The Ornaments He Cannot See

About This Talk

Chapter 13 sets out what a husband owes his wife beyond her food, fixing her clothing at fifty zuz a year in the Talmudic period in Eretz Yisrael, six and a quarter dinarim of pure silver, with new garments in the rainy season and last year's frayed ones as her own, and then withdrawing the figure entirely on the ground that in other ages and countries there is no fixed sum and he owes whatever the least a married woman wears in that country. It includes household goods and a dwelling in the obligation, a bed and its spreads, a mat, a pot, a plate, a cup and a bottle, a rented dwelling of four cubits by four with a yard and a latrine, and ornaments such as colored head cloths, eye makeup and rouge so that she should not appear unattractive to him, all of which describes a poor man while a wealthy man is compelled to provide silk, embroidery and gold according to his means, and a man who cannot meet the poor man's minimum is compelled to divorce her with the ketubah standing as a debt. The obligation extends to sons and daughters of six and under, and where a husband has gone abroad the court allots subsistence, clothing, goods and rent but not ornaments, since there is no husband present for whom to make herself attractive, while a woman whose husband lost his mental faculties or became a deaf mute is granted the ornaments. It then times his vows: a vow barring every ornament stands a year in a poor household and a month in a wealthy one, a vow barring the bathhouse stands one week in a large city and two weeks in a village, a vow barring shoes stands three days in a village and one day in a large city, a vow barring her from lending and borrowing a sifter, a sieve, a mill or an oven must be absolved or he divorces her and pays because it gives her a bad name among her neighbors, while the same oath taken by the wife lets him divorce her without a ketubah because it gives him the reputation of a miser, a vow barring her from her father's house allows a month in the same city and until the first festival in another, and a vow barring her from a house of mourning or from weddings admits no delay at all, since this is like placing her in jail and locking her in, unless indecent people were in fact present. He must provide a veil where custom requires one so that she can visit her father, a house of mourning and a wedding, for a woman is not confined in a jail from which she cannot come and go, though it is uncouth to be constantly out and once or twice a month as needed is the measure. He may refuse to have her relatives enter his domain and she may refuse to live in one courtyard with his, either party may insist on leaving a neighborhood of wicked or indecent people even where the dwelling is hers, and the chapter closes on geography, dividing the world into lands and Eretz Yisrael into Judea, Transjordan and the Galilee, compelling a woman married in another land to follow her husband home or take a divorce without her ketubah, permitting a husband who married in his own land to move her from city to city and village to village but not between a city and a village, forbidding him to move her from pleasant surroundings to unpleasant ones or from unpleasant to pleasant, since she must care for and check herself in the pleasant place so as not to be considered inferior, forbidding a move from a Jewish area to a gentile one, and then setting all of it aside for Eretz Yisrael and for Jerusalem, to which a woman may be compelled even from pleasant surroundings to unpleasant ones, and from which nobody may be taken for any improvement whatever, so that a husband who wishes to go while she refuses divorces her without a ketubah and a husband who refuses while she wishes to go divorces her and pays.