Mayim Rabim

Well, it's unusual, but I can certainly see how it works for you.

My only curiosity is - is your husband as okay with this arrangement as you are?

Wow. My father is a rabbi too, and I do ask him other sheilot. I just cannot imagine choosing him as my rav to show bedikot to.

eden-
He is actually more comfortable with it than I am.

You do what works for you. One question and one comment, though.

Certainly your father is a professional and looking at bedikah cloths is not personal for him. But the same could be said of gynecologists, and so my question is, if your father were a gynecologist and the medical profession permitted it, would you use him as your doctor? The convenience argument could certainly be made (I bet your father could fit you in for an appointment even when the receptionist says they're fully booked for the next three weeks), and the professional standard would still apply.

Second, you said, "Halakha... is this great abstract body where the average person cannot distinguish between brown and red and all of that has absolutely nothing to do with your daughter’s sex life." I disagree. When a rabbi is ruling on your bedikah cloth (or any niddah question), it has *everything* to do with your and your husband's sex life - and from the rabbi's perspective too! I've found that rabbis and yoatzot tend to rule as leniently as possible in niddah cases, more so than in other areas of halacha, precisely because they keep in mind the real life, actual, personal consequences of their ruling. In other words, while I don't really want to think about this when dropping off a bedikah cloth, I would prefer a rabbi or yoetzet who ruled with my sex life in mind over one who looked at the stain as an abstract entity.

Um, no. In terms of my own comfort level there is a huge difference between looking at a bodily secretion and looking directly at my body. Maybe it is an arbitrary distinction, but it works for me.

I hear your second point and while it works in terms of other aspects of Taharat ha-Mishpacha it does not apply to a color. A color is either tahor or tamei and it has nothing to do with any other factors that surround it. The proper way to look at a stain is as an abstract entity, and once you have a bad color on white cotton there is nothing anybody can do about it.

Avigayil, you're right - there is a difference between looking at a bedikah cloth and looking at a body. And it's not an arbitrary one, either - it's the difference between indirect and direct contact, between something detached from you and you yourself. But the way you feel that a line would be inappropriately crossed in the gynecologist scenario even though your father is a professional, others (including me) feel about the bedikah cloth scenario. I'm not saying *you* should feel this way - as I said before, you do what works for you - but I am saying that one's father being a professional and the convenience in using him doesn't really mitigate a feeling that something is inappropriate, just as it wouldn't for you in the gynecologist scenario. So, while the professional factor is necessary to making this "okay behavior," it's not sufficient, and what it ultimately comes down to is a subjective feeling as to whether or not showing your father a bedikah cloth violates the boundaries of the father-daughter relationship.

As for the yes-or-no status of a color, could there really never be a safek? I don't actually know the answer to this question, but it's hard for me to believe that when we're talking about a continuous range of colors and shades, there isn't *something* that couldn't be identified absolutely. In such a case (if it exists), there would be wiggle room in how a rabbi rules - either to be strict to prevent a Torah prohibition or to be lenient to prevent unecessary separation between a husband and wife. The first being a more abstract consideration and the second being quite real-life oriented. I agree that most of the time, a color is probably either good or bad and no amount of sympathy for the people involved can change that, but I hold out for the odd color that's hard to pin down.

BTW, color isn't the only area in the laws of TH that one might think is predetermined and yet sometimes rabbis find ways to be lenient anyway. I once forgot on day 7 (DAY 7!!!!) to do my bedikah until 5 minutes after shkiah (you can imagine the feeling - after doing mikvah prep I suddenly realize OH CRAP!), did the bedikah just in case, and then called a yoetzet. She was extremely sympathetic and said she'd call a rabbi to confirm, but basically told me there wasn't much hope. Well, she called me back 5 minutes later to say the rabbi she'd spoken to said it was okay, and she thought it was a combination of my having done it so close to shkiah and because for other reasons I wasn't going to be able to go the next night either, so saying "no mikvah" that night would mean 2 extra days of niddah. The point is, here's something that someone intenseley trained in the laws of niddah (the yoetzet) thought was pretty open-and-shut but because of the human consequences here, the rabbi went out of his way to find a way to be lenient.

Anyway, thanks for sparking this discussion - it's really given me something to think about.

Kelloggs, although the question of how much room there is to rule differently on a color based on human factors is a fascinating one, I think as a worry about Avigayil's arrangement it's a bit od a straw man.

When Avigayil said her father rules based on the color in the abstract, without thinking about her sex life, I doubt that she meant without thinking about the consequences to her sex life. Parents don't sit around playing love scenes in their heads, but they usually care a great deal that their children have fulfillment in that area of their lives. I think her father is very unlikely to have his head in the sand about how his rulings affect her relationship based on some kind of denial that she has a sex life. In fact, if anyone would be reluctant to rule strictly because it would cause undue hardship to his daughter, I would think it would be a parent.

Kelloggs, once again I disagree with you that there is room for leniency in terms of color. Your example of forgetting to do a bedikah until five minutes after shkiah is interesting, but there would be no question had you not done a bedikah at all, because there is room to be lenient (in terms of when shkiah exactly is, etc.) It is possible that one rabbi may say a color is ok while another will not, but an individual rabbi will not pasken that the same color that was bad for one person is fine for someone else because of their personal situation. It's just not the way it works.

Also, I think you looked at my argument as coming from the perspective of professionalism. While this is true to a certain extent I see it as much more than that. Part of the point I was trying to make is that halakha exists on a different plane than any other reality, so my interaction with my father as a "professional" (rabbi) would not be the same as my interacting with him in any other capacity- if he were my doctor or therapist for example.

Thanks for giving me a chance to clarify myself.

Eden, you raise an interesting point. What I did not mention is that I rarely ask my father more "grayish" questions that have to do with TM and other bedroom areas. These kinds of questions can be dealt with long distance and my husband enjoys asking them to his Rabbi. I have never asked my father for a heter to use birth control, and when I had to undergo gynecological surgery during my shiva nekiim we called my husband's rabbi. Clearly if I needed a fast answer to a question I would go to him, but when the question is not as straightforward as "yes" or "no" my comfort level starts to go down.

Oh, and everything else you said is dead on.

I think this is unusual but reasonable. And you've written about it so sensitively - thank you!

I have never asked my father for a heter to use birth control, and when I had to undergo gynecological surgery during my shiva nekiim we called my husband's rabbi. Clearly if I needed a fast answer to a question I would go to him, but when the question is not as straightforward as "yes" or "no" my comfort level starts to go down.

This makes the most sense to me. While I'm not quite 100% convinced that no colors are ever questionable (then why would it matter if a bedikah cloth was from a hefsek tahara, the 1st 3 days, or the last?), I can see why that conviction makes a clear separation btw bedikahs and, as you put it "grayish" sheilahs.

Sort of like me asking my FIL about kashrus in my kitchen (kosher, treif, wash in cold water) but not about someone else's (should I ask them to cut fruit with a plastic utensil). And DH will occasionally ask "theoretical" halachic sheilahs re: T"H of his father.

Thanks for the post.

Do women married to rabbis (rebetzin) ask their husbands to look at questionable bedikahs? Just curiosity.

I would think so. I remember once, at a shiur, a Rabbi told us of a woman who didn't believe him that her brown and yellow bedikos were okay. (She wanted a heter to go to mikvah before the 7 days were up, and he insisted on helping her instead by examining her hefsek attempts from days 5 and 6: she hadn't been starting the 7 clean days until day 7) His response was, "I'd tell my own wife they were okay."

I think the premise here is that if he rules wrong, he's the one with the issur kares, not some random other man, so he's that much more careful, and therefore we trust him to rule on his own wife's bedikos. And of course, he has to be honest enough with himself to ask another Rav if he's not sure.

I don't know for sure that he or any specific Rabbi does rule on his own wife's bedikos, but it's for sure more tzniusdik than taking them to someone else! As long as he isn't overly careful, ruling the more stringent way every time, because then his wife might decide to go over his head and ask a different Rav!

Thanks Eden for the articulate post. It helped me understand some aspects of what Avigayil was saying.

Avigayil, regarding colors, you said:
"[A]n individual rabbi will not pasken that the same color that was bad for one person is fine for someone else because of their personal situation. It's just not the way it works."

What is that assertion based on? Your observations growin up in a rabbinic household? Your personal experience? Discussions with experts? I ask not antagonistically, but so I can better evaluate your statement.

The thing that strikes me as odd about what you said is that if you're right, then an individual rabbi can always identify 100% what he's looking at - otherwise, there would be room for safek and consequently, room to consider individual circumstances of the questioner. But the same color can look different in different lights (even sunlight is different at various times of day, month, and year) and can look different depending on how long it's been on the bedikah cloth. So when dealing with a color that's very close to the line between tamei brown and tahor brown, for example, how can a rabbi be absolutely sure of what he's looking at? How can he know without any doubt that he would see the same thing and rule the same way if it were an hour later? Anyone have any ideas?

My assertion is based both on my study of the area and on common sense. I didn't learn very much about nidda from growing up in a rabbinic household.

I stand by what I said, but with one clarification: The intent of my statement was red colors. Since brown is a safek color there is room for leniency unless the rabbi or the woman is certain that it was red that changed to brown after it sat for a while. Some rabbis may be more makil with other browns, and I wonder if a rabbi would rule strictly on a brown in once case but leniently on another with different circumstances (that have nothing to do with the stain itself.) I would be curious to ask a rabbi what he does.

Do women married to rabbis (rebetzin) ask their husbands to look at questionable bedikahs?

My kallah teacher made it very clear that she didn't. She told a very funny/sad story about how her husband (a well-known posek on T"H) tried to persuade her to show him her latest bedikah when she'd been staining for nine weeks after a miscarriage. She refused, and he had to fish it out of the garbage and tell her it looked fine to him. She said "you know, after nine weeks of being apart, I would also think it looked fine." *cue class laughter here* And he said, no no, of course I would never take that responsibility on myself, I just meant I think we should show it to someone else before we give up...