Niddah 20b (כ:) — the Talmud in English

For only

Rabbi Ḥanina was sufficiently wise

and able to examine in this manner; but

everyone else—

was not so wise!

Rabbi Yoḥanan said: Rabbi Ḥanina’s wisdom caused me not to examine blood,

as I would not look at the blood appearances of a woman and issue a ruling concerning them. For where I

would declare impure,

Rabbi Ḥanina would declare pure.

And if I

would declare pure,

he

would declare impure.

Rabbi Elazar said: Rabbi Ḥanina’s humility caused me to

look at blood only in such a case.

And if Rabbi Ḥanina, who was humble, was willing to place himself in doubt and examine it,

should I not examine it?

Rabbi Zeira said: The nature

of the people

of Babylonia caused me not to examine blood, as I said:

I do not understand the nature,

as I do not know how to distinguish between the different types of blood, for example, whether the blood came from a human being or from an animal;

but I understand blood

in order to distinguish between the impure and the pure blood of the uterus itself,

as all of them are of one type and differ only in their colors; surely I would not know how to do so!

And the Gemara asks:

Does this mean that the matter depends on the nature,

that examination of menstrual blood depends on recognizing the nature and types of blood,

but it was Rabba who knew the nature and did not know the blood?

And it answers: Rabbi Zeira was saying “all the more so.”

Rabbi Zeira meant:

If Rabba, who knew the nature, did not examine blood,

then

I,

who do not even know the nature—would I

examine blood?! Ulla happened to come to Pumbedita, and they brought blood before him,

but he did not examine it. He said:

If Rabbi Elazar, who was the master of the Land of Israel,

the greatest expert among all the scholars of the land in the appearances of blood,

when he happened to come to the place of Rav Yehuda

in Pumbedita,

did not examine blood

out of respect for Rav Yehuda,

should I examine it?!

And the Gemara explains:

And why did they call

Rabbi Elazar

“the master of the Land of Israel”?

Because of an incident that occurred:

A certain woman brought blood before Rabbi Elazar,

and

Rabbi Ami was sitting before him,

before Rabbi Elazar.

Rabbi Elazar smelled it

and

said to her:

“This is blood of desire,”

it is,

for she had seen blood caused by her longing for her husband, and it is pure!

After she left,

the woman,

Rabbi Ami attended to her

to question her,

and she said to him:

“My husband was away, and I longed for him!”

Rabbi Ami called

Rabbi Elazar

“the upper chamber

of Rabbi Elazar”:

“The secret of the Lord

is for those who fear Him!”

And the Gemara brings another incident:

Ifera Hurmiz, the mother of King Shapur,

who was a gentile but observed the laws of menstruation,

sent blood before Rava

to examine it.

Rav Ovadya was sitting before him,

before Rava.

Rava smelled

the blood.

He said to her:

“This is blood of desire!” She said to him, to her son: “Come and see

how wise the Jews are!”

He said to her,

her son:

“Perhaps he was like a blind man

shooting into a skylight,”

meaning, perhaps he succeeded only by chance?!

She then sent him

to Rava

sixty [60]

types of blood, and he identified all of them.

Rava said what they were.

The last one,

the final blood,

was blood of lice, and Rava did not know

what it was.

It happened that

Rava sent her a gift,

a comb that kills lice,

and she understood that Rava’s purpose in sending this gift was to answer indirectly what the last blood she had sent him to examine was.

She said: “Jews,

in the chambers

of the heart you dwell,”

for you are so wise!

Rav Yehuda said: At first,

in the beginning,

I would examine blood. Once the mother of my son, Isaac, said to me:

“We do not bring this first drop

before the Sages,”

because it is contaminated,

but only the drops that follow it, from then on

I did not

examine it!

I stopped examining blood and issuing rulings concerning it, because perhaps the first drop had been impure and the woman had thereby become impure, and only afterward, when the impure appearance changed to the appearance of pure blood, did she bring that blood to him. Since the women brought only that blood to show the Sage, Rav Yehuda refrained from issuing a ruling.

However,

between impure and pure,

to distinguish between the pure blood of a woman after childbirth and the impure blood that follows it,

I certainly examine it,

because here there is no concern that there had previously been impure blood which she did not bring, since the earlier blood is certainly pure.

Yalta,

the wife of Rav Naḥman,

brought blood before

Rabba bar bar Ḥana, and he declared her impure. She then brought

the same appearance of blood

before Rav Yitzḥak, son of Rav Yehuda, and he declared

it pure,

for her.

And the Gemara raises an objection:

How could he do this,

Rav Yitzḥak, who declared it pure?

But it was taught in a beraita: If a Sage declared an item impure, another Sage may not declare it pure!

If he prohibited it, another Sage may not permit it!?

And it answers: Rav Yitzḥak

at first

would declare it impure,

even though he held that it was a pure appearance, because of the rule that when one Sage declares an item impure another may not declare it pure.

Once she told him

Yalta told Rav Yitzḥak

that every day

Rabba bar bar Ḥana himself

would declare such a case pure,

as he too held that such an appearance was pure,

but nowadays

he declared it impure

because

did so because

he was apprehensive in her eyes,

he declared it pure, Rav Yitzḥak did so, since Rabba bar bar Ḥana himself held the same way.

Rav Yitzhak, since Rabba bar bar Hanna too held so.

The Gemara asks:

And are they reliable

when she says, “A Sage declared such an appearance pure for me”? And it answers:

Yes! For it was taught: A woman is believed to say:

“Such

a blood appearance

I saw, but I lost it,”

meaning that she brings a sample of her own blood or of her friend’s blood, and even if it is a pure appearance, she is believed to say that the appearance of the lost blood was exactly like this, and she is therefore pure.

A question was raised before them:

A woman shows blood to her friend, and the friend tells her,

“Such

an appearance

a certain Sage declared pure

for

me, this particular Sage.”

What is the ruling?

May the woman who showed the blood rely on her friend’s testimony?

Come and hear: “A woman is believed to say, ‘Such blood I saw, but I lost it’!”

The Gemara rejects this:

There it is different,

as it is not present

the blood

before us,

and therefore we rely on her statement. But if the blood is still present, she must bring it to a Sage for examination.

And the Gemara brings a proof:

Come and hear: Yalta brought blood before Rabba bar bar Ḥana, and he deemed it impure; and she brought it before Rav Yitzḥak, son of Rav Yehuda, and he deemed it pure!

To understand the proof, the Gemara brings the question and answer concerning Rav Yitzḥak’s conduct, which were written above:

And how could he act in this manner? But it was taught in a beraita: If a fellow scholar deemed an item impure, another fellow scholar is not permitted to deem it pure, and so on. And we said: At first, he did deem it impure, but once she told him that every day he would deem such a sight pure, and it was only today that his eyes troubled him, he went back and deemed it pure.

And Rav Yitzḥak relied on Yalta’s report that Rabba bar bar Ḥana had deemed a similar sight pure. -

Apparently, she is believed regarding it!

The Gemara rejects this:

Rav Yitzḥak bar Yehuda—

relied on his learning!

He did not rely on her testimony at all; rather, he too held, on the basis of the tradition that he possessed, that this sight was pure. The Gemara therefore remains uncertain.

The Gemara brings another ruling concerning the adjudication of blood appearances:

There was an incident in which

Rabbi saw,

examined

blood at night and deemed it impure. The next day, he

and on the following day

saw

that same blood again

during the day—

and deemed

it pure.

Rabbi waited

an

hour

and then

retracted

his ruling. The Gemara understood that he retracted his ruling without seeing it a third time, because he thought that the difference between the appearance during the day and the appearance at night resulted from the fact that at night the blood was moist, whereas during the day it had dried, and his seeing it at night while the blood was moist was the correct observation;

and he deemed

it impure!

Rabbi said:

Rabbi,

Woe is me—

perhaps I erred in retracting my ruling and deeming it impure, for now the appearance was pure!

The Gemara asks:

The Gemara asks: Why did Rabbi say

“perhaps I erred”—

when

he certainly erred!

For it was taught in a beraita: A Sage should not say: Had the blood been

moist,

it would certainly have been impure; rather, he should say: A judge has only what his eyes see!

Rabbi had seen that the appearance was now pure, and he had no reason to be concerned that it appeared this way because it had dried.

The Gemara answers: The incident did not happen in this manner. Rather, Rabbi examined the blood a third time.

This is what happened:

Initially,

when he examined it at night by candlelight, he

held it to be

certainly

impure.

And

once he saw in the morning that it had changed,

having become whiter than its appearance at night,

he said: It was certainly pure, and it was only at night that it was not seen properly.

Once he saw,

after an hour,

that it had changed again,

and become even whiter,

he said: This

blood

is impure, and it is merely becoming clearer and clearer,

meaning that its reddish appearance was becoming increasingly diluted. What we said—that a judge has only what his eyes see—applies when he did not initially see an impure appearance.

Rabbi examined by candlelight 236 .

Rabbi Yishmael, son of Rabbi Yosef, examined

even

on an overcast day

and even

between the columns

in the beit midrash where he studied, despite the absence of strong light there.

Rav Ami bar Shmuel said: And all of them,

all bloods,

may be examined only between sunlight and shade.

Rav Naḥman said in the name of Rabba bar Avuha:

He examines

in sunlight and

shades the appearance

with the shadow of his hand 237 .

We learned in the Mishna:

And like diluted wine consisting of two parts.