Just as men contract ritual defilement from both normal and abnormal discharges from their reproductive organ (i.e., seminal and non-seminal discharges, respectively), women also contract ritual defilement from both normal and abnormal discharges from their reproductive organ (i.e., menstrual blood and non-menstrual blood, respectively). But whereas for men, normal and abnormal discharges are differentiated by the color and consistency of the discharge, for women, normal and abnormal discharges are distinguished solely by the date on which they occur, as follows.
Starting from the first time in her life that she begins menstruating, a woman begins a somewhat elastic cycle of alternating 7-day menstrual periods and 11-day non-menstrual time spans. Menstruation is considered to last exactly seven days, even if actual bleeding occurs for fewer or more days; during the 11-day spans, whatever uterine bleeding may occur is considered non-menstrual.
Although every 7-day menstrual period is followed immediately by an 11-day non-menstrual span, the 7-day menstrual period following an 11-day non-menstrual span does not begin until actual bleeding occurs.
To illustrate: A woman’s first 7-day menstrual period begins with the onset of her menarche. As soon as these seven days are over, she begins counting again; any bleeding that occurs during the ensuing 11 days is considered non-menstrual. If she does not bleed during these 11 days, or bleeds on no more than two of them consecutively, she begins her next 7-day menstrual period the next time she starts bleeding, no matter when this occurs. After this second 7-day menstrual period, she counts 11 days again for non-menstrual bleeding, and so on.
If, however, during an 11-day non-menstrual span, she bleeds for three or more consecutive days, her next 7-day menstrual period is postponed until after she has ceased bleeding and then counted seven full, consecutive days clear of bleeding, as will be explained later. The day on which she next bleeds after these seven clear days is considered the first day of her next 7-day menstrual period, after which she again counts 11 days for non-menstrual bleeding, and so on.
If the woman bleeds on the last two days of the 11-day non-menstrual span and then continues to bleed on one or more of the subsequent days, these subsequent days of bleeding do not combine with the two days of non-menstrual bleeding to form a 3-or-more-day period of non-menstrual bleeding that must be followed by a 7-day count of clear days. Rather, this subsequent bleeding begins her second menstrual period.
Ritual Defilement Contracted from Menstrual Bleeding
If a woman has a uterine discharge, and her discharge, based on the day it begins, is deemed to be menstrual blood, she becomes ritually defiled, as will be described presently. In order not to ritually defile other people or implements, she must refrain from touching them or letting them touch her. She must remain in her state of separation from contact for exactly seven days, regardless of how long her flow actually lasts. If her discharge has ceased by the end of the seventh day of her menstruation period, she may immerse herself the following evening and thus become rid of this defilement.
During her period of separation, whoever touches her will become ritually defiled and must immerse themselves in a mikveh, after which they will remain defiled until evening, at which time they will become rid of this defilement.
Chasidic Insights
Menstrual blood and non-menstrual blood: These two types of blood and the ritual defilement they impart parallel the two types of discharges men experience—seminal and non-seminal—and the ritual defilement they impart, as described above.
The laws of female bleeding, just like the laws of male emissions, take us back to the dawn of human history and remind us how much our lives are a product of the incident with the Tree of Knowledge of good and evil and the resultant expulsion from the Garden of Eden, and how we must continually strive to reverse the consequences of these events until reality is consummately spiritually healed, with the final, messianic Redemption. Part of the “pain” that was introduced into the process of pregnancy on account of the incident with the Tree of Knowledge is the menstrual cycle. As was explained in our discussion of the primordial sin, it is specifically the feminine side of our psyches—our drive to concretize Divine inspiration, thereby transforming the world into God’s home—that is the most susceptible to the enticements of evil. In order to rectify this susceptibility, the woman—and through her, her husband, whose life is also affected by his wife’s menstrual cycle—must be periodically reminded of their own fallibility as God’s partners in creation. The potentially heady sense of self that can result from partaking in the miracle of bearing a new human being (which serves as the archetype for propagating Divine consciousness throughout creation in general) must be attenuated by being reminded of human limitations. Thus, by means of the menstrual cycle, wife and husband are humbled into acknowledging the need to submit to God’s will when fulfilling His mission on earth.
We also noted that the sin of Adam and Eve was presaged by the diminution of the moon, which resulted in its monthly cycle of waxing and waning. The fact that the woman’s menstrual cycle occurs in specifically monthly periods alludes to its origin in the lunar cycle.
Normal menstrual bleeding renders the woman ritually defiled to a limited extent, as we will see. The extent of this form of ritual defilement and its accompanying purification process is typically enough to restore the couple to their normal Divine consciousness (until it is necessary to repeat the cycle the following month). This periodic cleansing of the existential “venom” of the primordial snake that was injected into our psyches when Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit will continue until God “causes the spirit of impurity to pass away from the earth.”
Non-menstrual bleeding, in contrast, is the result of an abnormally inflated feminine ego, in which the self-assurance that should have been humbled by the menstrual cycle is instead fed by presumptuously and repeatedly overstepping the bounds of God’s will. This sinful hubris elicits uterine bleeding—the reminder of human frailty—before its scheduled resumption, resulting in a more serious extent of ritual defilement necessitating a full week of purgation followed by sacrificial rites.
Here again, together with its warning against reinforcing anti-Divine consciousness through transgressing God’s will, the Torah informs us that power of repentance is such that even someone who has internalized evil to this extent can still be rehabilitated.
