Whoever Hears My Voice

About This Talk

Chapter 2 reads the verse's two verbs twice, so that he shall write covers a husband who writes the get with his own hand and one who tells another to write it while also teaching that divorce takes effect only through a document, and he shall place covers handing it over himself or sending an agent while teaching that she may not simply take it. It permits two colleagues charged to write, sign and deliver to serve as agents and as witnesses both, permits a get to be written for a husband whose wife is absent where the scribe and witnesses know both identities, requires a man to divorce only in the presence of his namesake where two couples in one city share their names, permits writing in a time of danger even without knowing who the parties are, and places the scribe's fee on the woman. It then insists that the husband himself tell the scribe to write and the witnesses to sign, so that colleagues told to write and sign who hand the work to a scribe produce a void get even where the husband receives the document and places it in his wife's hand before witnesses, while colleagues told to tell a scribe produce a get that is merely unacceptable and close to void, and it defines void as void by Scriptural law and unacceptable as disqualified by Rabbinic decree. It allows a hundred gittin to be written one after another where the husband charged them with the divorce itself, and forbids a second without consulting him where he charged them only to write and hand it to an agent, leaving a divorce carried out anyway in doubt. It lists the words that effect a divorce, among them divorce her, send her away, release her and discharge her, the words that accomplish nothing at all so that a get written on them is void, among them dismiss her, give her what she needs, do as the law requires and do unto her as she deserves, and the words it refuses to resolve, among them let her go, permit her and assist her, which leave her status in doubt. It reads intent from circumstance, so that a healthy man's request yields a document handed to him alone while the same words from a man suddenly and gravely ill, led away in chains even over money, boarding a ship or leaving with a caravan yield a get given straight to her, validates the get of a man who orders it and then takes his own life while voiding that of a man carried from a roof by the wind and upholding it where the two cannot be told apart, and obeys a man calling up out of a pit even if he cannot be identified afterwards and a man whose windpipe is mostly severed because he is alive at this time. It voids the words of a man spoken as an evil spirit takes hold or while as drunk as Lot, waits out the illness of a man who instructed while healthy and then lost his mind, examines a man who has lost only his speech with three questions of differing answers and a thorough check of his mind, distinguishes him from a deaf-mute whose motions and writing are not relied upon unless he married by motions in the first place, has a father receive the get of his consecrated minor daughter while an orphaned minor must first be able to tell a get from another object, and closes by ruling that a man the law requires to divorce may be beaten until he consents, because compulsion means being forced to do what the Torah does not obligate, and this man wants to keep the mitzvot while only his evil inclination presses him.