Reassessing the Realism/Formalism Distinction in Rabbinic Purity Laws

Rabbinics scholars have analyzed the laws of ritual purity in terms of two competing conceptual models: realism, where the laws reflect a conception of impurity as a ‘real’ – physical or metaphysical – entity, and nominalism or formalism, where ritual impurity has no existence independent of its normative implications.

I will use scholarship on category formation and legal hermeneutics to argue that the attempt to discern a particular conception of ritual impurity from the rabbinic legal corpus is largely misguided. Virtually all the evidence scholars cite for a realistic conception of ritual impurity can be explained based on the processes of sense construction and category development that are endemic to all legal discourse. Even in patently artificial areas of law, these processes often yield highly complex, internally coherent conceptual structures – systems so rigid that the categories and principles they contain seem to take on a life and logic of their own.

Conversely, even if the rabbis did have a well-developed conception of impurity as a real entity, this would not necessarily be reflected in all aspects of purity law. Once the physical or metaphysical system of impurity has been ‘translated’ into legal terms, that set of laws will be shaped by the formalistic tendencies of legal discourse that are not shared by other, non-legal modes of thought, generating disparity between the realistic conception of impurity and the legal propositions it has generated.