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© 2013 John D. Brey.
Ritual uncleanness is always related to death. Death is unclean, and blood --- outside of a body --- always represents death. So blood should always be unclean. But it's not? There are two examples of blood, which always represent death, being clean, rather than unclean. ----- Both cases come about through nails in a human hand, and exclusively the hand of a Jewish male.
The first case of pure blood is the blood that occurs when a Jewish fingernail tears the membrane away from the glans, at birth (eight days after birth). But why should this blood be pure rather than impure?
The second case of pure blood is the blood of the virgin bride that's found on the sheets at the consummation of the marriage ceremony. This blood, like the blood of circumcision, is handled by the groom (a no no if it's impure), and given to witnesses (proving the bride's virginity). Like circumcision blood, it’s used as a symbol of purity (circumcision blood being so pure that the cloth where it resides is often used to wrap sacred things like the Torah scroll).
The only reasonable way that circumcision blood could be a symbol of purity is if it symbolizes the blood of death itself. The blood of brit milah must be the blood of death itself in order for the blood to symbolize purity rather than the impure. Which means the organ being bled must represent death, the serpent of death, who spreads death, in order for this blood, as opposed to all other blood, to be pure, rather than unclean. Drawing blood from the origin of death makes the blood pure, clean, good. All other blood represents the ravages caused when the serpent of death spread his disease throughout the cosmos.
The proof-of-virginity sheet appear to be a double, or triple, entendre. It "witnesses" to the angel of death, the macrocosmic phallus, that he has had his roll in the consummation of the child now living in the Jewish home (the no longer virgin bride). He has his witness. And passes over (so to say) this home.
But if the groom and bride pull a fast one, and place the serpentine limb's blood on the sheets, when the Jewish groom doesn't really tear the virgin veil on the bride, then the proof-of-virginity sheets keep the angel of death passing over the Jewish virgin long enough for her virgin firstborn, born of virginity, to exit the home, through an intact veil, therein creating a Jewish male not subject to the authority of the angel of death, since this Jewish male is not the offspring of the serpent.
The angel of death is tricked into thinking the first-“born” Jewish male is his own offspring by the surrogate blood of the limb placed on the proof-of-virginity sheet. The angel of death uses the proof-of-virginity sheet as proof of his role in the birth of all sons of men. So he sees the blood as the blood of a niddah, rather than pure blood, since he thinks the Jewish male has used the homunculus of the god of this world, the angel of death, i.e., the serpent between his legs, to cause the blood on the proof-of-virginity sheet.
But in truth, Abraham made a pact with God not to remove the dalet that God placed back on Sarah, and thus marked this covenant with the blood of the serpent who would normally tear that dalet to birth Isaac. The covenant between Israel and God, marked by Abraham in the blood of his serpent, and by Israel by the blood of the surrogate lamb, was a covenant whereby Israel and God would trick the god of this world, the god of the Egyptians, into believing an act of sexual congress took place (using blood from the flesh of the serpent) when in fact no phallic sex actually occurred.
The angel of death gained full authority over the sons of men when Adam fell in the garden. He has the power of death over every single living thing. And he executes that authority to the letter, in each and every case.
Israel partook in the greatest gambit the world will ever know when they took it upon themselves to pull the wool over the eyes of the god of this world long enough to get Jesus of Nazareth to the cross, where the authority of the god of this world was wrenched from his wretched hand.
Hebrew words lend themselves to various interpretations. And the Hebrew word translated "lintel" is already obscure since it's only used in the Passover passages. It's the word משקוף (mǎš·qôp̄). It’s related to the word for "clear water," משקע, or "well water," משקה, which Proverbs (5:15) relates to a woman's sexual organ. It’s also the word for “door frames,” שקף, with the addition of the letter representing a woman's womb, the letter mem: מ–שקף. Since the word used for the "lintel," in Exodus chapter 12, is the word for "door frames," with the addition of the letter signifying a "womb," the mem, it seems appropriate to speculate that the blood of the Passover is placed on both the door frames, and then the veil hanging from the “lintel,” which covers the entrance to the womb, i.e., the woman's sexual entryway.
It was once customary to hang a clean cloth on the doorway of the synagogue where a circumcision was taking place. After the circumcision was performed, the blood on the "hands" (and on the nails in the hands) was wiped off with a clean cloth (like the one hung on the door of the synagogue). The cloth was thereafter called the mohel's glory cloth. It replaced the clean cloth placed on the door prior to the circumcision ----celebrating that the circumcision has been performed.
Professor Abraham Gross (Ben-Gurion University) quotes a book written by the pupil of a 13th century mohel:
And
a cloth is brought upon which the mohel wipes his hands and mouth
sullied by the blood. And why was the practice instituted that this cloth be
spread over the synagogue entrance? [I have heard] from my uncle Rabbi Ephraim
of Bonn---may the memory of the righteous be a source of blessing---to
publicize the commandment, as they publicized the blood of circumcision and the
blood of the Paschal sacrifice in Egypt, when they placed it as a sign on the
lintel so that all should see the miracle.
Professor Gross goes on to point out that according to the Talmud (bBB 93b), there's mention of the custom of placing a cloth on the lintel. The cloth on the lintel represents the doorway in the ancient Jewish home at Passover. Two bloods are place at the entrance on Passover, the blood of the lamb, and the blood of the limb. (Fwiw, the placing of this cloth on the doorway of the synagogue is justification for the concept of a dalet being hung in the name of Sarai, to make her "Sarah" שרי vs. שרה. A clean cloth must be hung since she had already had the cloth of her lintel torn by the serpent prior to the birth of Isaac.)
One needn't be too versed in the Jewish verses to know that this synagogue practice mimics the rituals performed at the temple when it stood in Jerusalem. The high priest takes the blood of the sacrifice (representing circumcision), enters the cloth hanging from the lintel of the temple (without tearing it or opening it), and places the blood on the Ark of the Covenant. Furthermore he sprinkles blood on the veil hanging from the lintel of the temple, even as the the bloody cloth is hung from the lintel of the synagogue after the circumcision takes place.
David Biale, in Blood and Belief, p. 98, addresses the same book quoted by Professor Abraham Gross:
One
medieval Ashkenazic custom that made this blood public and visible is the habit
of taking the cloth with which the mohel (the ritual circumciser) had
wiped his hands of the blood and hanging it in the door of the synagogue in
which the circumcision had been performed. The source that describes this
custom specifies that the practice replicates the salvific smearing of the
blood on the doorposts of the Jews in Egypt as protection against the Angel of
Death. Yet the practice was enacted in the context of a Christianity that also
publicly displayed icons of the blood of Christ.
In
the circumcision ritual, several drops of wine are put in the infant's mouth.
As in the Eucharist, the wine would appear to stand for the blood that has been
spilled, in this case as a result of the operation. . . Consumption of blood is
even more explicit in the custom of the mohel sucking several drops of
blood from the wound (although he would not actually swallow the blood). The
justification for this rabbinic custom of metzitzah was generally
medical: it was believed that sucking the blood would prevent infection.
However, it is hard to avoid the suspicion that something more ritualistic was
at stake. These Jewish practices might be called a mirror image of the
Eucharist. In both cases, blood appears to be consumed, although in fact it is
not.
In
the continuation of Abulafia's discussion in Gan Na'ul, either a
cooptation of Christian motifs or the articulation of some remarkably parallel
themes is apparent. The passage recalls the Christian perception of the sacred
nature of Jesus' blood, which originates in the Gospels' contention that Jesus'
blood possessed a sanctifying nature. The point of contact between this theme
and that discussed earlier, concerning the blood placed on the posts and
lintels of the doors of Israelite homes during the Exodus story, bears
mentioning. Jesus is identified as the paschal sacrifice in the New Testament.
As the lamb, his is the blood on the doors of the Israelite homes. For
Abulafia, the structure of the posts and lintels of those doors signified
circumcision. Implicitly, in that earlier case, the blood of circumcision was
imbued with the same aura of sacrality, by Abulafia, that Christians ascribed
to Jesus' blood.
In light of these ideas it’s appropriate to think of the Jewish bride and groom going into the privacy of their nuptial chamber to pull a fast one on the whole world, particularly the demonic rulers of this world, who think they've hot-wired their right to jus prima noctis into the very biology of the human body. They smile every time a couple enters the nuptial chamber since they think they've got the serpent getting the first dibs on striking at the firstborn, therein securing their rulership, and Israel's slavery.
But the righteous Jewish bridegroom, and his bride, make a death-pact in the nuptial chamber. They swear on the life of their firstborn never to tell anyone what they're about to do. Knowing that the serpent is the source of their slavery, they fake phallic intercourse and then take a knife to the serpent on the bridegroom's body, letting that blood bled out on the sheets, which they bring out as proof that the marriage has been consummated to the liking of the demonic rulers of this world.
God sees the faith of the righteous groom, Abraham, and uses the blood of circumcision . . . or rather the profound faith that empower the ruse, to make the Jewish bride pregnant without the use of the serpent. In this sense, the blood of the serpent, bris milah, is the birth blood of the Jewish firstborn since the moment the knife cuts the serpent out of his former role in human generation God is free to make Sarah pregnant (Gen. 21:5). God makes Sarah pregnant based on the blood of the serpent not the seed of the serpent. The blood of death (the death of the serpent), rather than the slime of the serpent, chametz, gives birth to the Bread of Life.
These ideas form a profound explanation for something the Holy Spirit only allowed John the Revelator to touch on briefly without the explanation that would bring all this together. In his Gospel and his Epistle (the first) John makes a mystical notation that Jesus is born of blood and water, and that at the crucifixion the same blood and water witnesses to a great revelation sealed by the Holy Spirit.
Jesus is born of blood and water since his birth is the literal fulfillment of the ritual phase of the ruse played on the rulers of this fallen world. Jesus is born from the blood of the phallus because of Abraham's faithful and obedient establishment of the ritual. Because of the fulfillment of the ritual, God prepared a Jewish seed that would literally, rather than ritually, occur from the blood of Abraham's phallus. Jesus was born of the literal blood of Abraham's phallus and the "water" (mayim) of Mary's womb.
John is beside himself with excitement about this, but is not allowed by the Holy Spirit to reveal it. God adds a dalet to the name Sarai when Abraham bleeds the serpent (ritually). Since the letter mem represents the womb, the addition of the dalet to Sarai's womb (mem) spells "blood" (Hebrew dalet-mem). Isaac is ritually born of blood and water mayim and dam (dalet-mem).
The dalet represents a door or a veil such that by restoring Sarai's virginity (adding a veil back to her name and her mem) Sarah has a closed-mem. According to Jewish midrashim a closed-mem represents the advent of Messiah. Also, all final mems are closed, signifying that in biology, the first closed-mem is the final womb, so that phallic sex, which has enslaved mankind, is ended once and for all. The final womb, the closed-mem, is the dalet-mem, where water mayim, and blood, dam (dalet-mem) are combined in the first and final closed mem-brane in all human history.
Rabbi Ginsburgh points out that in the word for mem מם (the name of the letter), if you add a yod (the mark of circumcision), מים, you get the word "water" . . . while if you make the yod (which is the mark of circumcision), ithyphallic (uncircumcision), מום, if you extend it (so that it becomes a vav [which is an extended yod]) you get the word “mum,” which is a "blemished" mom. Which is to say a mom with a womb that has been opened by the extended yod is a blemished mom. The mom whose pregnancy is affect by emasculation blood (ritualized in circumcision, symbolized by the yod) is a mom who gives birth by "water" mayim, and the blood produced when the vav ו is cut down to size י to become the yod.
