What the Calendar Decides

About This Talk

Chapter 6 lays out the Rambam's calendar of niddah and zivah and the laws of counting. It opens by teaching that the bleeding of niddah, of zivah, before childbirth and the pure blood after it are all one substance from one source, and only the time at which it appears makes a woman pure, a niddah or a zavah. A woman who sees for the first time or at her fixed time is a niddah for seven full days whether she sees for all seven or once, and blood after them is zivah, since by a halachah from Sinai there are no more than eleven days between one niddah period and the next. In the Rambam's reckoning the seven days are called days of niddah and the eleven that follow days of zivah whether or not she sees on them, and she counts seven and eleven throughout her life until a birth resets the pattern; Rashi and the Ramban instead count from what actually happens each month, a dispute that changes nothing in practice since women count seven clean days after any bleeding. One or two days of bleeding in the days of zivah make her a minor zavah who watches a day for a day, while three consecutive days make her a major zavah who counts seven clean days and brings an offering; the two differ only in the count and the offering. A minor zavah watches through the night, immerses after sunrise and watches the whole day, and one clean day balances one or two impure days; a major zavah immerses on the seventh day after sunrise; immersion at night in either case is invalid. Relations after an immersion at the proper time carry no liability for karet even if she sees later that day, but everything she touched is tentative and becomes impure retroactively if she sees before the day ends, so she waits until evening. Bleeding on the seventh clean day, even near sunset, cancels the whole count, and a discharge of semen during the count cancels one day. Bleeding on the tenth, eleventh and twelfth days of zivah does not make her a major zavah, because the twelfth begins her days of niddah, and the verse's "after the time for niddah" refers to the eighth, ninth and tenth days; one who sees on the eleventh, immerses that night and has relations is impure but not liable, and if she immerses on the twelfth after sunrise she is forbidden until evening by Rabbinic law. Sightings at twilight that might complete three consecutive days of zivah leave an unresolved doubt. A niddah who found her bleeding had stopped and did not inspect for days is presumed pure in the interval, but impurity found at both ends is presumed continuous, a doubt arises if she found impurity and only later found herself pure, and on the first day of flow even a clean inspection counts as impure. A zavah clean on the first and seventh days of her count is treated as clean throughout, the same applies to a zav, and whenever it is doubtful whether she is a niddah or a zavah she counts seven clean days, immerses at night and brings an offering that is not eaten.