The Thread He Kept

About This Talk

Gerushin 8 is the law of the conditional get, and its single test is whether the husband has retained anything at all. The four formal rules of conditions come from Hilchot Ishut 6, and failing any of them nullifies the condition rather than the divorce, so the get simply works. The two valid forms run on separate tracks: with the twofold wording the divorce begins only on fulfillment, so he may still nullify the get or alter the condition, and his death or the burning of the get kills it, whereas with from this day or on the condition that the divorce is retroactive to delivery, he loses the power to nullify or add, and she may fulfill the condition even after his death. While the condition hangs he may not enter privacy with her, dealings happening before a witness, and seclusion before two witnesses leaves the divorce in doubt even on fulfillment, lest they resumed relations and nullified the get. The condition may never be written into the document nor instructed to the scribe: a clean get is written and signed and the condition spoken on delivery, and a condition written in after the essential portion is acceptable while one written or even spoken before it leaves the divorce in doubt, because the husband retains rights in the essential matter of the get. The chapter's center is the excluded name: you are permitted to any man aside from so and so voids the get where that man could consecrate her, even where relations with him carry a prohibition short of annulling a marriage and even where he is a minor who will grow up, while naming a gentile, a servant, her father or her brother leaves the get acceptable because the exception is empty, and naming her sister's husband leaves it in doubt since her sister may die. A catalogue of smaller reservations each leaves the divorce in doubt: except a man not yet born, except promiscuous relations, except one who consecrates her by document, except the right to annul her vows, except her eating terumah through him or his inheriting her property if she dies first. Repairs are tracked word by word through Reuven and Shimon, and today you are not my wife but tomorrow you will be is no divorce, which is why the get reads from this day onward. The measuring stick appears in the pairs: never drink wine for the rest of your life is no divorce while for as long as I live or as long as so and so lives is effective, thirty days away from her father's house is effective and never is not, never marry so and so is void and not for fifty years is effective, with the divorce undone retroactively if she marries him. He may not aim her either, since on condition that you marry so and so is effective but the Sages said she should marry neither him, lest people say men give each other their wives as presents, nor anyone else. Keeping the paper keeps the marriage, so this is your get but the paper is mine is no divorce while on condition that you give me the paper is effective. A later condition on a different subject becomes an alternative she may choose between, while a later higher sum replaces the lower; a condition with no stated duration means one day, and it fails if the father or son dies first or the father refuses her service. Two hundred zuz within thirty days must be given inside the period and accepted willingly, and his announcing that he waives the money defeats the divorce, because he imposed the condition to distress her and she was never distressed. And where a get nullifying condition was spoken he must take the get back and give it again, while a merely suspending stipulation can be nullified by word alone.