Study Niddah folio 29A with parallel Hebrew-English text, traditional commentary, and modern study tools. Free access to Babylonian Talmud online.
in order to differentiate between the valuation of a man and the valuation of a woman. Therefore, it could not have been derived from that verse that a tumtum and a hermaphrodite are excluded from the halakha of valuations, were it not for the superfluous words “the” and “if.”
§ The Mishnah teaches that if the fetus emerged in pieces, or if it emerged reversed, i.e., feetfirst rather than headfirst; when most of its limbs emerge, its status is like that of a child born, with regard to the impurity of a woman after childbirth. R' Elazar says: Even if the head is among the
And R' Yoḥanan says: They taught in the Mishnah that the woman is not impure unless most of the fetus’s limbs emerged only in a case where the head is not among the limbs that emerged; but if the head is among them, the head exempts the woman’s future offspring from the obligation of primogeniture,
The Talmud asks: Shall we say that these rabbis disagree with regard to the opinion of Shmuel? As Shmuel said that if a woman is pregnant with twins, and the head of one of the fetuses emerges and then disappears back into the womb, this does not exempt the other fetus from the obligation of primoge
The Talmud rejects this suggestion, as it is possible that in the case of a whole non-viable newborn, everyone, i.e., R' Elazar and R' Yoḥanan, agrees that the emergence of the head is considered a birth, contrary to the opinion of Shmuel. When they disagree, it is in the case of a fetus that emer