Berakhot 060

נושא: Berakhot

Berakhot 060

BET MIDRASH VIRTUALI

One who has had a seminal emission recites it 'eyes only' and does not recite the berakhot before or after it. [Such a person] does recite Grace after Meals but not Grace before Meals. Rabbi Yehudah is of the opinion that [such a person] recites both Grace both before and after meals.

1:
Our mishnah is concerned with the question whether and how a man who has had a seminal emission may recite the Shema.

2:
Similar (but not identical) to the menstruant woman, the Torah considers human ejaculate to be ritually impure – to the extent that immersion in a mikveh [Ritualarium, Ritual Pool] is required to remove the ritual impurity before ritual rights and duties may be resumed. The Torah prescribes:

If semen issues from a man he shall wash his whole body in water and remain [ritually] impure until the evening [Leviticus 15:16].

The Gemara [Bava Kamma 82b] notes the prescriptions of this verse and points out that actually it only applies to the sancta of the Bet Mikdash, but it was not the intention of the Torah (according to the sages) that this rule be applied to all ritual tasks. It was Ezra the Scribe, according to the rabbis, who (in the 5th century BCE) extended the rule "even to Torah study". The sages explain this extension of the Torah's rule by Ezra as his attempt to reduce sexual activity so that the sages "would not pester their wives like roosters".

3:
This attempt, attributed to Ezra, was a dismal failure, and the rule quite soon became "more honoured in the breach than the observance". (I suppose any sociologist could have foreseen this outcome.) The rule that was ultimately adopted was that of Rabbi Yehudah ben-Beteyrah in the Gemara: "Torah cannot contract impurity" [Ĥullin, 136b]. In other words, even if someone is in a state of ritual impurity this should not preclude them from fulfilling all their ritual duties and privileges since their ritual impurity cannot be "passed on" to Torah. Rabbi Yosef Karo, in his monumental commentary on the Tur, Bet Yosef (which became the precursor of his even more famous "Shul&#293an Arukh", which was just his attempt to cut the Bet Yosef down to a manageable size) – quotes great predecessors such as the Rif [Rabbi Yitzĥak Alfasi] and the Rosh [Rabbi Asher ben-Yeĥi'el] and concurs with their conclusion that nowadays all persons in a state of ritual impurity are permitted and required to fulfill all their ritual obligations. This means, as he points out, that men who have ejaculated – both voluntarily and involuntarily – and women who are menstruant, and members of both sexes afflicted with sexual diseases, and all of us who are under the sway of several other forms of ritual impurity which need not detain us here – all are required and permitted to function fully from the ritual point of view.

4:
Rabbi Moshe Isserles [Eastern Europe, 16th century CE] had a problem with this blanket approval. He attempts to deal with his problem in a most convoluted way [in his gloss on Shulĥan Arukh, Oraĥ Ĥayyim, 88:1]:

Some [poskim] have written that a menstruant woman should not enter a synagogue, recite her prayers, mention God's Name or touch a Sefer [Torah?] during the period she is bleeding. Others permit all this, and this is the obvious rule. However, the custom in these areas [Ashkenazi Eastern Europe] follows the former opinion, while permitting all this to a woman who is niddah [after the bleeding has stopped but before immersion in a Mem>mikveh]. However, even where the more stringent view is followed, during the High Holydays and so forth when many frequent the synagogues, such women may attend no differently from other women, because it would cause them great distress if everyone were inside and they were outside.

These convolutions are amazing to anyone who is not used to this manner of reasoning: statement, counter-statement, counter-counter-statement and so forth. I suppose that Isserles' position could be summed up as requiring menstruant women to avoid Israel's sancta unless doing so makes them unhappy. How much more simple is the view of the oriental poskim [decisors] that this whole issue can be safely ignored for both sexes. This is the practical view taken by Masorti/Conservative Judaism.

To be continued.

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