Come mai la sua ora [di scoprire il sangue mestruale] è sufficiente [per calcolare la sua impurità da quel momento]? Se era seduta su un letto ed era occupata a maneggiare cose pure [cioè cibi o vasi], e se ne andava e [poi] vedeva [sangue], era impura e sono tutte pure [poiché la sua impurità è calcolata solo da quel momento]. Anche se hanno detto [riguardo a una donna che non ha un periodo regolare]: rende gli oggetti impuri da quel momento a quel momento [cioè da ventiquattro ore prima, in modo retroattivo], conta solo [i suoi giorni di impurità mestruali] da l'ora in cui ha visto [sangue].
Bartenura on Mishnah Niddah
היתה יושבת במטה ועסוקה בטהרות – but that it doesn’t teach [in the Mishnah] that she was engaged with [ritual] purity and she arose/turned aside and saw it (i.e., a drop of blood). And it (i.e., the Mishnah) teaches that she was sitting on the bed, to inform/teach us that because she has regular premonitory systems of menstruation and she know her regular date, the bed is also pure, as it is taught, “and all of them are pure.” But if she doesn’t have a premonitory system of menstruation, that we declare her unclean from one astronomical period of twenty-four hours to another, the bed would also be impure, like the uncleanness of a menstruant woman that defiles a more serious uncleanness to defile a man and to defile the clothing that is upon him.
Ask RabbiBookmarkShareCopy
English Explanation of Mishnah Niddah
How [does the rule that] it suffices [to reckon her period of uncleanness from] the time she discovers the flow work? This refers to a woman that has a regular menstrual cycle. As we learned in yesterday's mishnah, she is considered to be impure only from the moment in which she observes a blood flow. She doesn’t retroactively defile anything.
Ask RabbiBookmarkShareCopy
Bartenura on Mishnah Niddah
אע"פ שאמרו – that a woman who does not have a premonitory system of menstruation renders unclean [whatever she has touched] during the preceding twenty-four hour period.
Ask RabbiBookmarkShareCopy
English Explanation of Mishnah Niddah
If she was sitting on a bed and was occupied with ritually clean objects and then she leaves [the bed] and then sees [blood flow] she is unclean but the objects are clean. Although in this case it is exceedingly likely that the blood flow started while she was still in bed, since she has a regular cycle, only the things that she touched after she discovered the blood flow are impure. The bed and any other pure things she touched earlier remain pure. This seems to be a case in which the rabbis rule created an intentional leniency, one that might even be seen as ignoring what likely happened.
Ask RabbiBookmarkShareCopy
Bartenura on Mishnah Niddah
אינה מונה – [she doesn’t count] the days of her being a menstruating woman other than from the time that she saw it (i.e., the drop of blood).
Ask RabbiBookmarkShareCopy
English Explanation of Mishnah Niddah
Even though they have said that she conveys uncleanness for a period of twenty-four hours [retroactively] she counts [the seven days of her menstruation] only from the time she observed the flow. This section addresses a woman who does not have a regular menstrual cycle and therefore retroactively defiles anything she touched in the 24 hour period before she discovered that she was bleeding. Nevertheless, when it comes to counting the days of her menstruation during which she is impure, she does not count from the earlier time period. She counts from when she noticed that she was bleeding. This is because the 24 hour period is a stringency she may have been bleeding as early at that period therefore anything she touched must be considered impure. But since she only knows that she began menstruating at a later time, she counts her days only from then.
