Siman 189 Seif 13 - Part 1
13. A woman does not establish a vesses, even if she saw on three consecutive Rosh Chodesh, unless they were all in the same onah, either by day or by night. If she saw 3 times during the day and the fourth by night or vice-versa, she suspects both the day and the night, because of her vesses kavua and because of the vesses of her previous period. If she saw randomly in the morning and at night (and does not establish a vesses kavua) or once in the morning and three times at night, or once at night and then three times in the morning or three of this and three of that, she concerns herself only with the last vesses.
What's Going On - Consistent intervals
The Shulchan Aruch is telling us that not only must the interval of number of days be consistent in order to establish a vesses kavua, but also the vesses must be during the same onah - either day or night. Seeing 3 times by, say, day, with consistent intervals, would establish her as having an interval of X days seeing in the morning. If on one occasion, her period commences on interval but at night, that is considered a deviation. As with all deviations from Vesses Kavua, this woman would, for the following month, suspect both the day and the night of the interval date, as well as the date of the month. (See Siman 189, Seifim 14-16 for a fuller discussion of the issue).
On the other hand, if she always sees on the same date of the month or over the same interval but the timing of the period varies between day and night, she does not establish any vesses kavua. So we see that the conditions for establishing a vesses kavua are in fact very high. This makes some sense; the idea of vesses kavua is for the most part an extraordinary leniency in halachic application by allowing a woman to have a single onah of separation in anticipation of her period rather than the up to 3 that are required of a woman who has a Vesses SheAino Kavua. The fact that the bar is set so high functionally means that the vast majority of women will work under the Vesses SheAino Kavua rules. Nevertheless, it is important to know the vesses kavua rules so that one can recognize when one's menstrual pattern might conceivably fall into that category.
Night precedes day
As we've learned, if a woman
doesn't have a vesses kavua, then the actual sighting of her period
uproots whatever interval and month date her previous period imposed on
her. There is some discussion however, that if her previous period had
been during the day and her current period is on the same date but at night
and extends into the day whether her daytime vesses is
uprooted. According to most poskim it is - as we learned in 184:6,
we follow only the onah in which menstruation begins. However, the
Shulchan Aruch HaRav holds that the earlier start of her period
(provided that it extended into the morning) does not uproot the daytime Vesses
SheAino Kavua and the following month she will need to suspect both the
night and day onos of the date.
The language of the Shulchan Aruch, that uses a date-based vesses, implies that we need the vesses to appear in the same onah in the case of a woman with a Vesses HaChodesh. It is not apparent though that this requirement also holds for a Vesses Haflaga. However, we do in fact hold that this principle applies to the Vesses Haflaga as well.[1]
There are 3 distinct views on the application of this law to the Vesses Haflaga.
1) The first is that of R. David Tabali, who held that we can use an interval between 2 vestos if the vesses is on the correct day of the cycle and occurs with the same interval of onos.
2) The Noda B’Yehudah maintains that it is only the number of intervening days that matters, even if the two cycles last a different number of onos.
3)
The final view, belonging to the
Today we follow the view of the Noda B’Yehudah.[2]
However, there is a view that even though we do not use the number of intervening onos to establish a Vesses Kavua, there are certain circumstances in which this would be relevant. For example, if a woman had a cycle of 56 onos (an even number of onos will result in a shift in the onah of the vesses from night to day or vice-versa). If she has 8 such cycles, some would consider her as having 2 overlapping cycles of 56 days each and would the rules of separation accordingly.[3]
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