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ReplyDeletehttp://nishmablog.blogspot.com/2011/04/p-tazria-uvayom-hashmini.html
Please let me know if you have seen elsewhere what I am proposing below.
ReplyDeleteThe question why is the period of tamei twice as long when a woman gives birth to a girl as when she gives birth to a boy.
Becoming tamei is related to the departure of life, or potential life.
For example when a person dies, the body is tamei and so too those that touch it; when a woman has her monthly cycle because an egg has departed, the woman is tamei; when a man has an emission because sperm has departed, he is tamei.
When a boy is born he will not produce any sperm until puberty. But when a girl is born, her body already contains all the eggs, she will ever produce. The potential life is already in her.
So when a child is born, life has departed from the mother. But when a girl is born, the life of the newborn has departed and so has the potential life of the eggs within the newborn.
Thus twice the loss and twice the period of being tamei.