Leviticus Rabbah and the spiritualization of the laws of impurity

This dissertation is a literary analysis of three sections in Leviticus Rabbah (LR), an aggadic compendium of midrash on the book of Leviticus, compiled in the Amoraic period. The study demonstrates that the rabbinic authors of LR transformed the levitical laws of purity into a set of exegetically generated reflections on God, the people Israel, and ethical relations. In the first chapter, I explore how LR parashah 14 injects theology into Leviticus 12\u27s purification ritual for a woman who has given birth. I consider the ways in which the rabbis\u27 theologizing discourse intersects with a discourse about gender, amplifying God\u27s role in childbirth at the expense of the mother. In the second chapter on LR parashah 16, I show that the rabbinic composers bring a concern for proper speech and ethical behavior to their reading of Leviticus 13-14\u27s ritual for the metsora (leper). In this parashah, the rabbis deepen and extend a tenuous biblical link between tsara\u27at (leprosy) and lashon hara (evil speech), substituting the ritual trappings of the notorious condition with a concern for building an ethical community. In the final chapter on LR 17, I study a related levitical topic, that of house diseases, and argue that the rabbis utilize the Leviticus verses to affirm the ongoing election of Israel from among the nations. Taken together, these three LR parshiyot suggest that the LR composers were engaged in an elaborate project of allegorization. Without undermining the Leviticus verses or contravening their legal import, the LR rabbis launched a way to read levitical purity so that it yielded contemporary meaning