It Has to Come to Rest

About This Talk

The chapter opens by refusing to read the verse narrowly: he shall place it in her hand covers her hand, her bosom, her courtyard, or an agent she appointed and charged that his hand should be as her hand, and her courtyard means one she bought, one she rented or one merely lent to her, since all three are her property. The second halachah then supplies the limit that governs everything after it, because a get thrown into her courtyard does not divorce her unless she is standing next to the courtyard, and if she is not it waits until she stands there, even where the document is perfectly safe, for divorce is a liability for a woman rather than an advantage and a liability may not be invoked against a person outside her presence. What follows is a study of thrown documents in which every ruling asks whether the get arrived and stayed: she on her roof and he throwing upward from his courtyard, where the divorce takes effect once the get reaches the space of the guardrail or comes within three handbreadths of a roof with no guardrail and he can no longer retract even in midair, provided it finally comes to rest, and void if the writing burns or is erased first because it will never come to rest whole; the reverse arrangement, where it binds the moment it passes out of his boundary into hers, though a get thrown into a fire on her property or into water that erases it is void while a fire reaching it after it has come to rest is too late; a get tossed onto a reed or a spear in her courtyard that must settle somewhere she can protect because the wind may take it; her courtyard nested inside his with his walls the taller, where the inner is protected by the outer and the airspace suffices, which the Rambam says expressly does not carry over to containers, since with her container inside his the get must come to rest on the side of hers and only where hers lies on its side with no bottom, a bottom making it functional and therefore something he would object to; a get thrown to her while she stands in his house or courtyard, which must reach her hand, or a small bottle or basket of hers he would not resent, or a couch of hers ten handbreadths high which counts as a separate domain; the place lent her without borders, where a get within four cubits divorces her but a spot it rolls onto becomes a second place if it is four cubits square, or ten handbreadths high, or has a name of its own, and he lent one place and not two; the get that passes through her domain and lands outside it, which does not divorce her even having passed within three handbreadths of her ground; the get that lands on a neighbor's roof she can reach, which does, because nobody minds that use of his property; and her own four cubits treated as her courtyard where the get falls from her inclined hand, while a fall into water or fire she was standing beside is void from the outset. The last third moves to neutral ground, where a get close to him does not divorce her, one partly close to each leaves the matter in doubt, one she can bend down and pick up is disqualified by Rabbinic decree, and only her hand permits her to remarry from the outset, with close to him defined by capacity rather than distance, meaning that he could protect it and she could not, and with priority of arrival deciding whose four cubits a place is, so that his standing there first defeats the get and her standing there first leaves it merely disqualified. Then the string, where a get thrown into her hand with him still holding the other end does not divorce her while he can pull it back, until he snaps the string, and the servants, where a get given to a servant of hers divorces her if the servant is awake, bound and guarded by her but not if he is unbound because he has a will of his own, is disqualified by decree if placed in a sleeping unbound servant's hand, and where a husband may instead deed her his own bound servant holding the get, or sell or give her the courtyard the get is already lying in.