Siman 199, Seifim 3-6
3. Ideally, the chafifa needs to be soon before her immersion. The proper custom is that she start to scrub while it is still day and continue her scrubbing until after dark and then go immerse. There is a custom for her to bring a comb to the mikvah comb her hair there, even though she has already done so. In a pressing circumstance when she needs to scrub during the day or it is impossible to do any of it during the day and she must do it all at night, she may do so, provided that she not rush to her house and that she scrub properly.
4. If her chafifa will fall on Saturday night when it is impossible for her to scrub while it was still day she should scrub on the night of her immersion. In any case, the custom is to wash very well on Friday and on Saturday night go back, scrub and comb a bit.
5. If her immersion is Friday night, she scrubs during the day.
6. If her immersion will fall on Saturday night and that night is a Yom Tov she then scrubs on Friday. Similarly, if the two days of Yom Tov fall on Thursday and Friday and her immersion is Saturday night, she does her chafifa on Wednesday. She should tie up her hair so that it does not tangle. She must also be careful during the days between her scrubbing and her immersion to avoid any kind of filth and that nothing from her food preparation or her serving to her children get stuck on her, if it is possible. If it is impossible for her, such as if she has no one to do the preparation and serving or if she needs to handle them during the meal, she should not worry. She should wash her hands after each encounter so that she does not create a barrier. When she immerses, she must check her body and hair well to make sure that there is no barrier and she should rinse her hidden parts with hot water, even if it is Yom Tov. Similarly, she needs to clean her teeth at immersion time to insure that there are no crumbs, meat or bones in her mouth. (See Siman 197 regarding if she may immerse on Saturday night, even if that is not her scheduled immersion date.)
What's Going On – Time of the Preparations for Immersion
The timing of the chafifa is the subject of a dispute between Rashi and the Sheiltos. Rashi maintains that the it should be done during the day to make sure that she doesn’t rush through it (since she can’t immerse until night time) while the Sheiltos prefers that she do her chafifa immediately before her immersion and that therefore she should do it at night.[1] In order to follow both views, the Shulchan Aruch rules that one should start her chafifa in the daytime and have it continue into the night. A woman should spend an hour on it[2], presumably ½ hour while it is still day and ½ hour after nightfall. There are views that today, since women do the entire chafifa at the mikvah, the only time there is a requirement to spend a full hour is if she begins it at night for some reason, but once she has started during the daytime we no longer fear that she might rush through it.[3] However, the governing custom is to spend an hour, regardless of when one starts.
Practically speaking, today women perform the entire chafifa at the mikvah[4], so by arriving there while it is still day and spending a good amount of time on it, she functionally fulfills the requirements of both of the views.
A practical difference between the two views is how to handle a situation in which because of circumstance she can either not to chafifa during the day before her immersion or on the night of her immersion. An example of this is when her immersion will be on Saturday night. Since she can’t prepare herself during the day, she can’t fulfill Rashi’s requirement that she do the chafifa by day. In that case, would Rashi let her do it at night or would he back up the chafifa to Friday?
The halacha is that the woman performs her chafifa on Friday and then does an “update” on Saturday night when she is at the mikvah.
There are two views in how to interpret Rashi. The first is that he permits the chafifa to be Saturday night, since he does not argue with the need to have it as close to the immersion as possible and there is no possibility of doing it earlier.[5] In that case, the practice that the Rama describes is, indeed, a custom. Others maintain that Rashi actually requires that the primary chafifa be done on Friday and not merely a custom.[6] In any event, if the woman fails to do anything on Friday, she would still be able to immerse on Saturday night.[7]
In order to maintain our requirement that the chafifa not be rushed, in the event of an even longer delay, such as that from a multi-day yom tov, the woman does her primary chafifa during the last possible day and does an update before immersion.
All of this relates to chafifa only. As the Shulchan Aruch notes, the iyun may still only be done just prior to immersion.
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