Why Is Male Breast Milk Kosher? Breastfeeding, Gender, and the Leaky Body in Rabbinic Literature

Breastfeeding is a controversial subject. Central to debates about how, where, and whether it should be done is a rhetoric of control, seeking to strategically regulate female bodies. Throughout these debates, the alterity of women pervades. Further, many of these narratives include a notion that the female body is not whole, but pierced; it is a porous body incapable of self-regulation, in direct contrast with the male body, conceived of as contained and controlled. Focusing on breastfeeding in an essay on pierced and unbound bodies in rabbinic literature might seem surprising. However, theorizing the female body as leaky and the male body as contained elucidates certain rabbinic discourse regarding the purity status of breast milk. In particular, it explains why the rabbis imagine a scenario in which a lactating male produces pure breast milk.