The Blanks the Scribe Leaves

About This Talk

Chapter 3 governs the requirement that a get be written for the sake of the husband and the wife, ruling void a get written by a scribe for practice even when the husband's name, the wife's name and the city all match, a get prepared by one man and used by a neighbor who shares his name, and a get written to divorce the older of two wives bearing the same name and then given to the younger, while a husband who tells the scribe he will divorce whichever wife he chooses leaves the divorce doubtful, and a get written without the proper intent stays void even if the letters are traced over again. It rules that a get written and set aside should not be used after the couple were secluded together, lest people say her get preceded her son, though after the fact the divorce is effective, and that a get written for a woman before she was consecrated is void because she could not have been divorced by it when it was written. It permits a scribe to prepare the standard text in advance while leaving empty the man's name, the woman's name, the date and the sentence, behold you are permitted to any man, since these must be written for their sake and the witnesses must then sign for their sake, and rules that where the scribe wrote properly and the witnesses signed without intent the get is valid by Scriptural law and unacceptable only by Rabbinic decree, the Rambam rejecting in his own voice the view that such a get is void like a forgery, since the signatures were instituted only as a measure to aid society. It then treats a lost get, presumed genuine where caravans do not pass and requiring either immediate discovery or its original container together with the agent's recognition of its length and width where they do, the doubt raised when another man of the same name lives there and a stranger passed by, the distinctive sign that settles the matter, and the two gittin interchanged between men of identical names which must both be handed to each woman, so that if one is lost the other is void. It rules that a person known by two names is written by the one most used with the phrase, or by whatever names he is called, that a nickname is acceptable, that the less used name with that phrase is unacceptable, and that a name of the husband, the wife or the city written incorrectly voids the get despite that phrase. It closes by excluding five from writing a get, a gentile, a servant, a deaf mute, a mentally incompetent person and a minor, while a woman may write her own, grounding each exclusion in the capacity to write for their sake, permitting the standard body to be written by one of them where a competent adult wrote the four essential portions, and ruling on a get written on the Sabbath or Yom Kippur unknowingly, which is effective, or willfully, which is not.