Seven Days, a Mikveh, and Her Word

About This Talk

Chapter 4 opens the laws of niddah. A woman in the niddah state is like all the other forbidden relations, and relations with her carry kerait, even with a girl of three, since niddah impurity can arise from birth and zivah from the tenth day. The prohibition covers the seven days of niddah even if blood was seen only on the first, seven days after the birth of a son and fourteen after a daughter, and the days of zivah until she counts clean days, and it applies to a Canaanite maidservant and a freed woman as well. The impurity depends on both days and immersion: if she never immersed in a kosher mikveh, the prohibition remains in force even years later. These categories do not apply by Torah law to gentile women, though the Sages decreed that gentiles are treated as zavim for matters of purity. Blood seen during the 33 days after a son and 66 after a daughter is blood of purity and does not forbid her once she has immersed. A niddah and a woman after childbirth immerse at night, on the evening of the eighth or fifteenth day, and one who delayed still immerses only at night, though illness, distance, danger, cold or locked city gates permit daytime immersion from the eighth day on. A husband may assume that a wife with a fixed pattern is pure until she tells him otherwise; one returning from a trip away may rely on her being pure if he left her pure, but must hear her say she is pure if he left her a niddah. A woman who said she was impure and then claims she was joking is not believed, unless she gives a plausible reason, such as his mother or sister being present. If she becomes impure during relations, the husband must not separate abruptly, and this applies to all forbidden relations. Relations are forbidden close to the expected onset of her period, for the day or night on which it usually begins. Husband and wife check themselves afterward with clean, soft, white cloths called eidim; a woman without a fixed pattern must check beforehand too, while a virgin and a woman in her days of pure blood need not. Rules follow for cloths examined in the morning, a cloth that was lost, and stains found on a cloth, distinguishing an elongated stain from a round one that may come from an insect, and a stain larger or smaller than a gris. A woman who bleeds during relations three successive times with no other cause may not continue with that husband, but may remarry; after the same occurs with three husbands she may not marry again until she is healed. Bleeding can be attributed to her expected period or to a wound, and she is believed when she says she has a wound that bleeds. The chapter ends with the examination by which she can establish that she has been healed.