terms of impurity, one body, but also in the rabbinic consideration of several bodily components within a single body as “appendages.” This term is used, in the context of human bodies, to refer to hair, nails, and teeth, three bodily constituents with which one is not born and that are disposable throughout one’s life, in such a way that their pertinence to the body is seen as secondary. These three components partake in the impurity of the body as long as they are connected to it, but are no longer impure once they are separate from it: for example, the teeth, hair, and nails of a corpse convey corpse impurity as long as they are connected to the corpse, but not once they are set apart from it.42 Accordingly, we find in the Mishnah statements such as this one:
If the appendages of the impure [person] were on the pure [person], or if the appendages of the pure [person] were on the impure [person]—[the pure person] is impure.43
This passage concerns carriage as one of the modes in which impurity is conveyed by persons with genital discharges: as a rule, persons with genital discharges convey impurity to everyone that they carry and to everyone that carries them. The question at hand is what happens if the body parts that are being carried are parts that are considered to be “appendages” of the body. Since they do not fully belong to the body, can they be said not to convey or contract impurity in this situation? While the Mishnah does not explain what it means by “appendages,” it is reasonable to understand this passage in light of the Tosefta, which specifies that the discussion relates to teeth, hair, and nails.44 We see, then, that the human body is not a fixed, unified, and monolithic entity: it is seen as consisting of various parts, and its different constituents are subject to different rules when it comes to the contraction and conveyance of impurity.
This perceived modularity of the human body is what enables, I suggest, one of the most perplexing rabbinic (or protorabbinic) innovations, namely, the ruling that one’s hands are constantly impure (in a low degree) regardless of the impurity status of the person as a whole. One’s entire body can be certifiably pure, but unless one has just washed one’s hands this very instant, his hands are considered to be “second to impurity” in such a way that they