Written In My Presence

About This Talk

The chapter governs the get that has to travel, and it sorts the whole law by one question: can the signatures be checked where the document arrives. Inside Eretz Yisrael an agent may hand over a get he never saw written and whose witnesses he cannot name, and she is divorced and may remarry; but if the husband then protests that it is a forgery the signatures must be verified, and where that proves impossible she must leave her second husband and the children of that marriage are illegitimate, while a lost get leaves the divorce in doubt, which is why five categories of women presumed to hate one another may not carry a get there, namely a mother-in-law, a mother-in-law's daughter, another woman married to the same man even after she has remarried, her yevamah even where that woman is her own sister, and her husband's daughter from another marriage. Outside the land, and between the land and the diaspora, the agent who was present at the writing and the signing instead says before two witnesses that it was written in his presence and signed in his presence, and the divorce takes effect though the witnesses are unknown to us and even though their names resemble gentile names; thereafter the husband's protest is of no consequence, which reverses the earlier suspicion so that even the women presumed to hate one another are relied upon once they must make that statement, and the Rambam states the purpose outright, that the Sages required the sentence so she would not be left needing witnesses who cannot be found. The statement must be whole: half of it fails, and so does an agent who saw the whole writing and only one signature even where he himself is the second witness, though he and one other person may testify to that remaining signature and the get becomes acceptable; part of the writing suffices if it was the opening portion, even one line, even where he only heard the scribe's pen, and even where the scribe went out to the marketplace and returned to finish. Two witnesses who testify that the get is forged defeat the agent's statement entirely. Geography follows verifiability: the rivers of Eretz Yisrael and the Mediterranean islands within its boundaries take the rules of the land and those outside take the rules of the diaspora, Babylonia counts as the land for gittin, and a get written in the land but signed abroad requires the statement while one written abroad and signed in the land does not. Two agents may deliver without the statement and the husband's protest is void, since they themselves serve as the witnesses, but only while the get is in the possession of both of them, and otherwise they must declare it jointly or have the signatures verified, whereas one man's testimony to the writing joined to two men's testimony to the signing is acceptable even without possession. An agent who handed over the get privately, or without the statement, takes it back and gives it again before two witnesses, and if he does not the divorce is unacceptable until the signatures are verified; one who lost the power of speech first leaves the signatures to be verified; a blind man may not bring a get from abroad at all, unless he saw the writing and signing before losing his sight, in which case he declares before three, as a woman must, because the provision of two applies only to an agent fit to serve as a witness, who then joins the other two as the third. An agent stopped by illness or by forces beyond his control may pass the get on, even through a hundred agents and even after the first has died, by declaring before a court which appoints the next, each later agent saying only that he is an agent of the court, unless the signatures were verified, in which case the transfers may be private. And a husband may send his wife with her own get as his agent to a court, in which case she must make the statement herself, while a husband who simply handed her the get with no stipulation leaves her nothing to say, and we assume she is divorced, since she holds a get written according to law and signed by witnesses and would not bring ruin upon herself.