Daily Talk
Six blessings are recited over wine before ten men and she is still only an arusah. A marriage contract is written for two hundred dinarim and she is still only an arusah. He brings her into his house, closes the door, says nothing at all, and she is his wife in every respect. Then the same chapter forbids him to remain with her for one hour without the document whose entire purpose is to make leaving her expensive. Why should the words that bless count for so little and the paper that anticipates the end count for so much?
Not for a Single Hour Without It
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About This Talk
Chapter 10 rules that an arusah remains forbidden to her husband while she is in her father's house, that what completes the marriage is neither the blessing nor the contract but his bringing her into his own home and being alone with her, that this privacy is what the word chuppah means, and that a woman who enters the chuppah while she is a niddah is still an arusah however long the two of them remain in the room, since the bond is completed only where union is fit. It gives the six blessings in full, adds the blessing over wine to make seven and records the custom of a myrtle branch, requires ten free adult men with the groom counted among them, and then states plainly that blessings recited without privacy leave her an arusah while privacy without blessings makes her married in every respect, the blessings being recited afterwards even days later. It requires the ketubah to be written before the chuppah, fixes two hundred dinarim for a virgin and one hundred for a woman who is not, converts those into twenty five and twelve and a half zuz of pure silver at a coinage that was seven parts copper to one of silver, permits any addition the groom likes up to a talent of gold, and gives the reason our Sages instituted the document at all, so that she should not be light in his eyes to send away, from which it draws the rule that a man may not remain with his wife for a single hour without one, while a woman who sold her ketubah to others needs no replacement. It rules that a ketubah written without a chuppah leaves her an arusah who collects the fundamental sum and none of the addition, ordains seven days of rejoicing for a virgin and three for a woman who is not, forbids mixing one celebration into another, bars weddings on Friday and Sunday and on the intermediate days of a festival while permitting betrothal on any weekday including the ninth of Av, sets Wednesday for a virgin where the court sits twice a week, and gives each side twelve months or thirty days to prepare, after which a man who has still not wed his arusah owes her maintenance except on the days and in the conditions where the wedding could not have taken place.