Composite manuscript: Hebrew letters to the Jewish court of Paris by Pinchas Michael Abdallah (Gaster Hebrew MS 1207)

The differences and distinctions in the laws of their ritual purity are as mentioned above, and this is what is written in verse 28: "After the drop of her menstruation and issue, a day of purification is made, and she shall count seven days for herself, and afterwards she shall be purified." This is to say: if she sees blood within the seven full days from when she began to count, after she examined herself and found no blood on her side or during the examination, until seven full days have passed—and here we have learned that there is no difference between a zavah gedolah a woman with a major issue of blood and a zavah ketanah a woman with a minor issue of blood, for her flow lasts many days, contrary to the niddah menstruation, as women differ in the nature of their constitution. And here we have learned that these eleven days in the established count? are a Halakhah le-Moshe mi-Sinai a law given to Moses at Sinai. And this phrase, "a law given to Moses at Sinai," heaven forbid! I do not speak of the honor of the sages, nor shall my soul enter their assembly, but their decrees are like the decree of Pharaoh, who decreed, "Every son that is born ye shall cast into the river," and his decree did not stand, as it is written, "And the midwives kept the children alive." Yet the Sages have upheld their own decrees regarding the distancing and modesty concerning both males and females, and they prevented Israel, the seed of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, from being fruitful and multiplying in holiness and purity according to the commandment of God, adding additional? burdens to the law.

Concerning all this, I shall reply before the reader and show the severity of this, which is the opposite of the law of the Talmud, and many have been the victims of its fall and numerous are all its slain. And this is the language of the Gemara in Tractate Shabbat, Chapter 5, folio 52b: "Rabbi Samuel bar Nachmani said in the name of Rabbi Jonathan: Whoever says the sons of Eli sinned is nothing but mistaken, as it is written, 'And the two sons of Eli, Hophni and Phinehas, were priests to the Lord, etc.'" It raises a difficulty: How then do I uphold the text, "that they lay with the women," as written in the Book of Samuel I? And it answers: "Because they delayed their offerings by not going to their husbands, the Scripture considers it as if they had lain with them." And thus, from these words of the Talmud, we have learned that those who were lost in their innocence, the wrath of the Lord was against Eli and his entire house, and He punished Hophni and Phinehas.