- If she has intercourse close
to the time of her vesses, we attribute the blood to her oncoming
period and do not call it "as a result of intercourse.”
- If she has a wound in her
vagina, we attribute the blood she found to the wound. If the nature
of the blood from the wound is different from that of her menstruation, we
do not permit attribution. This all applies for a woman who has a
vesses kavua and then she may attribute the blood found not near her
vesses time to the wound even if she does not know with certainty that the
blood came from the wound. Similarly, if she does not have a vesses
kavua and there is a doubt whether the blood is uterine blood or not, we
attribute it to the wound because of a double doubt – first, whether it is
uterine bleeding or from another area, second, if it is uterine blood is
the result of a wound or not. However, if she knows with certainty
that the blood is from the uterus even though she has a wound there, we
cannot attribute the blood to the wound unless we know with certainty that
the blood in fact came from the wound in a case where she does not have a
fixed vesses.. In any event, if she sees during her vesses or at the
30 day mark, we don't attribute the blood to the wound because if we did,
she would never be prohibited to her husband. Kesamim (spotting) can
be attributed to the wound in all cases.
- A woman is trusted to assert
that she has a vaginal wound that the blood is coming from. Further,
if she says, "I am certain that this blood is not from the
uterus" she is believed and she is pure.
We have seen
that there is a view that a couple may not engage in intercourse even if the
husband is going on a trip. According to
this view, the halacha of Seif 4 is odd – we have already been
told that she can’t have intercourse at all during the onas vesses and is certainly permitted during the onah before that, even if she normally menstruates
at the beginning of her onas vesses. That being the case, it is unclear what the
phrase “close to the time of her vesses” actually means according to this view. There are various answers given. The answer that I find the most compelling is
that in the absence of this law, one might think that her bleeding, which could
be a result of a combination of her approaching vesses and intercourse,
would render her as one who sees blood as a result of intercourse. This law comes to teach us that even though
the intercourse might have been a contributing factor to her bleeding, we
nevertheless attribute the bleeding to her normal vesses, which happened
to have come early in this case. In practice, if she ends up with what is
called vesses haMurkav, a vesses from a combination of
intercourse and the relative time before her normal menstruation, we would
simply prohibit intercourse on those days. This same law applies to a woman who does not
have a fixed vesses and is observing the onah beinonis.
In the case of a
wound or an internal injury, we need to know that the bleeding is from the same
area as the injury.
A leniency in this law is that we do not force the woman to ascertain with a posek
whether or not the blood is of a “different nature” and the associated law
would be relevant only if the differences between the two bloods are obvious.
The poskim
have discussed the issues of injuries, bleeding and vesses at some
length. Each case is unique and needs to
be measured against its own circumstances.
There is no way to properly cover this area in these pages – I would end
up either leaving out considerations, making mistakes in my understanding of
the law myself, or end up writing a book on the subject. If one is in this unfortunate circumstance,
it is essential to contact a qualified posek.