One-Page Learn · The Halachos at a glance
הִלְכוֹת אִסּוּרֵי בִּיאָה
Forbidden Intercourse 8
Sefer Kedushah · Issurei Biah, Chapter 8 • The veset, its limits, and the woman who lost her count
3
Times to establish
a veset
3
Times bypassed
to uproot it
1
Bypass uproots a veset
set in days of zivah
7-17
Days counted by a woman
who lost her count
8:1-8What Makes a Veset
- A day joined to a sign. Some women have vesetot and some feel nothing until the blood comes. For the Rambam a veset is a fixed day, such as the twentieth to the twentieth, preceded by bodily signs: yawning, sneezing, heaviness at the opening of the stomach, the hair standing up, warmth. Later authorities, followed in practice, hold either one suffices. (8:1-2)
- The whole time is guarded. A woman without a fixed veset examines herself before relations. One with a veset is forbidden through its entire time: the whole day if it falls by day, the whole night if by night. (8:3)
- Three to set, three to release. Her veset was the twentieth and she saw on the twenty-third: both days are forbidden, and again the second month. After the third time the twentieth is purified and the veset moves to the twenty-third. (8:4)
- Outside causes do not count. A cycle brought on by an external factor such as jumping is not a veset even if repeated. Where the same interval recurs three times, the interval is the veset and the jumping is disregarded. (8:5)
- A pattern that moves, and deviations. The fifteenth, sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth of successive months establish an advancing veset; a broken step undoes it. A woman who deviates from her fixed day keeps both the old and the new day until three months decide; returning once to her fixed day restores it. (8:6-8)
RememberA pattern is real only after it speaks three times, and it is released only after it is silent three times.
8:9-15Expected Is Not Happened
- No veset where the body is presumed quiet. A veset is not set within days of niddah on which she saw, nor in her eleven days of zivah. One that appears in days of zivah must be heeded, but a single bypass uproots it. (8:9-10)
- Attention praised, absence forgiven. Frequent inspection is praiseworthy even with a fixed veset. In her days of zivah she is presumed pure and need not inspect, and a woman who did not inspect at all is presumed pure until she inspects and finds otherwise. (8:11-12)
- The late inspection. She did not inspect at her veset and found blood days later: impure retroactively from the veset regarding pure objects, but not regarding her husband, and she counts only from the discovery. If she found herself pure, she is pure. (8:13)
- A wound on the very day. Blood from a wound is pure even at the time of her veset, because concern for vesetot is Rabbinic; by the Torah she is impure only when she actually sees. (8:14)
- No one left out. A blind woman examines herself and shows the cloth to her friends. A deaf-mute or a woman who cannot understand is examined by capable women until her veset is known, and then she is permitted to her husband. (8:15)
RememberThings are judged back to the expected time; a person is judged from what was actually seen.
8:16-22The Woman Who Lost Her Count
- Both stringencies at once. A woman who no longer knows where her days of niddah begin waits a full seven after one or two days of bleeding, lest it was niddah, and counts seven clean days after three, lest it was zivah. (8:16)
- The arithmetic is done for her. One or two days: she completes the seven, then counts eleven. Three, four, nine, even eleven days: a doubtful zavah, since the days may straddle the start of her niddah days. (8:17-19)
- Twelve is certain. From twelve days of bleeding she is definitely a zavah, since however the days fall, three must land in zivah; thirteen days leave seven zivah days for her count. (8:20)
- A ceiling on confusion. Even after a thousand days, once bleeding stops she counts seven clean days and begins anew. Whoever errs never counts fewer than seven nor more than seventeen before her days of niddah begin. (8:21-22)
RememberNever fewer than seven, never more than seventeen: no lost count stays lost.