Avot212

Today's shiur is dedicated in admiration to all the participants of the Bet Midrash Virtuali who live in Israel's northern communities – them, their families and their neighbours and all those who defend and protect them.

9:
The start of menstruation: there is no need to explain how this clause connects with women! The Torah [Leviticus 18:19] is very explicit in this regard:

The rabbinic definition of this "period of uncleanness" is an extrapolation from another verse in the Torah [Leviticus 12:1-2]:

Thus, without going into details, a woman is considered to be ritually menstruant from the moment she starts bleeding from the womb until seven days have passed from the cessation of the bleeding. She is not considered to be ritually pure again after her "period of uncleanness" until she has bathed in a ritual bath [mikveh].

10:
The bleeding which defines menstruation is part of nature's mechanism for preparing a womb once again for conception after an egg failed to be fertilized. Thus only bleeding which comes from the womb itself causes a woman to be considered menstuant. During the whole period of "ritual uncleanness" the woman is called niddah, which basically is intended to indicate that sexual relations with a male are forbidden.

11:
In earlier times it seems that women were very strict in this regard. The Gemara [Niddah 66a] states:

It was customary for women who saw bleeding when they were not expecting it to have the garment examined by a sage so that he could determine whether this blood was from the womb or not. Clearly, if it was not from the womb the woman was not to be considered menstruant and was permitted to her husband. Surely it is for this reason that Rabbi Eli'ezer Ĥisma considers the task of the sage to permit wives to their husbands to be 'veritable halakhah'.

To be continued.

In Avot 209 I wrote: the modern thinking person … can never be sincere in … observance if it negates … common sense …

Yehuda Wiesen writes:

This raises the question, how do faith/observance and scientific orientation (aka common sense) coexist? I think, not well. This might be one cause for the pervasive lack of observance of the vast majority of the laity of the Conservative Movement. The problem is clear, but what is the solution?

I respond:

I believe that we dealt with this very important issue in our exposition of Mishnahs 15 – 19 of this chapter [Avot 195 onwards]. However, as I wrote to Yehuda in a previous response to a similar question: "this subject is 'longer than the earth and broader than the sea' [Job 11:9], and I cannot deal with it appropriately in the small space afforded by the framework of 'discussion'. I hope I have given some hints for further thought."

In Avot 210 I wrote: Amnon is talking about fear of the unknown and the unknowable; Rabbi El'azar ben-Azaryah is talking about fear of God.

Meir Stone writes:

I learned in Rabbi Joseph Telushkin's book "Jewish Literacy" that fear of God is different from all other fears. In all other fears a person tends to run away from what he fears. But when you fear God you [run] toward him.

I respond:

I would like to think that this is a correct observation.