Daily Talk
He says he consecrated her and she denies it, and from that moment he may not marry her mother or her sister while she may marry his brother tomorrow. A man tells a woman and her daughter in one breath that both are consecrated to him and he has consecrated nobody, and one added clause makes every eligible woman in the room his wife. Why should a sentence weigh so much, and the intention behind it so little?
Forbidden to Him, Permitted to Her
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About This Talk
Chapter 9 works through what a sentence of kiddushin does when it cannot be divided, when it names nobody, and when nobody can prove it was said. A man who consecrates a woman and her daughter or two sisters together has consecrated neither, and one who tells a whole group that all of you are consecrated to me has consecrated none of them if a forbidden pair stands among them, while the added clause that those of you who are fit for marriage with me are consecrated to me marries every eligible woman present. Kiddushin given to an unnamed woman is real and unusable, so two sisters told that one of them is consecrated both need a divorce from a man forbidden to both, and five brothers who appoint one father produce twenty five bills of divorce out of a single sentence, while phrases like my oldest daughter are read in the one settled way and the clever alternatives are declined. The chapter then turns to claims, and its principle is that a claim binds only the mouth that makes it, so that a man who says he consecrated her is forbidden to her relatives while she is permitted to his, and a woman who does not know to whom she was consecrated is released by a claimant whose word is accepted exactly as far as it costs him and no further. An agent who consecrates for himself the woman he was sent to consecrate for another has validly married her and is called wicked in the same halacha. And the chapter closes in the street, with the report that makes a woman presumed consecrated with no binding evidence at all, the offsetting rationale that must be heard when the report is heard, the gifts and marriage contracts read against local custom, and the ruling that witnesses who saw nothing have contradicted nobody, since a man commonly consecrates a woman in private.