Niddah 25b (כה:) — the Talmud in English

And

when examining it to see whether it has these limbs on its head,

one does not examine it in water, as the water is harsh

and removes

the soft tissue

from it; rather, one examines it in oil,

as the oil is soft and polishes it.

And one sees

it

only in sunlight,

as in its light one can discern even small details!

The Gemara asks:

How does one examine it?

The Gemara expresses astonishment at the question:

How does one examine it?! —

But the difficulty of the examination is

as we said

in the beraita!?

The Gemara explains the question:

Rather,

the question is

with what does one examine it in order to know whether it is male or female?

And this is referring to a case in which the signs explicitly mentioned in the beraita were not discernible: a lentil-sized form indicates a male, and a barley-grain-sized form indicates a female].

The Gemara explains:

Abba Shaul bar Nash, and some say

Abba Shaul bar Ramash, says: One brings a smooth-headed splinter and moves it in that place.

If it catches

the splinter,

it is known that it is male,

because the membrum obstructs the splinter, thereby causing it to catch;

and if not, it is known that it is female!

The Gemara adds:

Rav Naḥman said that Rabba bar Avuha said: They taught

that catching is a sign only when one moves the splinter

from below upward 148 ,

for then the catching is evidence that it is male, since in a female there is nothing to obstruct the splinter.

But

if one moves the splinter

from the sides,

catching is possible even in a female, because

perhaps they are the walls of the uterus,

and the splinter encounters the walls at the opening of the uterus and catches.

Rav Adda bar Ahava said: The tanna taught: If it was female, it is

discernible [

recognizable]

as a split barley grain!

Although the beraita states only “barley,” without the addition “split,” the intention is that the female appears like a split barley grain.

Rav Naḥman raised an objection against this:

If the split is the sign,

perhaps it is the cord of the eggs [

the membrane separating the eggs]

that is present,

as it appears like a split.

Abaye said: Now, the eggs themselves are not discernible [

they cannot be recognized];

can the cord of the eggs be discerned? Rav Amram said: The tanna taught

that when the limbs of its hands and feet begin to develop,

its two thighs are like two crimson threads!

And Rabbi Amram said further concerning this, [

the threads with which the tanna compared the fetus’s thighs are]

like

threads

of the woof,

which are thicker than the threads of the warp.

The tanna further said:

And its two arms

of the fetus appear

like two crimson threads!

And Rabbi Amram said further concerning this —

the intention of the tanna is that the thinness of the arms is

like that of

a thread

of the warp!

Samuel said to Rav Yehuda: Sharp-witted one! Do not perform an act

that would classify it as a viable fetus

until it develops hair,

when hairs of the head appear on it; and do not rely on the signs recorded in the beraita.

The Gemara asks:

And did Samuel say this? But Samuel said: “In this case

in which the shafir was clear,

and in this case

in which the shafir was cloudy,

she is concerned,”

lest there was a fetus in it, despite the fact that the hairs of its head are not discernible?!

The Gemara answers:

Rav Ami bar Samuel said: To me, my master Samuel’s statement was explained as follows:

to be concerned

for the days of ritual impurity as a woman who gave birth —

she is concerned,

and, because of the uncertainty, she observes two weeks of impurity.

But

the days of purity —

we do not grant them to her until it develops hair,

for Samuel imposed the requirement of hair only because of the lack of expertise, and did not maintain that the hair is an essential requirement by law.

The Gemara asks:

Is that to say that Samuel was uncertain

and did not know how to identify a fetus without hair?

But there was a certain shafira [

shafir]

that came before my master Samuel, and Samuel said:

Samuel said:

This

is forty-one days old!

Samuel knew how to estimate the shafir’s exact age,

and he reckoned from the day on which she went to the immersion until that day, and it was only forty days 150 .

And he said to them

Samuel said:

This woman engaged in intercourse while she was a menstruating woman!

For the shafir was forty

-one

days old, whereas only forty days had passed since her immersion; it follows that she conceived one day before immersing for her menstrual status.

They bound him —

and she confessed!

Thus Samuel was extremely expert and could determine the age even to within a single day; how, then, could he be uncertain and say that until it develops hair it remains doubtful? The Gemara answers:

Samuel is different, for his master’s power was great,

as he was especially expert, but not everyone was as expert as he was. Therefore, he instructed others that as long as it had no hair, it should not be treated as certainly a viable fetus.

We learned in the Mishna: If a woman miscarries a sandal,

or a placenta, she observes the periods for both a male and a female.

The Sages taught: A “sandal” resembles a fish of the sea

that is called by this name — “sandal.”

At first, it

was a

proper

viable fetus,

but

it was crushed,

flattened afterward when its twin brother pressed against it in the womb.

Rabban Shimon ben Gamliel says: A sandal resembles the tongue of a large ox!

For our Rabbis testified: A sandal requires

that it possess

the form of a face.

However, if the facial limbs are not complete, we attribute this to its having been crushed from the beginning of its formation, and it is not a viable fetus.

Rav Yehuda said that Samuel said: The halakha is:

A sandal requires the form of a face!

Rav Adda said that Rav Yosef said that Rav Yitzḥak said: A sandal requires the form of a face,

but its facial limbs need not be in their proper places. Rather,

even

if the form of its face is

behind it,

it is a viable fetus.

This is analogous to a person who slapped his fellow —

and turned his face backward;

so too, in this case we attribute the matter to the pressure exerted by its brother, which caused it to turn its head backward.

In the days of Rabbi Yannai, they sought to declare pure a sandal that had no form of a face. Rabbi Yannai said to them:

You have declared the fetuses pure,

for even without the form of a face it is a viable fetus!

The Gemara asks:

But it was taught in a beraita: “For our Rabbis testified” —

a sandal requires the form of a face?!

The Gemara answers:

Rav Beivai bar Abaye said that Rabbi Yoḥanan said:

this testimony “for our Rabbis” is not the halakha, because

this Mishna was taught only from the testimony of Rabbi Neḥunya

alone;

this Mishna was taught

as the view of a single authority, and the halakha is not established in accordance with him!

Rabbi Zeira said: Rav Beivai merited having the tradition attributed to him,

as fortune caused him to precede me in transmitting this teaching.

For he and I were sitting before Rabbi Yoḥanan when he stated this teaching,

that this Mishna was taught only from the testimony of Rabbi Neḥunya.

He preceded me and said

this teaching in the study hall,

and he merited it,

as it was attributed to him!

The Gemara raises a difficulty concerning the Mishna, which states: “If a woman miscarries a sandal, she observes the periods for both a male and a female”:

Why did they mention a sandal

as a reason that she observes the periods for both a male and a female,

when there is no sandal without a fetus accompanying it

as well? If so, she must in any event observe the periods for the additional fetus , even without the sandal!?

The Gemara answers:

If a female was born together with it, that is indeed so,

and there would be no need to mention that she observes the periods because of the sandal.

Here, with what are we dealing? With a male having been born,

because of whom she need observe only one week, while because she also miscarried a sandal, whose sex is uncertainly female, she must observe two weeks because of the uncertainty.

The novelty concerning a sandal, more than concerning any fetus whose sex is uncertain, is as follows:

It might enter your mind to say that since Rav Yitzḥak bar Ami said: When

a

woman emits seed first, she

gives birth to a male,

and if

a man emits seed first, she

gives birth to a female!

Therefore, we might say:

Since this one,

the additional fetus, is

male,

this one

the sandal

is also male,

since the formation of the male twin necessarily means that the woman emitted seed first, and therefore the sandal, which was formed with it from the same act of intercourse , is also male.

It teaches us

that perhaps both emitted seed simultaneously: this one is male and this one is female!

For when they emit seed together, twins can be born, one male and the other female.

The Gemara offers another answer:

Alternatively,

the reason the Mishna mentioned a sandal is even when its twin is female, and the Mishna teaches

that if she gives birth to a female before sunset and to a sandal after sunset,

and it is unknown whether the sandal is male or female,

she counts the “beginning of menstruation” from the first 156 ,

since she begins counting her menstrual days on the eighty-first day after the birth of the first, known female child. We are concerned that the sandal, which was born second, was male, in which case it has only forty days of purity, and the days of purity ended on the eightieth day after the birth of the first fetus. Therefore, the blood she saw on the eighty-first day renders her impure with the impurity of menstruation for seven days. However, since she gave birth after sunset to a sandal whose sex is uncertainly female, her menstrual impurity is not certain; rather, she counts

the beginning of menstruation

also

from the later one,

counting, because of the uncertainty, the eightieth day from the day on which she miscarried the sandal, and she is concerned that the blood she saw on the eighty-first day was blood of the days of purity. There is a further stringency arising from this concern: if she sees blood again on the eighty-eighth day, in the case of an ordinary menstruating woman, after seven days of menstruation come eleven days of ziva, during which she is impure for only one day. But since in this woman’s case it is not certain that she was a menstruating woman on the eightieth day, we are stringent with regard to her seeing blood on the eighty-eighth day, and she is again impure for seven days with menstrual impurity.

It follows that, because of the birth of the sandal, her count is disrupted, and she does not know when the days of menstruation ended and the days of ziva began. If the sandal was male and the days of purity ended on the eightieth day after the birth of the certainly female child, then the days of menstruation began with the sighting on the eighty-first day. But if the sandal was female, the eighty-first day after the first birth was the eightieth day for the sandal, which was born after sunset, and the blood she saw on the eighty-first day was blood of purity. Only blood seen from the eighty-second day onward is menstrual blood, and only after seven days from that sighting do the days of ziva begin.