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Siman 196, Seifim 4-5
What's Going On - Counting According to R. Akiva Eiger, the self examination must also include a check of her undergarments. Nevertheless, if she neglected to do so, the self-examination is still valid. Most poskim have maintained that a woman only needs to be perform one self-examination per day. The Shulchan Aruch follows the opinion of the Tur that 2 checks are required each day. The underlying reason for requiring two is the inter-relationship between a woman being prohibited to her husband because of Niddah and a woman being unable to eat kodshim (certain foods with elevated degrees of purity, such as trumah). For the latter, apparently, a woman needs to perform 2 examinations per day as a precedent to immersion so she can become pure. Based on that requirement and the connection between these two areas of halacha, the Tur maintains that the original requirement of 2 self-examinations per day remains in force, even if technically she could get by with just 1. The Yerushalmi gives another reason for the requirement of two checks per day. The Talmud there apparently maintains that the natural transition from day to night and night to day can disturb peoples' natural rhythms. Therefore, the two examinations reflect the possibility that the shift from one to the other could have resulted in new bleeding. Therefore, we make the morning self-examination to check whether there was bleeding during the night and the late afternoon one to determine if the daytime caused new bleeding. Although the basic halacha requires two self-examinations per day, it is also not blind to the fact that the self-examination might not be easy to perform and might be painful for some women or might aggravate and inflame tissue. Therefore, the lowest level requirement according to some poskim is for a single self-examination during the seven day period. The ideal timing for the single self-examination is either Day 1 or Day 7. Many of these poskim maintain that, given the option, the woman should perform the self-examination on Day 1 rather than on Day 7. The Shulchan Aruch brings as an alternative view (advanced by the Smag and the Sefer HaTrumos) that the minimum acceptable number of self-examinations is two: one on Day 1 and the other on Day 7. It appears that the Shulchan Aruch, in violation of the general principle of "Stam v'Yesh, halacha k'stam" - that when the Shulchan Aruch has an anonymous opinion and one headed "there are those who say", the halacha follows the anonymous one - prefers the second view. The Shulchan Aruch, then, holds that one cannot reduce the number of self-examinations below 2 and they most be at the beginning and the end of the 7 day period. L'halacha we try to follow this view unless there is an extreme circumstance. The Mishnas Sofrim of R. Joshua Wolhendler notes, however, that one could theoretically perform only one additional self-examination - on Day 7 - and still meet the stricter requirements of the second view in the Shulchan Aruch. He suggests that while it is true that it is highly preferable to perform the self-examination during the daytime, if a woman were to perform it at night, it would be acceptable. Therefore, if a woman strictly follows the rules of hefsek tahara and uses a moch, inasmuch as the moch is in place during the beginning of the night of Day 1, the moch itself could serve as the Day 1 self-examination, in addition to its role as the final step of the hefsek tahara. He suggests then, that if a woman really can only do one self-examination, provided that she uses a moch as part of the hefsek, she perform a single self-examination on Day 7, thus meeting the requirements of both the first and second views brought in the Shulchan Aruch. One should only consider this as a halachic option in extreme conditions and under halachic guidance. In searching for leniencies in the application of the Shulchan Aruch's position on the minimum number of self-examinations, keep in mind that these leniencies are available only to those for whom self-examinations are physically difficult or painful. What happens then, if one does not perform all of the required self-examinations? In the case of a woman who did Day 1 and went to mikveh without performing the Day 7 check, since there are a large number of poskim who require only one check through the entire cycle anyway, if the woman has had intercourse with her husband already, we let it go. If she hasn't, she needs to perform the self-examination and immerse for a second time. The Shulchan Aruch itself deals with the case in which a woman does not perform any self-examination during the 7 days. The halachic requirement is that a woman "count" seven days. The count is initiated by the first self-examination that she performs on Day 1. Therefore, if a woman made no self-examination during the seven days following her hefsek tahara, her counting for her clean days never really began! Therefore, in the case brought in the Shulchan Aruch, since she has performed a self-examination on Day 8, she has turned that day into Day 1 of her 7 day count. Similarly, if a woman performed an exam on Day 1 and then a second time on Day 8, since she did not have the minimum number of required self-examinations during the 7 day period, the would start recounting with Day 8 becoming Day 1 of a new count. If she didn't make an examination on Day 1, but did it on Day 2, then she would begin counting her 7 days on Day 2. Her 7 days then would end on Day 8 since her hefsek tahara, but it would also be Day 7 of the 7 day count. The requirement of checking only by daylight was in order to help properly distinguish between reds that were impure and reds that were pure. This distinction was in fact made at one time. Today, all reds are considered impure. Therefore, this halacha is a little less significant and in fact, poskim today will use artificial light to examine a cloth.
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