Q&A: Nails and OCD
Nails and OCD
Question
Hello Rabbi,
The prohibition against throwing away nail clippings, and the concern that a pregnant woman might miscarry because of it, weighs on me very heavily because of my disorder (I have feelings of excessive responsibility and an inability to tolerate ambiguity). I of course never throw away nail clippings, not even small pieces, only into the toilet, but I’m constantly worried that one might fall, or that I bit or clipped my nails and a tiny piece fell and I can’t find it (as happened just now in my room, and my sister is pregnant, and she doesn’t really go into my room, but just in case; that’s why I’m stressed and want to ask you). This is really burdensome, and I’m tired of calculating whether a woman might come here and whether she might miscarry because of me. In your opinion, how much substance is there to this prohibition because of that, and how careful do you think one should be about it?
Answer
Although this appears in the Talmud, in my opinion there is nothing real to it. Either it is a superstition, or a concern that it might disgust the pregnant woman. It is no accident that it was not brought as Jewish law in Maimonides or in the Shulchan Arukh. In my opinion, simply ignore it.
See an overview here: https://www.yeshiva.org.il/ask/87221
Discussion on Answer
Did you recite Birkat HaGomel for the miracle?
If she hadn’t stepped on the nail clipping, you would have gotten the Rabbi Akiva Eger of our generation. It would have been a spiritual miscarriage.
I’ll add and relate a practical story: when my wife was pregnant, I made sure she stepped on a nail clipping that I had cut and that had never been moved (as per the Talmud’s instruction), and nevertheless, thank God, she did not miscarry and the child was born healthy and whole.