Daily Talk
A woman the Torah forbids to her husband loses the main sum of her ketubah and keeps every coin he added on his own, because, the Rambam asks on her behalf, what then can she do? A woman forbidden by her own act loses all of it, down to the dowry that wore out in his house. On the afternoon before Kol Nidrei, how much of this year's wreckage did you actually choose?
What Then Can She Do
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About This Talk
Chapter 24 sorts the end of a marriage by asking whose deed made it impossible. A man who knowingly married an aylonit is compelled to divorce her, yet she keeps the fundamental sum and every condition; a man who did not know, or who married a woman forbidden by an ordinary negative commandment, owes no fundamental sum, no conditions and no support in his lifetime or after it, and keeps the produce he ate, but he still owes the amount he added on his own, because she kept her side of the agreement and it is the Torah, not her conduct, that forbade her. A sh'niyah is treated as unrecognized in every case, while a woman knowingly married against a negative commandment, or forbidden by a positive one, keeps her full ketubah, is supported from his estate and is reimbursed for the benefit he took from her property. Mi'un forfeits the fundamental sum and keeps the addition; adultery forfeits both and the conditions with them, because her own deeds forbade her. The dowry follows the same fault line: whatever survives intact she takes, even an adulteress, and in the ordinary case he answers for nichsei tzon barzel while she bears the loss of nichsei m'log, but where he never knew she was an aylonit the rule inverts, since he never acquired the m'log, so he answers for the m'log and not for the tzon barzel, while mi'un and adultery recover nothing at all. The chapter then defines what forfeits a ketubah by conduct, the faith of Moses and the six breaches of the Jewish faith and the scandalous report, and protects her at every edge, exempting Ezra's belt and a walk from courtyard to courtyard under a handkerchief, requiring warning and witnesses, giving her an oath when the warning was unwitnessed, refusing to compel a divorce in any of these cases, disregarding her own confession of rape, paying her in full when the husband alone saw the adultery, and ruling that a woman coerced at the outset stays coerced even if she came to consent, though a priest's wife is forbidden to him even when raped and is compelled to be paid her whole ketubah before he divorces her.