The Color of a Stain — Which Colors Render a Woman Temei'ah?

Four conditions under which a stain does not render a woman temei'ah: its size, a surface that cannot receive tum'ah, a colored surface, and a location uterine blood is unlikely to have reached. Here is one more: the color of the stain.

The colors — a quick division

• Problematic colors: red, pink, black.
• Colors that are not problematic: white, yellow, green, light gray, beige, blue.
• Colors that require an expert: browns, oranges, dark grays (close to black) and purples. These require a rav or yoetzet who is baki b'mar'ot — expert in shades. Not every rav has that expertise. The more expert the posek, the more he can be lenient.

Expanding the sources

We begin with the Mishnah in Masechet Niddah, which states that by Torah law there are only five shades that are problematic. They comprise four kinds of red, and black, which the Gemara explains was once red and faded to black.

The four shades are:

1. Adom — red
2. K'keren hakarkom — part of a saffron flower
3. K'yein hamazug — wine diluted with water
4. K'meimei adamah — earth mixed with a little water

The Gemara works through the nuances of each: which kind of wine, which kind of earth, which part of the flower, which red. The conclusion: every other shade of red blood is tahor by Torah law.

The historical loss of expertise

The Gemara records several sages, among them Ulla, who refused to examine blood on bedikot because they could not distinguish blood of a problematic color from blood of a permitted one.

The Rosh teaches that although the Gemara records no explicit prohibition against distinguishing between shades of red, we may infer from this that we no longer possess that wisdom. Any red, or any color with a reddish cast, is therefore treated as problematic, since it may be one of the shades of red forbidden by Torah law.

No Rishon disputes the Rosh.

The Tur cites this view of the Rosh: since the wisdom of the sages has diminished and pure shades of red can no longer be distinguished from impure ones, every color containing red is treated as impure.

The ruling of the Shulchan Aruch

The Shulchan Aruch does not mention here that all reds must be treated as impure out of stringency. It simply states that all reds are problematic and lists the permitted colors. That is the classic style of the Shulchan Aruch: record only the halachah relevant from the era of the Geonim onward.

The permitted colors according to the Tur

The Tur says only two colors are permitted, white and green, and explains that "green" covers several shades:

• The color of a leek
• The color of an etrog (that is, yellow)
• The color of wax
• The color of gold
• The color of an egg yolk

A point of interest: Rabbanit Bat Sheva Roth notes that the yolks of free-range chickens are a fairly deep shade of orange.

The ruling of the Shulchan Aruch — summary

The Beit Yosef explains that when the Tur said only green and white are permitted, he meant that every color containing no red is permitted.

And so the Shulchan Aruch rules: white and green are permitted. Like the Tur, it explains that "green" includes various shades of yellow.

The Rema adds that blue is permitted as well.

Brown — the gray area

Brown goes unmentioned until the era of the Acharonim. The Sidrei Taharah and the Aruch HaShulchan disagree about whether brown is a permitted color.

In practice, some shades of brown are permitted and some are not, and the traditions among poskim as to which browns are permitted vary widely.