The Document That Does Nothing

About This Talk

The chapter sets two exits from a marriage against each other and then hands the last word to a third party who cannot speak. One should not marry a minor at all, yet an orphan girl was permitted to marry so that somebody would care for her, and that marriage is a rabbinic institution and therefore tentative: remain to majority and it is complete without a new kiddushin, decide against him before then and she leaves by mi'un with no bill of divorce; a girl her father married off counts as an orphan for this if she was widowed or divorced while still a minor, since marriage ends her father's authority. She may refuse whether merely consecrated or fully married, in his presence or outside it, against a yavam as well, any number of times, and a later consecration is itself a refusal; the right runs until she becomes a na'arah or is known to be an aylonit, and relations after twelve end it because they consecrate her Scripturally, with examination required and a doubtful case resolved by a get. Between six and ten the court tests whether she knows to guard the kiddushin money and grasps its purpose, below six no refusal is needed and above ten it is needed even if she is inept, and the rite itself is a sentence told to two witnesses, even guests dining in her husband's house whom she is serving, after which they write and sign a record that, unlike a get whose transfer effects the divorce, needs no intent and no delivery and is deliberately worded so as not to resemble one. A deaf-mute woman's marriage is equally rabbinic yet mi'un was withheld from her so that men would not avoid marrying her. Against that, a divorcee consecrated to another man is forbidden to her first husband even without relations, who is lashed and forced to divorce her if he takes her back, while relations alone do not forbid her since the verse turns on becoming another man's wife; an adulterous wife becomes forbidden with the raped wife of an Israelite excepted, and a wife who defied a warning against seclusion brings only stripes of rebellion because nothing was established. Mi'un, by contrast, voids rather than ends, so she may marry his relatives and he hers, she is not disqualified from the priesthood, and she may return to him after a second marriage ended any way at all, whereas a girl divorced by get who ends a second marriage by refusal may not return, lest he influence her to refuse the second since he sent her away and she never rejected him. The chapter closes on two intervals belonging to the unborn and the newborn: ninety days before a new consecration, counted from the writing of the get even if conditional or delivered years later, applied flatly to a minor, an elderly woman, a barren woman, an aylonit, a woman whose husband was overseas or imprisoned, a virgin merely consecrated, a freed maidservant, a convert and a converting couple, with a captive woman's thirty days counted inside them, exempting only the girl who refused, the woman who had promiscuous relations and the woman raped or seduced; and twenty four months during which no man may marry or consecrate a woman pregnant or nursing another man's child, lest he harm the fetus or let her milk fail, a bar that a wet nurse or early weaning does not lift, that forces a divorce even on a priest who can then never take her back, and that leaves a man who only consecrated her married but unable to consummate until the time has run.