Rob,

You could be correct. Women are not prohibited from donning tefillin, for example. But the minhag is that they don't. So it's taken on the force of halacha but it's minhag.
However, the counting of clean days is not minhag, it is Torah.

Avi

quote:

Originally posted by Avi d'Israeli:
However, the counting of clean days is not minhag, it is Torah.

Actually, it's only Halacha for a Zava, one who saw blood on 3 consecutive days during the 11 day period after the 7 day Niddah period.

Since we no longer can distinguish between Dam Niddah and Dam Zivah, we have the Minhag to count 7 clean days in any event.

While bromocryptine may be used, it is actually estrogens that are usually used in the type of cases I described.

Again in the type of cases I described the women do not ovulate during the time of their menses, but before going to the mikveh.


Waiting seven days is halacha (derabanan) and it is not just minhag.


Putting my point aside , I would like to just pose a question for discussion on a theoretical level and not halacha.

Do we really not know how to differentiate between Nida and Zava in all cases.
Rav Chaim made the point that we can't differentiate between dam tahor and dam tamei. Off course he didn't make that up.
But is it that we can't tell the difference in all cases or just certain cases.

Take the most typical case for the sakes of argument.

A woman who has a 28 day cyle who has 5 days of bleeding every month that always comes on a sunday. It looks red like typical blood that you get when you cut yourself and it feels like her period.
Do we not know that this is Dam Tamei and that she is nida.
I know Rav Chaim's point is that we don't.
That would mean that theortically in such a case that woman could possibly actually have dam tahor on the first few days of her period and on a biblical level allowed to have relations during that time (during her peiord).

I think that what is meant is that most can't tell the difference between dam tahor and dam tamei in atypical cases and questionable cases.
For example blood being some shade of black.

Quote "5. Minhag does not necessarily rate as halacha. "

The old minhagim, especially those that are brought in Shas, do rate to Halacha (in our Sugya, the Rishonim and Achronim call the 7 clean days and Issur D'rabanan.)

The second day Yom Tov in Chutz L'Aretz is also "only" a Minhag, still anyone transgresses them is put into Niduy.

Baruch,

"While bromocryptine may be used, it is actually estrogens that are usually used in the type of cases I described."

This is what I was alluding to. Laurence is referring to young women who are trying to synchronize their menses with their wedding date. We were discussing women with 21 day cycles who want to conceive. These are two completely different medical issues which demand different medical approaches as you are noting here.

"Again in the type of cases I described the women do not ovulate during the time of their menses, but before going to the mikveh."

Again we are in agreement.

"Waiting seven days is halacha (derabanan) and it is not just minhag."

Again we are in agreement

"Do we really not know how to differentiate between Nida and Zava in all cases. Rav Chaim made the point that we can't differentiate between dam tahor and dam tamei. Off course he didn't make that up. But is it that we can't tell the difference in all cases or just certain cases."

I'm not sure that "we" can't tell the difference, but the average woman may not be able to tell because those skills are not readily available to learn.

"I think that what is meant is that most can't tell the difference between dam tahor and dam tamei in atypical cases and questionable cases."

I agree with you again.

I think most of the issues raised about nidda have to do with the anomalous minority of women. Most women's physiologies fall well within the halachic mandates very comfortably. That's why I was saying that these anomalous cases can be dealt with by the poskim, physician and patient. They don't need to be entertained at the highest level of halachic discourse because they are the exception rather than the rule.

Quote "cases and questionable cases.
For example blood being some shade of black."

Actually, black blood is Tameh.

Nidah 20a as paraphrased by Kollel Iyun Hadaf"

s) Answer (R. Chanina): Black blood was red, it was stricken.

As my Gynecology text said, the figure of twenty eight days for women appears more in textbooks than in women.

Well I have fifty thousand male fish without goands living with fifty thousand female fish which have mature ovaries because of what the German's call "anti-baby pill" in the water so it is true one can never tell where a drug can do. However, I don't think after a few billion woman years, that one can not make a case that it would dangerous to take it as a recreational drug.

I can assure that enviromental estrogens are significant. Otherwise I would have been out of business years ago. It is just they effect animals like cows, chickens, pigs and fish. People seem pretty resistant.

Now we have another case of Dam Tahor, that seen for sixty days after birth. This is all blood for sixty days is ignored and the wife is permitted. Unfortunately for reasons not clearly explained, around the time of Rosh, the Jews stopped following the Torah in this regard.

quote:

As my Gynecology text said, the figure of twenty eight days for women appears more in textbooks than in women.

Given the empirical data that women living in proximity to each other tend to have their cycles synchronize over time...

If a single woman who is not taking any hormonal supplement is living around several single women each taking the same 28-day-cycle cycle-regulating prescription medicine, will her cycle tend to resemble a naturally-occurring 28-day cycle?


What is environmental estrogen?

I am afraid that data on women who occuppy the same closed evironment tend to cycle together is antedotical. That means a lot of people have seen it happen and reported it but the data has not been analysed. It certainly does happen in zoo animals which do not normally cycle together in nature as I will demonstrate if my brilliant paper on cycling in elands and oryxes ever gets accepted.

Now like Yaakov Avinu, we are concerned so much that all of the cows and sheep are cycling together as that they get pregnant at the same time so they will deliver at a good time.

The estrogen receptor (the protein in the cell which gives the responses you think of as estrogenic), unlike most hormones is what we call promiscuous. Some three hundred compounds in nature and another three hundred chemicals synthesed by man can activate the receptor even though they are not steroids. The natural ones are found in the legumes, soya, alfalfa, peas, clover etc. and cause premature breast development and puberty in children and generally sterilize cattle and sheep. Exactly what was in the Mandrake that Reuven gave his mother isn't clear to me. The only plants with human estrogen are figs and pomegranetes. I believe that is why the pomegrantete is called the love apple.

quote:

What is environmental estrogen?

What is environmental estrogen?

I don't have 10 years in as a L&D nurse or the like but simply put: Environmental estrogen is any compound either naturally occurring or synthesized that by exposure binds itself to estrogen receptor site and over a period of time produces an estrogenic effect in the body.

Chlorine bleach, for instance, could be considered an environmental estrogen. Used to clean the home, "purify" water, sanitze the laudry, and of course recreational exposure, and the chlorine in the mikveh, it all is absorbed and mimics an estrogenic effect in the body.

You have to decide what risks you are willing to dance with.

There are sterol estrogens that are commonly regarded as safe, but; from a standpoint of eliminating overstimulation or hypersensitivity, lesser is besser ;-)

Since this is way out of the scope of the forum, I will brief.

Chlorine compounds cause acne not hyperestrogenism.

Our concern with estrogens in the environment is premature puberty in children, increase in testicular cancer, and decrease sperm count in men. There is no reason at the present time to believe that any environmental estrogen is affecting adult woman who produce so much estrogen that no external incidental source can affect them.

B"H

Rebbe Yisroel,

The overwhelming majority of our commentators are saying what you have been saying all along, namely, that a Niddah (from the standpoint of the Torah) continues in a state of uncleanness for at least seven days.

Rabbeinu Asher (הרא"ש) wrote in Tractate Niddah, chapter 10:6 (Perek Tinoketh), s.v., ת"ר ואשה כי תהיה זבה, the following:

"The general rule which we adhere to from these oral teachings is that a menstruant woman, from the standpoint of the Torah, is whenever she begins to see blood for one day. That first day whereon she began to see [blood] is the beginning of her menstrual cycle, and she continues in such a state for seven days. It makes little difference if she had seen blood for those entire seven days, or whether she had seen [blood] for only one day. Now when the seven days are complete, she immerses herself on the eighth night and is permitted unto her husband. But if she saw blood on the eighth day, behold she enters within the eleven days that are interposed between each menstrual cycle, which are the days of [an irregular] running issue (Heb. ימי זיבות).

(Original Text)

כללא דנקטינן מהני מתנייתא. דנדה דאורייתא היכא דאתחילה וחזיא דמה יומא חד, ההוא יומא קמא דחזיא ביה הוי תחלת נדה ומשלמה עלה שבעה יומי. לא שנא חזיא דם בכולהו יומי ולא שנא לא חזיא אלא חד יומא. וכדנפקן שבעה יומי טבלה בליל שמיני ומשתריא לבעלה. ואי חזיא דם ביום השמיני הרי עיילה לה לתוך אחד עשר יום שבין דם נדה לדם נדה שהן ימי זיבות

Likewise, Rabbi Aharon Halevi, the author of "Sefer Ha-Hinouch," writes nearly the same thing in Parashas Acharei Mos, commandment # 207, and in Parashas Metzora, commandment # 182. Look there for his discussion on this subject.

So, too, we find in Midrash Tanhuma (Parashas Metzora), an excerpt taken from the writings of Rabbi Sherira Gaon who expressly mentions the matter of menstruant women, saying explicitly that they continue in their state of uncleanness for a minimum of seven days, even though they had seen blood for only one day.

All of these great commentators lend credence to that which Rebbe Yisroel has been saying all along, viz., that a Niddah is no less than seven days. So the question remains, however, why is it that not all women continue in compulsory seven days of uncleanness before they begin to count their seven days of cleanness? Perhaps the Rabbis saw that it was no longer necessary after the early generations ruled that all menstruant women require sitting out seven days of cleanness before immersing themselves in a mikveh. This additional wait automatically ensured that no woman would be forthwith permitted unto her husband when her blood stopped until she had waited seven days.

וצריך עיון

With deep respect,
David