One-Page Learn · The Halachos at a glance
אִישׁוּת
Marriage 15
Sefer Nashim · Who is obligated to have children and who is quietly exempted, why the wife's word decides the hardest question in the chapter and why it stops deciding it the moment she admits uncertainty, and the four rulings on conduct the chapter saves for last
17
The age from which a man becomes obligated in being fruitful and multiplying
20
The age at which an unmarried man is considered to have transgressed, unless Torah study has absorbed him
10
Years of marriage without a child, after which he must divorce her and pay the ketubah or marry a woman able to bear children
3
Successive miscarriages establishing the presumption that she will continue to miscarry
Part 1The count, and everyone the chapter lets out of it
- A release she may grant, and one she may not. A woman may authorize her husband to ignore her conjugal rights only where he already has children and has fulfilled the mitzvah of being fruitful and multiplying, and where he has not, he remains obligated to engage in relations whenever his conjugal duties require until he fathers children. (15:1)
- Seventeen, twenty, and an exemption granted at once. The mitzvah falls on the husband and not the wife and begins at seventeen, and a man who reaches twenty unmarried has transgressed, unless he is occupied with the study of Torah and hesitant to marry lest supporting a wife prevent his learning, since one occupied with a mitzvah is freed from another. (15:2)
- Ben Azzai, and the condition that can lapse. A man whose soul desires Torah at all times and who clings to it his whole life without marrying has not transgressed, provided his natural inclination does not overcome him, and if it does he is obligated to marry even having already fathered children, lest he be prompted to improper thoughts. (15:3)
- One boy, one girl, and grandchildren in their place. The mitzvah requires a son and a daughter, and is unfulfilled where the son is a saris or the daughter an aylonit, while grandchildren stand in for children where they are male and female and descend from two of his children, and not where a single child left both of them. (15:4, 15:5)
- A convert counts, a freed slave does not. A man who fathered children as a gentile and then converted together with them has fulfilled the mitzvah, while a freed slave who fathered children as a slave has not, even though those children were also freed, since a slave is not considered to have paternal lineage. (15:6)
RememberThe obligation is stated severely and then handed back to almost anyone who genuinely wants it, and the exemption rests on a condition only the man himself can verify.
Part 2Ten years, and the only person who can feel it
- Ten years, and no arrangement accepted. A man married ten years without children must divorce his wife and pay her ketubah or marry a woman fit to bear children, and is beaten with a rod until he does, and the offer to remain together while abstaining and living with witnesses so as never to be in private is refused whether he proposes it or she does. (15:7)
- Which of them the affliction belongs to. Where he releases semen as one shoots an arrow the affliction is presumed hers and he divorces her without the essential requirement while she keeps the additional sum, and where he does not, the affliction is his alone and he pays the essential requirement and the addition together. (15:8)
- Believed for what she knows, and only that. Where he claims the difficulty is hers and she claims he does not release as one shoots an arrow, her word is accepted because she can feel this and he cannot make the distinction, leaving him a conditional ban of ostracism and the ketubah to pay, while a woman who says she does not know forfeits the essential requirement, since money stays with its owner absent a definite claim. (15:9)
- The clock stops, and the clock restarts. Years in which he was away on an extended business trip, or either of them was ill or imprisoned, are excluded from the ten, a miscarriage restarts the count from the day it occurred, and she is believed against him about whether she miscarried and how often, since no woman makes herself out to be barren or prone to miscarriage. (15:11, 15:12, 15:13)
- A court that declines to rule. Where a woman claims her husband cannot perform in the ordinary way, the judges attempt a compromise and suggest she remain ten years and return with the claim, protracting the negotiations while neither requiring her to go on living with him nor judging her a rebellious wife, until the two parties reach agreement. (15:15)
RememberThe law goes and stands wherever the evidence actually lives, and then holds that witness to real knowledge. Believed for what she can feel, not believed for what she is guessing at.
Part 3Where the counting stops and the conduct begins
- A world built with every soul. Even a man who has fulfilled the mitzvah is bound by Rabbinic commandment not to refrain while he remains physically potent, since whoever adds a soul to Israel is considered as having built an entire world, and it is likewise a mitzvah of the Sages that neither a man nor a woman live alone. (15:16)
- Admonishment, measured and never forced. A man is obligated to admonish his wife, of which the Sages said that he does not do so unless a spirit of purity has entered him, and he must not admonish her more than necessary, and he may never compel her to relations, which are to be with her agreement, preceded by conversation and a spirit of joy. (15:17)
- What is asked of her at home. The Sages commanded a woman to conduct herself modestly, not to proliferate levity before her husband nor request intimacy verbally, not to withhold in order to cause him anguish so that his love should increase, and to keep her distance from his relatives and from any trace of scandal. (15:18)
- More than his own person. A man is commanded to honor his wife more than himself and love her as he loves his own person, to benefit her according to his means, not to cast a superfluous measure of fear over her, and to speak with her gently, being neither sad nor angry. (15:19)
- The way the chapter names itself. A woman is commanded to honor her husband exceedingly and be in awe of him, carrying out her deeds according to his directives and shunning what he disdains, and the Rambam calls this pairing the custom of holy and pure Jewish women and men, whose ways make a marriage pleasant and praiseworthy. (15:20)
RememberSeventeen halachot of counting children, years, miscarriages and sums, and then the ledger goes down and the last practical ruling in the chapter is about a tone of voice.