Niddah 54: When Intercourse is Permitted

Today's daf ends Perek VI.  It focuses on two main issues: the number of days that a woman can have intercourse with her husband, and when a woman may have miscarried and how to know whether that fetus was male or female. 

The rabbis are very specific about the number of days that a woman might be permitted to have intercourse with her husband.  She is ritually impure and thus untouchable from the first day of bleeding for eight days including one clean day of being a lesser ziva.  Then she is ritually pure for seven more days.  Then she is watching for blood, and finally she is ritually impure again.  There are larger periods of time counted, as well - fourty-eight days and one hundred days.  Within each time period the rabbis determine for how many days women and their husbands are permitted to have intercourse.  There is acknowledgement that some women are ritually impure for ten days and then ritually pure for ten days.  Finally, it is notable that if the couple has intercourse within times of ritual impurity, the husband is never permitted to have intercourse with his wife again.  That is a serious repercussion. 

All of this suggests that women are eager to have intercourse with their husbands.  There is one sentence that addresses a husband's desire: a man who does not wait for his wife to be completely ritually pure is considered to be a glutton and thus should not be permitted to have intercourse at all.