She Has Only Half a Man

About This Talk

Chapter 3 sets out the three ways kiddushin is established, by money of a prutah or its worth, by a document written on paper or a shard or a leaf for the sake of this particular woman and with her consent, and by relations taking effect at the conclusion of the act, and in every one of them the man is the one who speaks and the one who gives, so that a woman who gives and speaks accomplishes nothing, a woman who gives while he speaks accomplishes nothing, and a man who gives while she speaks leaves the status in doubt. It then rules on the words themselves, holding that a statement naming the man, that he is her husband or her betrothed or her man, establishes the marriage bond not at all, while a statement naming her as his wife, acquired, designated, within his property or bound to him establishes it, with a middle list of phrases such as set aside, earmarked, helper, counterpart and captive that leave the matter doubtful and only where the two had already been speaking of marriage, since otherwise those words are of no consequence. The chapter then rules that a woman may be consecrated to half a man while half of a woman cannot be consecrated at all, validates the formula that closes both of her halves in one breath and leaves in doubt any version that opens a gap in time or stretches one prutah across two acquisitions, gives a father authority over his daughter from birth until she becomes a bogeret and ends that authority permanently once she has entered nisu'in, and sets out the law of agents, requiring two witnesses to appoint the woman's agent and none to appoint the man's, before closing with the mitzvah of consecrating in person rather than through an agent, the stripes for rebelliousness given to a man who consecrates through relations or without an engagement or in the marketplace while his kiddushin remain fully binding, and the blessing of erusin that belongs before the act and may never be recited after it.