We have reached chapter 1, Mishnah 7, the final Mishnah of the chapter. In previous lessons, we dealt with cases in which a person brings a chatas offering even though they did not commit a specific sin, and the offering is brought to complete a purification process. We discussed the halachah of a woman who gave birth, and in our Mishnah we will continue to discuss her, as well as the halachah of a major zavah.
What is a zavah?
A woman has a regular monthly cycle. Once she begins to see blood, she becomes a niddah for seven days according to Torah law. It makes no difference whether she saw only a single drop of blood on the first day, or bled continuously for seven consecutive days; as long as she stopped by the end of the seventh day, even for a single moment, she immerses in a mikvah, becomes permitted to her husband, and is pure, and that is the end of the story.
From here onward she is expected to see blood again the following month, but cycles vary. The Torah established: The first day of her seeing is the first day, and at the end of the seventh day she immerses - meaning at the beginning of the eighth day. If between the eighth and eighteenth day, during those eleven days, she saw additional blood, this is not regular niddah blood, but rather zivah blood.
The term "zav" means a flow - an unusual and mysterious flow, which is not part of the regular menstrual cycle, and therefore she becomes a zavah. If she saw blood on three consecutive days, for example on the tenth, eleventh, and twelfth days, she becomes a major zavah, and she must count seven clean days before she can immerse and become pure.
Even after she has become pure and permitted to her husband, a remnant of tumah remains in her and she lacks atonement, until she brings a pair of birds - an olah and a chatas - similar to a woman who gave birth. Once she brings them, she becomes completely pure, meaning she is permitted to eat offerings and enter the Beis Hamikdash.
One offering for multiple obligations:
Our Mishnah deals with a woman who became obligated in several obligations, as a zavah or as a woman who gave birth, and seemingly she should have to bring several sets of offerings. The halachah here is similar to the halachah of immersion: A woman who was a niddah five times immerses at the end of them only one time and becomes pure. She is not required to undergo five separate immersions; one purification process is enough to atone for everything, like a complete reset.
Similarly, a woman who is obligated to bring a pair of birds - as a zavah, or the olah and chatas of a woman who gave birth - even if she gave birth to five children, once she brings the first set of offerings she is no longer lacking atonement. She is completely atoned for and purified, and is permitted to enter the Beis Hamikdash and eat consecrated foods.
The Mishnah discusses two situations: when the multiple obligations came about from doubt, and when they are certain - that she certainly gave birth several times, or that she certainly had several instances of zivah. It must be clarified: A niddah never brings an offering at the end of her process; only the zavah and the woman who gave birth are relevant to our Mishnah here.
Five doubtful zivahs and five doubtful births:
"Haishah sheyesh aleha safek chamesh zivos" - A woman who may have had five sightings of zivah. The same applies to one, two, or any number; the Mishnah used five as an example. This refers to someone who did not properly track her cycle, and does not know whether her sightings were during zivah days or niddah days.
"Vesafek chamesh leidos" - as we learned two mishnayos ago, a woman who had several miscarriages, and in each of them she does not know what came out of her - for example, she flushed the miscarriage down the toilet - and therefore she does not know whether she must bring one, two, three, four, or five offerings, or if she is not obligated to bring any offerings at all.
And the law is: "Meviah korban echad" - she brings one set of offerings for all five doubts, "ve'ocheles bezavachim" - and she is completely permitted to eat offerings and enter the Beis HaMikdash, "ve'ein hashear aleha chovah" - and the rest of the doubtful offerings that she perhaps had to bring are no longer an obligation upon her.
There is a certain dispute here: our mishnah implies that it is not an obligation upon her, but she is allowed to bring them as voluntary offerings; whereas others deduce that she cannot bring them even as voluntary offerings, since there is no obligation here at all. In any case, the main point is the same: once she brought one set, she is permitted again to eat holy offerings and enter the Beis HaMikdash. She is no longer lacking atonement, and therefore the rest of the offerings are unnecessary and she does not bring them.
Five Certain Births:
"Chamesh leidos vadda'os, chamesh zivos vadda'os" - she knows with certainty that she had five normal births, and seemingly is obligated to bring five sets of offerings; or she knows that five times in her life she was a major zavah and never brought the offerings at the end of the process. Here too, "meviah korban echad ve'ocheles bezavachim" - with the first set she becomes pure, she is no longer lacking atonement, and she is permitted to eat offerings and enter the Beis HaMikdash.
However, "vehashear aleha chovah" - the remaining four sets of offerings are still an obligation upon her, not to purify her, but as an independent scriptural decree. The Gemara learns from the word "zot" in the verse, to include that even in this scenario, where she had multiple births and already brought one pair of offerings, she is obligated to subsequently bring the rest of the offerings. They are not required for her purity per se, but they are an inseparable part of giving birth. The same law applies to a zav. This is the opinion of the first Tanna.
The Incident with Rabban Shimon ben Gamliel:
The mishnah relates: Once, the price of birds in Jerusalem - the turtledoves and young pigeons usually brought for an offering - soared until a pair of birds cost a golden dinar, a gold coin, which is an exorbitant amount of money. Rabban Shimon ben Gamliel, who was the last Nasi we see during the time of the Beis HaMikdash, swore using an expression referring to the Beis HaMikdash. It is obvious that this is not a Torah-level oath, since he did not mention the name of Hashem - although Hashem rested His name in the Beis HaMikdash, which adds complexity to the matter - and similar to the law that one who swears while holding a Torah scroll or tefillin, his oath has rabbinic validity.
Whatever the exact wording of his oath was, its content was this: I will not go to sleep tonight until the price of a pair of birds drops from a golden dinar to a silver dinar - nests for dinars. A silver dinar is one twenty-fifth of a golden dinar, so this would mean a price drop of about ninety-six percent.
What was his concern? That righteous, God-fearing women would come to the Beis HaMikdash - let's say during Pesach - to participate in eating the Pesach offering, and they had an obligation to bring offerings after giving birth. Once they discovered that the cost of a pair of birds was a gold coin, they would say they cannot afford it. And since they would not want to give up eating the Pesach offering and entering the Beis HaMikdash after taking the trouble to travel all that way, they might enter and eat while in a state of tumah.
And as we learned in the first mishnah in the chapter, one who enters the Beis HaMikdash or eats offerings in a state of tumah is liable to kares - a severity equivalent to performing forbidden work on Shabbos or eating on Yom Kippur. Because of this, Rabban Shimon ben Gamliel felt an urgency to lower the prices, so that women would not fall into this error and would not refrain from bringing the required offerings.
What did he do? He entered the beis din, the Sanhedrin, and taught: A woman who has upon her five certain births or five certain zivah periods - brings one offering and eats offerings, and the rest are not an obligation upon her. In other words, even when the obligation is certain, one pair of birds is enough to permit her anew to eat offerings, and the rest of the offerings are not an obligation upon her.
Two approaches to understanding his ruling:
The Rambam and the Bartenura: This is a case of what is known as "It is a time to act for Hashem; they have voided Your Torah" - a verse in Tehillim. Sometimes, when things get completely out of hand, the Sages are forced to seemingly void the Torah in order to preserve it; the most famous example is the writing down of all the Mishnayos, because had the Oral Torah not been written down, it would have been lost. Here too, he felt that if he did not rule this way - and this is not the true halachah, as the remaining four sets are obligatory - prices would remain high, and good, well-intentioned women would become liable to kares. Therefore, he exempted them from bringing the four kinnim, even at the cost of some women not bringing their obligatory korbanos. This was a horaas shaah, a temporary ruling due to the need of the hour and the pressing situation.
Tosafos: Rabban Shimon ben Gamliel disagrees with the Tanna Kamma. He does not accept their derivation, and holds that strictly according to the law, one korban is sufficient even for five definite births, and there is no obligation at all for the rest. According to this approach, it was simply that he disagreed with the Tanna Kamma, and this is how he taught the halachah.
This strategy was very successful: "ve'amdu kinnim bo bayom birvatayim" - the price of the birds plummeted to revatayim, meaning two quarter-silver coins for two kinnim, so that a pair of birds cost a quarter of a silver dinar. He wanted to lower the price to one silver coin per pair, and in fact, it dropped to a quarter of a silver coin - not a price drop of ninety-six percent, but of ninety-nine percent, and this was satisfactory.
As for the halachah, the Rambam - and similarly the Bartenura - understands that this was an extreme, one-time situation, and therefore a woman who had five births must bring five korbanos, even though she is already permitted to eat kodashim after the first set. The Raavad disagrees and follows the approach of Tosafos: in his opinion, this is not the law; rather, strictly according to the law, one korban is sufficient for all five, and this is how he rules for the halachah.