One-Page Learn · The Halachos at a glance
הִלְכוֹת גֵּרוּשִׁין
Gerushin 5
Sefer Nashim · Divorce · What counts as her hand, what it means for the get to come to rest, and how completely the husband has to let go.
3
Handbreadths of air that
count as the roof itself
4
Cubits around a person,
treated as her courtyard
10
Handbreadths of height that
make a couch its own domain
18
Halachos, and not one
appeal to a man's decency
Part 1Her hand, widened, and then guarded
- Her hand need not mean her hand. The verse "he shall place it in her hand" is not read only in its strict sense. Her hand, her bosom, her courtyard, or an agent she appointed and charged that his hand should be as her hand are all the same law. A courtyard she bought, one she rented and one merely lent to her are all her property, and once the get reaches her property the divorce is effective. (5:1)
- But she has to be standing there. A get thrown into her courtyard divorces her if she is standing next to the courtyard, and if she is not, it is not effective until she stands next to it. This holds even where the get will be perfectly safe where it fell. The reason: divorce is a liability for a woman and not an advantage, and a liability may not be invoked against a person outside her presence. (5:2)
- In his domain she needs her own foothold. When she is standing in his house or his courtyard, the get must reach her hand, or a container of hers whose presence in his domain he would not object to, such as a small bottle or basket. A couch of hers she is sitting on works if it stands ten handbreadths high, since at that height it is a separate domain and he does not object to the space its legs occupy. (5:8)
- Nested containers follow a different rule than nested courtyards. Where her courtyard sits inside his and his walls are the taller, a get thrown into the inner courtyard's airspace divorces her, since the outer walls protect the inner. Containers do not work that way: with her container inside his, the get must come to rest on the side of hers, and only where hers is lying on its side with no bottom. Give it a bottom and the divorce is not effective even when the get rests inside it. (5:6-7)
RememberThe law widens her hand as far as it will go, and then switches off the presumption of consent, because a burden is the one thing that may not be laid on a person in her absence.
Part 2It has to arrive, and it has to stay
- Crossing the boundary can be the moment of no return. She stands on her roof, he throws the get up from his courtyard: once it reaches the space of the guardrail, or comes within three handbreadths of a roof with no guardrail, the divorce is effective and he can no longer retract even in midair. Provided it finally comes to rest on her roof. Where the writing is erased or burned before it reaches her, the get is void even after it crossed her boundary, since it will never come to rest whole. (5:3)
- Reverse the roofs and it binds on entry. Where he is on his own roof and she is below in her courtyard, the divorce binds once the get passes out of his boundary into hers where she stands. But a get thrown into a fire burning on her property, or into water where it is erased or lost, is void. If it lands in her property and comes to rest and the fire reaches it afterward, the divorce stands. (5:4-5)
- Resting means resting somewhere she can protect. A get tossed onto a reed or a spear planted in her courtyard does not divorce her until it settles in a place protected by her, since the wind may carry it out. A get that passes through her domain and falls outside it does not divorce her, even if it passed within three handbreadths of her ground on the way, until it comes to rest in her domain. (5:6, 5:10)
- Her four cubits, and her neighbor's roof. Where she holds her hand at an incline and the get falls to the earth within four cubits of her and comes to rest, the divorce is effective, since the four cubits around a person are treated as her courtyard. Where it lands on another person's roof and she can stretch out her hand and take it, the divorce is effective, because people are not troubled by a neighbor using their property that way. Falling into sea or fire she was standing beside is void from the outset. (5:11-12)
RememberThree handbreadths of near miss is not arrival. The question is never how close the get came, but whether it came to rest, whole, somewhere she can guard.
Part 3What the husband is still holding
- In open ground, three outcomes. A get thrown in the public domain, or a domain belonging to neither of them, does not divorce her if it is close to him. Partly close to him and partly close to her leaves the divorce in doubt. Close enough that she can bend down and pick it up, and the get is unacceptable by Rabbinic decree. Only a get that reaches her hand lets her remarry on it from the outset. (5:13)
- Close is measured by who can guard it. "Close to him" means that he could protect the get and she could not. Where both of them could protect it, or neither of them could, it counts as partly close to him and partly close to her. Distance in cubits is not the test; capacity to protect is. (5:14)
- A get on a string is not a get. Where he throws the get into her hand while holding the other end of a string tied to it, the divorce is not effective, so long as he can pull the get back out of her hand, until he snaps the string. If he cannot pull it back, the divorce is effective. The document is in her hand, the verse is satisfied, and nothing has happened. (5:16)
- A servant can be her hand only while he holds still. Give the get to a servant of hers who is awake, bound, and guarded by her, and the divorce is effective, as though it lay in her courtyard with her beside it. Unbound, the divorce is not effective, since the servant has a will of his own. Placed in a sleeping servant's hand with her guarding him, the get is disqualified by decree unless he is bound. He may also deed her his own bound servant, or his own courtyard, with the get already in it. (5:17-18)
RememberTwo conditions hold the whole chapter together: she has to be present, and he has to be finished. Everything else is measurement standing between a woman and an ending arranged without her.