Daily Talk
The Torah gives a mother her own laws after a birth, and this chapter asks what counts as one. Forty days before a form is complete, a face that decides whether a form is human, a placenta that arrives three weeks after a child, a miscarriage no one could see. Why does the law measure the beginning of a life so precisely, and what does that care say about how it regards it?
What the Law Calls a Birth
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About This Talk
Chapter 10 defines what counts as a birth for the laws of impurity. Every woman who gives birth is impure like a niddah even without bleeding, whether the child is living, stillborn or miscarried, provided its form is complete, and no form is complete in fewer than forty days; a miscarriage on the forty-first day after relations is a doubt that brings the laws of a male, a female and a niddah, and a faintly human form brings the laws of both a male and a female. The Rambam describes the earliest form, rules that days of purity require a fetus with hair on its head, and counts a white mass with a bone as a birth but a sac of water, blood or shapeless flesh as none. A Cesarean birth brings neither days of impurity nor days of purity; a fetus removed in parts counts once the majority or the whole head has emerged, and a normal birth at the forehead; a hand that came out and returned makes her impure only by Rabbinic decree. A form like an animal counts as a birth if its face is human, the face being the forehead, eyebrows, eyes, cheeks and jaw, and a form that could never live does not count. A sandal or a placenta of at least a handbreadth never forms without a fetus, so a placenta alone brings the laws of a male and a female; after a living child, a placenta even 23 days later is attributed to that child, but before one, or after a miscarried fetus, it raises concern for another fetus and no days of purity are given. Twins of a boy and a girl bring the laws of a girl; an unseen miscarriage brings the laws of both if she was known to be pregnant, and of both and a niddah if not. The chapter ends by defining these combined laws: fourteen days forbidden, days of purity only to the fortieth day, and none at all where the laws of a niddah are added.