Masechet Ketuvot 12-13
Jul. 22nd, 2022 12:38 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
seekingferretDaf 12
Actually at the very bottom of 11b, we get the case of Private Benjamin (!) : If a betulah is secluded with her chasan on their wedding night, but her chasan dies before they can consummate the marriage, and she subsequently remarries, is her ketubah written as if she is still a betulah, or is she now considered an almanah? Or if the ketubah is written as if she's a betulah, and the second chasan discovers evidence on the wedding night that she is not a betulah, can the marriage be annulled, or can it be rewritten as if she's an almanah?
I'm mostly just delighted that the Rabbis wrote about Private Benjamin. Who knew Nancy Meyers was a talmud chacham? But also this case gets at really basic ideas about contract law and how they interact with marriage contracts. In other words, I could also make some Elon Musk comparisons here! If the second chasan was misled about the status of his kallah, then by rights the contract should be annulled, just like how if Twitter actively lied about the number of bots on the platform in their SEC filings, in a way that was material to the operation of the business, then Musk can get out of the contract because the contract was signed under false pretenses. But if the second chasan was aware that the kallah had been secluded, and he just assumed that there hadn't been enough time for consummation to take place, then it's on him, he should have known that there was a possibility that has kallah had possibly been intimate with her first chasan. Just like Elon Musk waived his right to due diligence and therefore may be compelled to do specific performance of the purchase of Twitter.
Later there's a fascinating Mishna about the cost of different types of brides. Throughout the masechta so far we have seen two 'marriage prices', where 'marriage price' means the amount written into the Ketubah that a woman would receive if they subsequently divorced, intended to support her. A betulah would be entitled to 200 dinars, an almanah to 100 dinars. The implied idea is that this reflected the fact that a betulah was considered more valuable, whether that be because of the supposed pleasure of being intimate with a betulah (though paying double the marriage price for one night's pleasure hardly seems worth it) or because a betulah is generally younger and has more child-bearing years ahead of her, or because a betulah is considered more pure and the marriage is more holy, I don't know, all the potential reasons are pretty gross. Though I do want to emphasize that I've been saying 'marriage price' for lack of a clearer translation, but this is not a dowry or a payment to the father of the kallah, this is the amount of money the kallah is due in the event of a divorce, so ideally this is not an amount of money anyone is paying anyone. That said, it's still a variable amount of money the chasan is committing to being willing to spend as part of the ketubah, so it's still in some fashion setting a price on his kallah. But the point is, the Talmud to this point has only contemplated these two prices, but now we get more prices and a discussion about the prices relative to each other and what that means. Higher prices for daughters of Kohanim, or daughters of wealthy families, and a complicated push and pull between some idea of market pricing, or some idea of considering the dignity and emotional well-being of women involved in these negotiations- even though the market apparently considered an almanah who is the daughter of a wealthy family to be significantly less valuable than a betulah from the same family, the Gemara insists on maintaining the 2:1 ratio in order to protect the dignity of the almanah.
I think we can imagine several pricing models. The Talmud is not writing in a purely capitalist society so it's not necessarily imagining that the marriage price is, like, 'whatever the market will bear'. The clear communicated intention of the marriage price, as I said, is to provide for the woman in the event she loses her husband and needs to support herself. So one possible model is that the Rabbis did some investigation, determined a reasonable minimum amount of money that a woman would need to support herself for a reasonable amount of time, and said "This is the marriage price." Or another possible model is that they did the same research, made the same determination, and said "This is the minimum marriage price, you can negotiate higher but cannot go lower." Or you can imagine a full free market, where the prices the Talmud is talking about are just suggestions, and if you want to negotiate a lower marriage price the Rabbis advise against it but don't forbid it.
Some of these approaches are less horribly objectifying than others, and there's some ambiguity so to some degree you can choose the option you find least horrifying. And of course in modern western societies prenuptial agreements are still a common part of getting married in many cultural contexts, of course finances are part of the consideration of a marriage, and of course some people think of marriages in mercenary contexts where one potential spouse is more of a 'catch' than another for all sorts of reasons besides whether they will make a good partner in the marriage. So I dunno, at some points I try to get over my horror and just think about the strictly legal implications. But it's hard because every so often you remember that you're talking about people, not animals.
But I also want to say that I know I am wildly inconsistent about when I use Hebrew, Aramaic and English in these posts, but I've been trying whenever possible to use betulah and almanah rather than virgin and widow, precisely because of these issues. The words virgin and widow have a lot of implications in English, and probably there's a lot of overlap with what the Talmud is talking about, but it's not a complete overlap and I feel like because this subject is so fraught and it's so easy to start using dehumanising language, keeping a reminder that the Talmud is not talking about what we mean when we use the English, it's talking about halachic states, is useful.
Daf 13
I'm starting to like Rabban Gamliel, which is one of those indicators that either things have gone wildly off the rails, or we're talking about a different Rabban Gamliel. Wikipedia reminds us that there are 6 Rabban Gamliels, so sometimes it can be hard to be sure. But I'm pretty sure it's the one we usually are annoyed with, the grandfather of Yehudah HaNasi based on context, though it might also be his grandfather (the one who is a Catholic saint).
A few dapim earlier, in a discussion of mourning customs, the Gemara says that it was Rabban Gamliel who set the example of being buried in a modest, low cost burial shroud in a cheap wood coffin, which was a specific attempt to end the process of ever more extravagant burials which made it difficult for poorer families to bury their loved ones. As Rabban Gamliel was one of the richest people in the nation, his example ended the status games and returned the focus in burial to the task of honoring a loved one's legacy with dignity. So I was already liking Rabban Gamliel more than usual.
But here on Daf 13 in discussion of he-said/she-said disputes about the condition of a kallah, the Gemara concludes that Rabban Gamliel was an absolutist: Always believe the woman. This stands in stark opposition to Rabbi Yehoshua, whose position was never believe the woman, even when it was an admission against interest and ordinarily we'd be inclined to put extra weight on her testimony.
To be clear, these are not some sort of bedrock trial principle, that in the face of evidence to the contrary you shoudl believe certain kinds of witnesses. Both Rabban Gamliel and Rabbi Yehoshua prioritize above everything else legitimate testimony of two kosher eidim. If they have proof the woman was lying or telling the truth, that's one thing. It's just, by the nature of this being a private and intimate matter, you're often going to be in the position where you don't have two kosher eidim one way or another. And Rabban Gamliel's position is that it's the woman's body that the testimony is about, so the presumption is that she's the domain expert. And Rabbi Yehoshua's position is, I guess, that it's the man's experience of sex that the testimony is about, so the presumption is he's the domain expert??? Or, there's an interesting statement a bit earlier that I didn't discuss which is that maybe the presumption is that this is always a testimony against the man's interest, because he just brought all his family and friends together for a big wedding feast, A) presumably he really wanted to marry this woman and still does and B) It's going to be really embarrassing to him to immediately divorce her because he thinks she cheated on him, so if he testifies that she was not a virgin, it's got to be because he really truly believes that she cheated on him and is forbidden to him d'oraysa. I think this overlooks really toxic men, but there is certainly some logic to it.
Actually at the very bottom of 11b, we get the case of Private Benjamin (!) : If a betulah is secluded with her chasan on their wedding night, but her chasan dies before they can consummate the marriage, and she subsequently remarries, is her ketubah written as if she is still a betulah, or is she now considered an almanah? Or if the ketubah is written as if she's a betulah, and the second chasan discovers evidence on the wedding night that she is not a betulah, can the marriage be annulled, or can it be rewritten as if she's an almanah?
I'm mostly just delighted that the Rabbis wrote about Private Benjamin. Who knew Nancy Meyers was a talmud chacham? But also this case gets at really basic ideas about contract law and how they interact with marriage contracts. In other words, I could also make some Elon Musk comparisons here! If the second chasan was misled about the status of his kallah, then by rights the contract should be annulled, just like how if Twitter actively lied about the number of bots on the platform in their SEC filings, in a way that was material to the operation of the business, then Musk can get out of the contract because the contract was signed under false pretenses. But if the second chasan was aware that the kallah had been secluded, and he just assumed that there hadn't been enough time for consummation to take place, then it's on him, he should have known that there was a possibility that has kallah had possibly been intimate with her first chasan. Just like Elon Musk waived his right to due diligence and therefore may be compelled to do specific performance of the purchase of Twitter.
Later there's a fascinating Mishna about the cost of different types of brides. Throughout the masechta so far we have seen two 'marriage prices', where 'marriage price' means the amount written into the Ketubah that a woman would receive if they subsequently divorced, intended to support her. A betulah would be entitled to 200 dinars, an almanah to 100 dinars. The implied idea is that this reflected the fact that a betulah was considered more valuable, whether that be because of the supposed pleasure of being intimate with a betulah (though paying double the marriage price for one night's pleasure hardly seems worth it) or because a betulah is generally younger and has more child-bearing years ahead of her, or because a betulah is considered more pure and the marriage is more holy, I don't know, all the potential reasons are pretty gross. Though I do want to emphasize that I've been saying 'marriage price' for lack of a clearer translation, but this is not a dowry or a payment to the father of the kallah, this is the amount of money the kallah is due in the event of a divorce, so ideally this is not an amount of money anyone is paying anyone. That said, it's still a variable amount of money the chasan is committing to being willing to spend as part of the ketubah, so it's still in some fashion setting a price on his kallah. But the point is, the Talmud to this point has only contemplated these two prices, but now we get more prices and a discussion about the prices relative to each other and what that means. Higher prices for daughters of Kohanim, or daughters of wealthy families, and a complicated push and pull between some idea of market pricing, or some idea of considering the dignity and emotional well-being of women involved in these negotiations- even though the market apparently considered an almanah who is the daughter of a wealthy family to be significantly less valuable than a betulah from the same family, the Gemara insists on maintaining the 2:1 ratio in order to protect the dignity of the almanah.
I think we can imagine several pricing models. The Talmud is not writing in a purely capitalist society so it's not necessarily imagining that the marriage price is, like, 'whatever the market will bear'. The clear communicated intention of the marriage price, as I said, is to provide for the woman in the event she loses her husband and needs to support herself. So one possible model is that the Rabbis did some investigation, determined a reasonable minimum amount of money that a woman would need to support herself for a reasonable amount of time, and said "This is the marriage price." Or another possible model is that they did the same research, made the same determination, and said "This is the minimum marriage price, you can negotiate higher but cannot go lower." Or you can imagine a full free market, where the prices the Talmud is talking about are just suggestions, and if you want to negotiate a lower marriage price the Rabbis advise against it but don't forbid it.
Some of these approaches are less horribly objectifying than others, and there's some ambiguity so to some degree you can choose the option you find least horrifying. And of course in modern western societies prenuptial agreements are still a common part of getting married in many cultural contexts, of course finances are part of the consideration of a marriage, and of course some people think of marriages in mercenary contexts where one potential spouse is more of a 'catch' than another for all sorts of reasons besides whether they will make a good partner in the marriage. So I dunno, at some points I try to get over my horror and just think about the strictly legal implications. But it's hard because every so often you remember that you're talking about people, not animals.
But I also want to say that I know I am wildly inconsistent about when I use Hebrew, Aramaic and English in these posts, but I've been trying whenever possible to use betulah and almanah rather than virgin and widow, precisely because of these issues. The words virgin and widow have a lot of implications in English, and probably there's a lot of overlap with what the Talmud is talking about, but it's not a complete overlap and I feel like because this subject is so fraught and it's so easy to start using dehumanising language, keeping a reminder that the Talmud is not talking about what we mean when we use the English, it's talking about halachic states, is useful.
Daf 13
I'm starting to like Rabban Gamliel, which is one of those indicators that either things have gone wildly off the rails, or we're talking about a different Rabban Gamliel. Wikipedia reminds us that there are 6 Rabban Gamliels, so sometimes it can be hard to be sure. But I'm pretty sure it's the one we usually are annoyed with, the grandfather of Yehudah HaNasi based on context, though it might also be his grandfather (the one who is a Catholic saint).
A few dapim earlier, in a discussion of mourning customs, the Gemara says that it was Rabban Gamliel who set the example of being buried in a modest, low cost burial shroud in a cheap wood coffin, which was a specific attempt to end the process of ever more extravagant burials which made it difficult for poorer families to bury their loved ones. As Rabban Gamliel was one of the richest people in the nation, his example ended the status games and returned the focus in burial to the task of honoring a loved one's legacy with dignity. So I was already liking Rabban Gamliel more than usual.
But here on Daf 13 in discussion of he-said/she-said disputes about the condition of a kallah, the Gemara concludes that Rabban Gamliel was an absolutist: Always believe the woman. This stands in stark opposition to Rabbi Yehoshua, whose position was never believe the woman, even when it was an admission against interest and ordinarily we'd be inclined to put extra weight on her testimony.
To be clear, these are not some sort of bedrock trial principle, that in the face of evidence to the contrary you shoudl believe certain kinds of witnesses. Both Rabban Gamliel and Rabbi Yehoshua prioritize above everything else legitimate testimony of two kosher eidim. If they have proof the woman was lying or telling the truth, that's one thing. It's just, by the nature of this being a private and intimate matter, you're often going to be in the position where you don't have two kosher eidim one way or another. And Rabban Gamliel's position is that it's the woman's body that the testimony is about, so the presumption is that she's the domain expert. And Rabbi Yehoshua's position is, I guess, that it's the man's experience of sex that the testimony is about, so the presumption is he's the domain expert??? Or, there's an interesting statement a bit earlier that I didn't discuss which is that maybe the presumption is that this is always a testimony against the man's interest, because he just brought all his family and friends together for a big wedding feast, A) presumably he really wanted to marry this woman and still does and B) It's going to be really embarrassing to him to immediately divorce her because he thinks she cheated on him, so if he testifies that she was not a virgin, it's got to be because he really truly believes that she cheated on him and is forbidden to him d'oraysa. I think this overlooks really toxic men, but there is certainly some logic to it.
(no subject)
Date: 2022-07-22 09:47 pm (UTC)#Mood
wait WHAT
(no subject)
Date: 2022-07-22 09:49 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2022-07-22 10:21 pm (UTC)