He Must Send Her Away, Not Himself

About This Talk

Chapter 1 opens the laws of divorce by ruling that a woman is released only by receiving a written bill called a get, and it lists ten requirements the Torah itself establishes, drawn from the verse in Deuteronomy: that the husband act of his own will, that he act by a document and by no other means, that the document declare that he is divorcing her and releasing her from his domain, that it sever the bond entirely, that it be written for her sake, that nothing remain to be done once it is written except handing it over, that he hand it over, that he do so before witnesses, that he do so for the sake of divorce, and that he or his agent be the one who gives it, everything else, including the date and the signatures, being a Rabbinic institution. The text must send her away and not send him away from her, so a writ declaring her permitted to any man divorces while one declaring that he is no longer her husband does not, and the language that frees a slave does not free a wife; the divorce takes effect when the get reaches her hand even inside his house, though a husband who does not then send her out is treated as having divorced and remarried her. Nothing may remain but the transfer, so a get written on a cow's horn requires giving her the cow, a horn cut off after the writing invalidates it, and writing on a growing plant or on a leaf in a perforated flowerpot is disqualified although the clay of the pot itself is fit. The giving must be his own act and for the sake of divorce: a get handed over as a promissory note or a mezuzah or placed in a sleeping woman's hand is void unless he tells her afterwards, a husband who tells the witnesses the truth and his wife a lie out of embarrassment has still divorced her, silence at the transfer disqualifies unless the two were already speaking of divorce, and a get she lifts from the ground or unties from him herself is void even if he then names it, while bending his body or tilting his hand is enough to make the taking his giving. The witnesses to the transfer are the essence of the divorce, so a get given privately or before a single witness is utterly void, while the signatures are a Rabbinic ordinance lest those witnesses die and the document be no more than a shard, which is why unsuitable signatures disqualify a get as a forgery although a get with no signatures at all is fit when witnesses saw it given, why the get is read aloud before them, and why a get destroyed before it was read leaves her status in doubt. The chapter closes with the Sages' ordinances: witnesses who cannot write sign over marks traced in spittle, a leniency granted for bills of divorce alone so that Jewish women are not left without a marriage partner, and the names, the signing in one another's presence, the date and the place are all required, an undated, predated or postdated get being unacceptable while a date narrowed only to a week, a month, a year or a seven-year cycle is fit.