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Impurity Jewish concepts of impurity (Hebrew: tum’ah) and purity (tohorah) carry forward Pentateuchal commandments that the people of Israel must avoid certain sources of contamination, the principal one of which is the corpse (Numbers 19). Uncleanliness affects the conduct of three activities: eating, procreation, and attendance at the Temple. When the priests ate their priestly rations, they were to do so in a condition of cultic cleanliness. Furthermore, all Israelites are to abstain from unclean foods and from sexual relations during a woman’s menstrual period or when affected by the uncleanliness of the sexual organs to which Leviticus 15 makes allusion. All Israelites also must become clean to participate in the Temple cult, which would affect many at the time of the pilgrimage festivals, PASSOVER, SHABU‘OT (Pentecost), and Tabernacles (see SUKKOT). In addition, among the forms of Judaism that flourished in Second Temple times, some groups, such as the PHARISEES, the ESSENES, and those represented by law codes found in the DEAD SEA SCROLLS, kept the rules of cultic purity in eating food at home, not in the Temple, a practice that did not characterize the bulk of the communities of Judaism. After the Jerusalem Temple was destroyed in 70 C.E., when attaining cleanliness to participate in the cult no longer pertained, rules of uncleanliness governing food and sexual relations continued to apply, as they do in Judaism to the present day. But in matters of public worship it was the Temple, not the synagogue, to which considerations of cleanliness applied, and no one would refrain from attending synagogue worship by reason of having become unclean

(tameh), for instance, by having attended a funeral.