admin asked Staff ago Dear Daat Emet,
A returnee to religion told me, “Did you know that in the Talmud [I think he said the Talmud; I’m not certain of the source] there is an exact description of a miscarriage: only from the 40th day do you bury the fetus, and the gematria for the word valad [Hebrew for fetus] is 40.”
Does Halacha indeed determine anything about a miscarriage from the 40th day onward?
Oren Shochat
jsadmin Staff answered 22 years ago
Dear Oren,
Once again those who return others to religion (I highly doubt that they check what others told them) are playing around with gematria instead of analyzing the Talmudic issue and seeing that Chazal had no intention of understanding nature.
In discussing the portion of Tazria we brought the disagreement between the Sages which appears in the Talmud (Niddah 30b) over how much time it takes for the fetal limbs to be fully developed. According to the Sages it takes 40 days and according to R’ Ishmael it takes 40 days for a male and 80 days for a female.
What is amazing is the disagreement between the Sages and the bringing of proof to back up their words which show and prove that Chazal were not scientific researchers at all. They sat in the study hall and interpreted verses, and based on that they drew factual conclusions, mainly erroneous. If they heard of an experiment carried out by gentiles. they brought it in their aid.
“They [the sages] told Rabbi Ishmael about Cleopatra, queen of Alexandria, whose maids were set to be executed [and since they were to be killed, they were experimented upon, according to Rashi]. They were checked and found, this and this [male and female] after 41 days. [A cruel scientific experiment was done on them: they were impregnated and after forty days their stomachs were cut open; it was found that both male and female fetuses had finished their development.] He said to them, ‘I bring you proof from the Torah and you bring me proof from fools?’…What is the proof that it is from fools? The woman in whom a female was found was impregnated forty days before the start of the experiment. The rabbis [answered Rabbi Ishmael’s claim] saying that they gave the maids an abortifacient before impregnating them. Rabbi Ishmael [answers] ‘it is possible the drug had no effect on the woman’.”
P.S. The issue of 40 days from conception is mentioned about the impurity of a woman who gave birth (Leviticus 12:2-5).
As to burial of anything miscarried — and even after birth, until the age of 30 days, the infant is considered to be a miscarriage — the Torah does not demand burial, but that is the custom. Jumping to another part of the same topic, see how Halacha is leinient in the laws of murder: If a woman gives birth prematurely during the eighth or ninth month, the infant is called a “miscarriage,” and one who murders it is not called a murderer. “One born before the end of the ninth month is considered a miscarriage unless it lives 30 days; one who kills it within those 30 days is not killed for that” (Maimonides, Laws of Murderers and the Saving of Lives 2:6).
Sincerely,
Daat Emet