Masechet Ketubot Daf 4-6
Jul. 13th, 2022 02:11 pmDaf 4
Actually toward the end of Daf 3 the Gemara discusses the idea that the Mishna's rule of observing weddings for betulot on Wednesdays was eventually given up and weddings sometimes scheduled on Tuesdays because having a standard date for weddings made them susceptible to non-Jewish rulers coming to towns specifically on Wednesdays and insisting on their right to prima nocta. The Gemara says that actually women are allowed to submit rather than die, which is surprising since arayot are not covered under the rule that pikuach nefesh exempts one from mitzvot, but maybe this isn't exactly an araya, or maybe the idea is that the rapist has power over you so he may kill you anyway, or maybe there's something about the way in which women are obligated in mitzvot differently, I don't know. But in any case the Gemara recognizes that in this circumstance a woman might choose to die anyway rather than submit (It calls them "tz'nuot", women who are particularly modest, but I think we can stipulate that any woman in this horrible circumstance might make any possible choice and be considered reasonable) so it considers it a case of sakana* allowing the change in date (Bearing in mind that the original enactment was d'rabbanan and horrific to start with, as I covered in my last post). So by changing to variable wedding dates they made it much harder for the ruler to try to impose prima nocta.
An alternate explanation of the idea of unforeseen circumstances leading to rescheduling the wedding from Wednesday is that it has to do with the case where unfortunately the chasan or kallah's parent dies immediately before the wedding, and they have to negotiate shivah rules along with the wedding. This is the bulk of Daf 4's discussion. Do you still go ahead with the wedding? Do you try to do the legal part of the wedding but defer the celebration? Do you postpone the wedding?
Amazingly, the Gemara's answer is practical and economical. If the feast was prepared and it's too late to stop it without going to waste, you have the feast and enact the wedding. If the feast is not fully prepared, to the point where one could resell the food and not lose money, you postpone the wedding. If you do go ahead and enact the wedding, you keep the body of the deceased in the house until after the wedding because technically mourning doesn't start until that happens. The husband immediately after consummation leaves his wife for the week. Though the sheva brachos are observed, and shiva is deferred until after, private mourning customs are adopted immediately.
I say amazingly because it strikes you, as some of the people in R' Linzer's shiur point out, that the first question on one's mind if you've lost your father the day before your wedding may not be whether you should carry on with your wedding or not. You may in fact be overcome with grief and unable to think clearly. When my grandfather died on a Friday, I wrote about how utterly wrongfooting it felt to not observe the rituals of mourning until Sunday... I can't entirely imagine what it would be like experientially to defer your observance of shiva for a week, in order to celebrate your marriage.
Daf 5
Both Daf podcasts I listen to skip this daf. Sometimes that happens because the daf fell on Shabbat the year it was recorded, but I suspect the content may have something to do with it being skipped in this case. I'm tempted to skip discussion of this page, too. But I feel like for that reason, I should discuss it.
Caveat that I am not an expert at human anatomy. But the point is, neither were the Rabbis.
A baraisa says that one is forbidden to do nisuin on Shabbat (Friday night) or motzei Shabbat (Saturday night). Why? They go back and forth a few times on motzei Shabbat but ultimately conclude it's a concern that one might be mechalel Shabbat in preparing for the wedding. You want to impress your guests, you want to have a freshly schechted animal for the wedding feast, so you schecht an animal and you don't wait until sundown. Perhaps you don't, like, massively cheat, but maybe you do it in the time disputed between the Rabbis about when exactly Shabbos ends. So fine, that explains motzei Shabbos.
Why can't you do nisuin on Shabbat? I mean, I would expect you to say that it's because you usually can't make kinyan on Shabbat, right? Easy, straightforward, and consistent with the idea that marriage is a legal contract. I sort of kid, there's nothing straightforward about the rules of kinyan and maybe there's some important reason why you could complete this sort of contract on Shabbat that I'm not aware of because there's a whole lot of Torah I don't know. Oh! I googled and you can make kinyan on Shabbat if it's for a mitzvah, and the daf suggests that the Rabbis seemed to consider nisuin a mitzvah. I guess p'ru u'r'vu.
But anyway, for whatever reason, that's not where the Gemara goes. No. They seem to believe that for some reason, the act of having penetrative sex with a betulah is melacha, but they're not quite sure why because the anatomy is confusing to them. The question they ask is, well, is the blood of the hymen something that is contained in blood vessels in the hymen that are broken by the act of penetration, or is it like menstrual blood, coming from inside the uterus or vagina but not originating in a wound?
Um...
Um...
Yeah.
So the Gemara's not so clear on the anatomy.
And of course the blood is not actually a necessary result of first time penetrative sex, both because sometimes the hymen has already been damaged by other activities and may not bleed, and because sometimes first time penetrative sex does not damage the hymen because of the way it is positioned or structured, because humans are a glorious tapestry and our bodies do not always obey the same rules. But that's besides the point, because as I understand it, for many people, there is some amount of blood from the first penetrative sex. So setting aside the fact the virginity is a ridiculous made up concept and there is the risk of real damage to relationships from having incorrect information about these biological processes, there is some physical reality that halachic deciders knowledgeable about female anatomy could potentially make halacha for. But these Rabbis are definitely not the people we want making decisions about womens' bodies!
Daf 6
Hilariously, the Gemara reports this weird finger-pointing about who forbids sex with a betulah on Shabbat. Rav says "We have no problem, it's Shmuel who forbids it." Shmuel says "We have no problem, it's Rav who forbids it." Worth mentioning again, the Gemara is the transcription centuries later of oral teachings from a widely geographically dispersed area, it's keenly aware that there may be mistakes or omissions in the oral transmission and a big part of the project of the Savoraim was sorting out disagreements that are not per se arguments, just discrepancies between traditions.
La di da, skipping the next part entirely, la di da, pay no attention to the twelve year old girl discussion, la di da.
So then the Gemara tries to figure out how it can possibly be permitted, since according to the theory that it's blood vessels in the hymen being ruptured, that's a clear violation of the prohibition on making a cut in someone's body on Shabbos (the same prohibition as schechting an animal) and according to the theory that it's blood internal to the uterus or vagina, you're still creating an opening and that's probably a melacha too. (Boneh, says R' Linzer, okay, sure)
One remarkable theory in the name of Rabba is that on Shabbat, one is permitted to have sex with a betulah provided they have penetrative sex carefully in order to not damage the hymen, which the Gemara contends is possible if men are trained in how to do this. This is remarkable, because if this is the case then the whole theory of virginity that yichud rooms are based on makes no sense, as Rava bar Rav Ḥanan says. Why do we have all sorts of testimony about the presence or absence of blood on a sheet, if the answer for its absence could simply be "We had the kind of penetrative sex that doesn't damage the hymen."? Abaye's answer is fascinating. He makes a distinction between cases when the man is trying to avoid damaging the hymen, because he would be mechalel Shabbos, version a case where the man is trying to claim that an absence of blood proves that his new wife has committed adultery in order to annul the marriage. In the one case, there's no need for witnesses or testimony, the man doesn't care about his wife's virginity as an object to take, he's just happy to have a wife who is a wonderful woman who will be his partner. In the other case, the man is terrible and we need to protect the wife from abuse of process by having a legal system that must presumably be designed to make it difficult for a man to make claims about the virginity of his wife.
This is precisely what I meant in my opening discussion... very often you find that when you dig into these utterly horrifying Gemaras, that buried a couple layers down in confusingly convoluted ways is an extreme awareness of the ways in which toxic masculinity operates and how to operate within its contours to try to protect women from its abuses. These Gemaras are still utterly horrifying, don't get me wrong. And for all the awareness of men acting badly, there's rarely an overt effort to just reject toxic masculinity.
And all this to add to R' Linzer repeatedly makes the point in discussing these dafs that besides the nonsense anatomy, there's an extremely male oriented perspective here in terms of the halachic questions. Nobody is asking whether a betulah having sex on Shabbat is mechalel Shabbat, the question is about whether the things that her chasan does TO her are mechalel Shabbat, and she has this wholly passive role as the person that things are done to, not a person who is actually doing any act. R' Linzer keeps calling it treating her as an object, but that doesn't quite feel right. It's not that she's considered an object that various sex acts are performed on, it's that she is participating in the acts but her actions have no halachic consequence.
*Just repeating for newcomers: The amount that I use Hebrew and Aramaic in my Daf Yomi posts is variable depending on my mood, if there's any words you don't understand you can always feel free to ask. Also I do Ashkenazi or Sepharadi pronunciation at random, ignore me. Also, as![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
lannamichaels points out, the tractate is called Ketubot, but I promise I will keep mixing up singular and plural and Ashkenaz and Sepharadi spellings.
Actually toward the end of Daf 3 the Gemara discusses the idea that the Mishna's rule of observing weddings for betulot on Wednesdays was eventually given up and weddings sometimes scheduled on Tuesdays because having a standard date for weddings made them susceptible to non-Jewish rulers coming to towns specifically on Wednesdays and insisting on their right to prima nocta. The Gemara says that actually women are allowed to submit rather than die, which is surprising since arayot are not covered under the rule that pikuach nefesh exempts one from mitzvot, but maybe this isn't exactly an araya, or maybe the idea is that the rapist has power over you so he may kill you anyway, or maybe there's something about the way in which women are obligated in mitzvot differently, I don't know. But in any case the Gemara recognizes that in this circumstance a woman might choose to die anyway rather than submit (It calls them "tz'nuot", women who are particularly modest, but I think we can stipulate that any woman in this horrible circumstance might make any possible choice and be considered reasonable) so it considers it a case of sakana* allowing the change in date (Bearing in mind that the original enactment was d'rabbanan and horrific to start with, as I covered in my last post). So by changing to variable wedding dates they made it much harder for the ruler to try to impose prima nocta.
An alternate explanation of the idea of unforeseen circumstances leading to rescheduling the wedding from Wednesday is that it has to do with the case where unfortunately the chasan or kallah's parent dies immediately before the wedding, and they have to negotiate shivah rules along with the wedding. This is the bulk of Daf 4's discussion. Do you still go ahead with the wedding? Do you try to do the legal part of the wedding but defer the celebration? Do you postpone the wedding?
Amazingly, the Gemara's answer is practical and economical. If the feast was prepared and it's too late to stop it without going to waste, you have the feast and enact the wedding. If the feast is not fully prepared, to the point where one could resell the food and not lose money, you postpone the wedding. If you do go ahead and enact the wedding, you keep the body of the deceased in the house until after the wedding because technically mourning doesn't start until that happens. The husband immediately after consummation leaves his wife for the week. Though the sheva brachos are observed, and shiva is deferred until after, private mourning customs are adopted immediately.
I say amazingly because it strikes you, as some of the people in R' Linzer's shiur point out, that the first question on one's mind if you've lost your father the day before your wedding may not be whether you should carry on with your wedding or not. You may in fact be overcome with grief and unable to think clearly. When my grandfather died on a Friday, I wrote about how utterly wrongfooting it felt to not observe the rituals of mourning until Sunday... I can't entirely imagine what it would be like experientially to defer your observance of shiva for a week, in order to celebrate your marriage.
Daf 5
Both Daf podcasts I listen to skip this daf. Sometimes that happens because the daf fell on Shabbat the year it was recorded, but I suspect the content may have something to do with it being skipped in this case. I'm tempted to skip discussion of this page, too. But I feel like for that reason, I should discuss it.
Caveat that I am not an expert at human anatomy. But the point is, neither were the Rabbis.
A baraisa says that one is forbidden to do nisuin on Shabbat (Friday night) or motzei Shabbat (Saturday night). Why? They go back and forth a few times on motzei Shabbat but ultimately conclude it's a concern that one might be mechalel Shabbat in preparing for the wedding. You want to impress your guests, you want to have a freshly schechted animal for the wedding feast, so you schecht an animal and you don't wait until sundown. Perhaps you don't, like, massively cheat, but maybe you do it in the time disputed between the Rabbis about when exactly Shabbos ends. So fine, that explains motzei Shabbos.
Why can't you do nisuin on Shabbat? I mean, I would expect you to say that it's because you usually can't make kinyan on Shabbat, right? Easy, straightforward, and consistent with the idea that marriage is a legal contract. I sort of kid, there's nothing straightforward about the rules of kinyan and maybe there's some important reason why you could complete this sort of contract on Shabbat that I'm not aware of because there's a whole lot of Torah I don't know. Oh! I googled and you can make kinyan on Shabbat if it's for a mitzvah, and the daf suggests that the Rabbis seemed to consider nisuin a mitzvah. I guess p'ru u'r'vu.
But anyway, for whatever reason, that's not where the Gemara goes. No. They seem to believe that for some reason, the act of having penetrative sex with a betulah is melacha, but they're not quite sure why because the anatomy is confusing to them. The question they ask is, well, is the blood of the hymen something that is contained in blood vessels in the hymen that are broken by the act of penetration, or is it like menstrual blood, coming from inside the uterus or vagina but not originating in a wound?
Um...
Um...
Yeah.
So the Gemara's not so clear on the anatomy.
And of course the blood is not actually a necessary result of first time penetrative sex, both because sometimes the hymen has already been damaged by other activities and may not bleed, and because sometimes first time penetrative sex does not damage the hymen because of the way it is positioned or structured, because humans are a glorious tapestry and our bodies do not always obey the same rules. But that's besides the point, because as I understand it, for many people, there is some amount of blood from the first penetrative sex. So setting aside the fact the virginity is a ridiculous made up concept and there is the risk of real damage to relationships from having incorrect information about these biological processes, there is some physical reality that halachic deciders knowledgeable about female anatomy could potentially make halacha for. But these Rabbis are definitely not the people we want making decisions about womens' bodies!
Daf 6
Hilariously, the Gemara reports this weird finger-pointing about who forbids sex with a betulah on Shabbat. Rav says "We have no problem, it's Shmuel who forbids it." Shmuel says "We have no problem, it's Rav who forbids it." Worth mentioning again, the Gemara is the transcription centuries later of oral teachings from a widely geographically dispersed area, it's keenly aware that there may be mistakes or omissions in the oral transmission and a big part of the project of the Savoraim was sorting out disagreements that are not per se arguments, just discrepancies between traditions.
La di da, skipping the next part entirely, la di da, pay no attention to the twelve year old girl discussion, la di da.
So then the Gemara tries to figure out how it can possibly be permitted, since according to the theory that it's blood vessels in the hymen being ruptured, that's a clear violation of the prohibition on making a cut in someone's body on Shabbos (the same prohibition as schechting an animal) and according to the theory that it's blood internal to the uterus or vagina, you're still creating an opening and that's probably a melacha too. (Boneh, says R' Linzer, okay, sure)
One remarkable theory in the name of Rabba is that on Shabbat, one is permitted to have sex with a betulah provided they have penetrative sex carefully in order to not damage the hymen, which the Gemara contends is possible if men are trained in how to do this. This is remarkable, because if this is the case then the whole theory of virginity that yichud rooms are based on makes no sense, as Rava bar Rav Ḥanan says. Why do we have all sorts of testimony about the presence or absence of blood on a sheet, if the answer for its absence could simply be "We had the kind of penetrative sex that doesn't damage the hymen."? Abaye's answer is fascinating. He makes a distinction between cases when the man is trying to avoid damaging the hymen, because he would be mechalel Shabbos, version a case where the man is trying to claim that an absence of blood proves that his new wife has committed adultery in order to annul the marriage. In the one case, there's no need for witnesses or testimony, the man doesn't care about his wife's virginity as an object to take, he's just happy to have a wife who is a wonderful woman who will be his partner. In the other case, the man is terrible and we need to protect the wife from abuse of process by having a legal system that must presumably be designed to make it difficult for a man to make claims about the virginity of his wife.
This is precisely what I meant in my opening discussion... very often you find that when you dig into these utterly horrifying Gemaras, that buried a couple layers down in confusingly convoluted ways is an extreme awareness of the ways in which toxic masculinity operates and how to operate within its contours to try to protect women from its abuses. These Gemaras are still utterly horrifying, don't get me wrong. And for all the awareness of men acting badly, there's rarely an overt effort to just reject toxic masculinity.
And all this to add to R' Linzer repeatedly makes the point in discussing these dafs that besides the nonsense anatomy, there's an extremely male oriented perspective here in terms of the halachic questions. Nobody is asking whether a betulah having sex on Shabbat is mechalel Shabbat, the question is about whether the things that her chasan does TO her are mechalel Shabbat, and she has this wholly passive role as the person that things are done to, not a person who is actually doing any act. R' Linzer keeps calling it treating her as an object, but that doesn't quite feel right. It's not that she's considered an object that various sex acts are performed on, it's that she is participating in the acts but her actions have no halachic consequence.
*Just repeating for newcomers: The amount that I use Hebrew and Aramaic in my Daf Yomi posts is variable depending on my mood, if there's any words you don't understand you can always feel free to ask. Also I do Ashkenazi or Sepharadi pronunciation at random, ignore me. Also, as
lannamichaels points out, the tractate is called Ketubot, but I promise I will keep mixing up singular and plural and Ashkenaz and Sepharadi spellings.