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ANSWERS TO REVIEW QUESTIONS

prepared by Rabbi Eliezer Chrysler
Kollel Iyun Hadaf, Jerusalem

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Nidah 39

Questions

1)

(a) During the eleven days between Nidah and Nidah, a woman has a Chezkas Taharah.

(b) If a woman who has no Veses, fails to make a Bedikah, she is assumed to be Tehorah, whether she did so by mistake or deliberately?

(c) A woman who has a Veses, however, has a Chezkas Tum'ah the moment her Veses arrives, because we assume that the Veses appears when it is due.

(d) A woman who is hiding from robbers is Tehorah - according to Rebbi Meir, even if the time of her Veses arrives, because fear removes the blood, and we can safely assume that she did not see blood.

2) A Zav and a Zavah who are counting their seven clean days, but who failed to do so, are considered Tamei, as is a 'Shomeres Yom ke'Neged Yom'.

3)

(a) Rebbi Meir says that a woman who has no Veses is forbidden to her husband. And it is according to him, says Rav Chisda, that we need our Mishnah to tell us that *that* is only as far as the days of Nidus are concerned, but when it comes to the days of Zivus (the eleven days), she cannot have a fixed Veses then, and she is therefore permitted to him.

(b) The reason that Rebbi Meir demands that her husband divorces her, is because, even though she is permitted to him during the days of Zivus, he is concerned that she may have Tashmish during her days of Nidus, too.

(c) As a matter of fact, the entire Mishnah goes like Rebbi Meir, and we are forced to make a radical change in the text, part of which will now read 'If she was not in hiding, and her time of Veses arrived and she did not make a Bedikah, she is Temei'ah, because Rebbi Meir says that if she was in hiding, that she is Tehorah' etc.

4)
(a) Rava learns that what the Mishnah is coming to tell us is, that if a woman sees blood during the days of Zivus, she has a Chezkas Taharah, and is not Metamei Mei'es Le'es.

(b) This is disproved from a Beraisa, which explicitly writes that she is.

5)
(a) Rav Yosef, Abaye's Rebbe, became ill, and tended to forget much of what he learnt and taught. On those occasions, Abaye would remind him what he had said when he was well.

(b) Rav Yosef, quoting Rav Yehudah Amar Shmuel, added that the Beraisa, which speaks of a Veses of every fifteen days, must mean fifteen days from the Tevilah (which is really twenty-two days from the last sighting), because otherwise, she would be seeing during the days of Zivus (7 days of Nidus and 11 of Zivus, means that a minimum of 18 days is required until the next period of Nidus falls due).

39b---------------------------------------39b

Questions

6)

(a) If we contend with the constant sighting of the fifteenth, then, she will be forbidden the entire period of the Onah (twelve-hour period that she usually sees), whenever that day arrives.

(b) Rav Papa understood that, when the Beraisa writes that she is subsequently Asur on the fifteenth day (after the Tevilah), too - which according to Rav Yehudah, means the twenty second day after the previous sighting - it is referring (not to the twenty-second day after her *new* sighting of twenty-seven days after her previous sighting, but) to the twenty-two days after her *old* sighting, the hyperthetical day on which she expected to see; Now that is only seventeen days after the previous sighting (which occured five days after she expected to see) - which means that she now saw during the days of Zivus (and we are forbidding her the next time (on the fifteenth day after the Tevilah or the tenty-second after the sighting) on account of it. So we see, that we *do* contend with a sighting seen during the days of Zivus - le'Chumra.

(c) Rav Huna Brei de'Rav Yehoshua disagrees with Rav Papa, on the grounds that the twenty-second day referred to by Rav Yehudah, took place, not after the hyperthetical sighting of twenty-two days earlier, but after the new sighting (which actually took place - twenty-seven days after the previous sighting) - which is during the days of Nidus, not Zivus. We do not, according to him, contend with the day on which she used to see, which now fell in her days of Zivus, and she is not therefore, obligated to contend with the possibility that she may see on that day).

(d) A chicken used to lay eggs every second day, and then after it had done this three times, it skipped one day; it failed to lay for two consecutive days and then it laid an egg again on the following day. If it is now reverting to original habit, to lay every second day, what will it do? Will it miss the next day, to continue from today with its original pattern. Or will it lay again on the following day before failing to lay for one day, in order to regain its original course (to lay on the same day that it would have done had it not changed)?
Is it not obvious that it will carry on from where it is now (to let bygones be bygones as it were), although it has changed from the original day, and not try to revert to hypothetical layings - that it would have laid on that day, had it not changed?

7)
(a) According to Resh Lakish, a woman cannot fix a Veses when she is actually a Nidah, whereas in the opinion of Rebbi Yochanan, she can.

(b) Rav Papa thinks that Rebbi Yochanan and Resh Lakish are arguing in a case when she saw twice on Rosh Chodesh, and again on the fifth of each of those two months. And then, on the third month, she saw only on the fifth of the month. And Rebbi Yochanan said about this case, that a woman can fix a Veses during her days of Nidus. To which days of Nidus is he referring ? To the third Rosh Chodesh, when she did not see blood, but ought to have (and he refers to it as her days of Nidus!). So it is clear that we *do* contend with the day on which she should have seen (not like Rav Huna Brei de'Rav Yehoshua)?

(c) But Rav Huna rejects this proof. Rebbi Yochanan and Resh Lakish, he claims, are speaking in a case when she saw twice on Rosh Chodesh, and then, on the third month she first saw on the twenty-fifth of the month, before seeing for the third consecutive Rosh Chodesh. Although she is really a Nidah, she nevertheless fixes her Veses, according to Rebbi Yochanan - and nobody is talking about hypothetical sightings, but real ones.
In spite of the earlier sighting, which has already rendered her a Nidah, we say that the sighting on Rosh Chodesh fixes her Veses - because we take on that, in reality, her sighting was due on Rosh Chodesh, but due to the excess blood, some of it emerged earlier.

Hadran Alach, Benos Kutim!

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