Rosh Yeshiva Responds
Rabbi Linzer answers halakhic questions from rabbis and community members

2 05, 2021

Bedikah For a Women With a Longer Than Average Period

May 2nd, 2021|Niddah, Yoreh De'ah|

QUESTION

Midwest, USA

Is there a process the Rosh yeshiva recommends for women who regularly take until day 7/8/9 to get a clean hefseik? I’m not talking about women who didn’t understand leniencies around brown and now that we look at their bedikot we can tell them otherwise. I mean women who are regularly seeing red on bedikot until those days. Would you recommend doing everything they can to get a clean hefseik (cleaning, etc.) and if they can get it, then skipping the bedikot during the first several days of 7 nekiyim (and colored underwear of course), or is this not an option?

22 12, 2020

Number of Bedikot during Sheva Nekiyim

December 22nd, 2020|Niddah, Yoreh De'ah|

QUESTION

Do you prefer that a kallah to be taught to do 2 bedikot each day during sheva nekiyim lekhatchilah or do we hold that these days one suffices even as a standard practice? If 2 is really the preferred lekhatchilah practice, what is the standard in terms of physical discomfort, emotional anxiety, or other issues that would allow a woman to drop down to 1 per day as their standard practice?

ANSWER

I absolutely do not teach 2 per day. That is the position of Sefer HaTerumah 87

22 07, 2015

Levels of Obligation in Shemirat Negiah

July 22nd, 2015|Marriage and Family, Niddah, Sex, Yoreh De'ah|

QUESTION

What is the origin of our current expectation of extra marital shemirat negiah (abstaining from touch)? Is this truly a halakhic obligation?

ANSWER

Thank you for the question. The first thing to note is that not all forms of touch are the same. There is casual, non-sexual touch; there is intimate, and yet non-sexual touch; and there is sexual touch. Even within sexual touch, there is touch that is very proximate to the act of intercourse, and touch that, while sexual, is more distant from the act of intercourse. Halakha in general does not lump all acts along a spectrum into the same

20 07, 2015

Separating on Marriage Night (Dam Betulim)

July 20th, 2015|Marriage and Family, Niddah, Sex, Yoreh De'ah|

QUESTION

If a couple has sex the night of their wedding do they need separate immediately following intercourse? It feels like a punishment for couples who actually wait, not even being able to enjoy the a full night together and then separating for at least 12 days.

ANSWER

If the woman is a virgin and her hymen is not perforated then after the first act of vaginal intercourse, she and her husband have to separate. This is the principle of דם בתולים, that the first hymeneal bleeding, in the Talmudic and Geonic period, was treated as menstrual bleeding. This practice even grew to