Maseches Ketubot 26-28
Oct. 30th, 2022 09:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
seekingferretI dropped Daf Yomi in early August when all the travel started, and I kept meaning to pick it back up but then the chagim hit. Kesuvos ended a few days ago, so I'm left with the choice of picking up Nedarim to stay in synch with the cycle, or trying to finish Kesuvos. I think I'm going to try the Ketubot option. Here's the rest of Perek 2. Also, as usual with Kesuvos, TW: Rape and Misogyny.
Daf 26
When last we stopped, the Gemara was struggling with a concept of scenarios where a court chooses to believe a person testifying to their advantage, because they could have just as easily told a lie that was more advantageous to them. Clearly this needs to be a limited concept, because it's almost equally reasonable that they're telling the less advantageous story precisely because they think it's more believable, or even because they know this principle of law. But in certain circumstances where witness evidence is difficult to obtain, and where the cost of accepting the lie is minimal, the Rabbis held it was okay.
Some of the cases in this chapter have nothing to do with marriage, but some of them do, which is why this chapter is in Ketubot. And in addition to this particular law of witnesses, the Gemara is touching on some other cases where the Rabbis will accept a single witness, or accept types of witnesses it ordinarily wouldn't accept.
On this daf the Rabbis are concerned with cases where a woman is imprisoned by non-Jewish authorities. She is out of view of Jewish life. In ordinary Jewish life, a married woman is forbidden to be secluded in the same room as a man who is not her husband, because it creates a suspicion of adultery. And I think there's sort of an assumption that, living in a Jewish community, seclusion is difficult to manage without some Jew knowing about it. But if she's held captive by non-Jews, we don't know whether or not forbidden seclusion happens, it's all away from the eyes of witnesses who could tell us whether there was forbidden seclusion.
So the Rabbis have to decide whether or not they trust non-Jewish society, and particularly the non-Jewish authorities. Spoiler alert, the Rabbis usually don't trust non-Jewish authorities, but fascinatingly here, they seem more open to trusting them than usual. According to Rav Shmuel bar Yitzhak, Rav creates a construct here of "The Hand of Israel is Over the Nations", which means one of two things:
1. The particular government the Jews are living under is a basically moral government by Jewish understanding, and can be expected, barring some failures of governance, to protect even vulnerable people kept in prison.
or
2. The entire era of the moment is one where all governments basically respect the rule of law and morality according to basic Jewish understanding, and can be expected, barring some failures of governance, to protect even vulnerable prisoners.
Either way is pretty amazing; the second is stunning. And the whole conversation left me extremely curious how modern poskim feel about this halacha, because there are potentially substantial consequences in halacha l'maaseh of any of these rules being in effect, or not being effect, and what posture do we believe American prisons are in, today?
Daf 27
A horrible but horribly romantic story:
Rabbi Zekharia ben HaKatzav was in Jerusalem during the Roman sack. There's a law that when a besieged city is occupied, the women inside are considered to have potentially been raped because soldiers raping is a fact of life, today just as much as in the Rabbinic era. For women married to normal Israelites, this is horrible but poses no halachic problems because non-consensual sex does not count as adultery. But for women married to priests, this is a problem, because as a matter of the law of purity, priests are not allowed to be married to women who have had sex with another man, consensually or not. Now, if the priest's wife has actually been raped, clearly she has to divorce her husband even though this is tragic and horrible. (I guess you could say that this is something she knew when she signed up to be a priest's wife, it's part of the commitment.) But if she hasn't been raped, there is still a presumption that she may have been raped, and unfortunately a woman is not allowed to testify that she hasn't been raped because the Rabbis weren't #believewomen. So she still is now forbidden to be with her husband even though nothing happened.
Rabbi Zekharia ben Hakatzav was a priest, and he was living in Jerusalem during the siege and was with his wife and children and somehow they managed to stay together and stay safe. Afterward, the Sages said that his wife was forbidden to him, but he demurred, insisting that his wife had never left his sight and he knew she had not been raped. They still held him to the letter of the law and told him she was now prohibited to him. But here's the awful but romantic part. He refused to divorce her but built her a house in his courtyard so that he could stay with her but never ever be allowed to be alone in the same room as her. And they lived the rest of their lives together but apart. Awww. So romantic. Also this sucks so much.
Daf 28
The Gemara returns to discussion of how we know somebody who hasn't been acting as a Kohen is actually a kohen. This is a really fascinating discussion not for the legal questions, but because it reveals a lot about how social class was constructed in the society the Talmud is describing. The (Jewish) slaves of Kohanim were allowed to eat terumah, the special offering/tax of first produce given as an entitlement to the Kohanim by all of Israel as recognition of their central role as intercessors on behalf of the people. Why were they entitled to eat Terumah? Presumably because their master was responsible for feeding them, and the Terumah might be the only food they had, so the Torah needed to make sure they would be fed. But there was apparently an importance given to making a distinction between the Kohanim being entitled to the Terumah, and the slaves being able to eat Terumah, so a slave cannot directly receive Terumah as an offering and eat it, they have to be given it by their master specifically.
Daf 26
When last we stopped, the Gemara was struggling with a concept of scenarios where a court chooses to believe a person testifying to their advantage, because they could have just as easily told a lie that was more advantageous to them. Clearly this needs to be a limited concept, because it's almost equally reasonable that they're telling the less advantageous story precisely because they think it's more believable, or even because they know this principle of law. But in certain circumstances where witness evidence is difficult to obtain, and where the cost of accepting the lie is minimal, the Rabbis held it was okay.
Some of the cases in this chapter have nothing to do with marriage, but some of them do, which is why this chapter is in Ketubot. And in addition to this particular law of witnesses, the Gemara is touching on some other cases where the Rabbis will accept a single witness, or accept types of witnesses it ordinarily wouldn't accept.
On this daf the Rabbis are concerned with cases where a woman is imprisoned by non-Jewish authorities. She is out of view of Jewish life. In ordinary Jewish life, a married woman is forbidden to be secluded in the same room as a man who is not her husband, because it creates a suspicion of adultery. And I think there's sort of an assumption that, living in a Jewish community, seclusion is difficult to manage without some Jew knowing about it. But if she's held captive by non-Jews, we don't know whether or not forbidden seclusion happens, it's all away from the eyes of witnesses who could tell us whether there was forbidden seclusion.
So the Rabbis have to decide whether or not they trust non-Jewish society, and particularly the non-Jewish authorities. Spoiler alert, the Rabbis usually don't trust non-Jewish authorities, but fascinatingly here, they seem more open to trusting them than usual. According to Rav Shmuel bar Yitzhak, Rav creates a construct here of "The Hand of Israel is Over the Nations", which means one of two things:
1. The particular government the Jews are living under is a basically moral government by Jewish understanding, and can be expected, barring some failures of governance, to protect even vulnerable people kept in prison.
or
2. The entire era of the moment is one where all governments basically respect the rule of law and morality according to basic Jewish understanding, and can be expected, barring some failures of governance, to protect even vulnerable prisoners.
Either way is pretty amazing; the second is stunning. And the whole conversation left me extremely curious how modern poskim feel about this halacha, because there are potentially substantial consequences in halacha l'maaseh of any of these rules being in effect, or not being effect, and what posture do we believe American prisons are in, today?
Daf 27
A horrible but horribly romantic story:
Rabbi Zekharia ben HaKatzav was in Jerusalem during the Roman sack. There's a law that when a besieged city is occupied, the women inside are considered to have potentially been raped because soldiers raping is a fact of life, today just as much as in the Rabbinic era. For women married to normal Israelites, this is horrible but poses no halachic problems because non-consensual sex does not count as adultery. But for women married to priests, this is a problem, because as a matter of the law of purity, priests are not allowed to be married to women who have had sex with another man, consensually or not. Now, if the priest's wife has actually been raped, clearly she has to divorce her husband even though this is tragic and horrible. (I guess you could say that this is something she knew when she signed up to be a priest's wife, it's part of the commitment.) But if she hasn't been raped, there is still a presumption that she may have been raped, and unfortunately a woman is not allowed to testify that she hasn't been raped because the Rabbis weren't #believewomen. So she still is now forbidden to be with her husband even though nothing happened.
Rabbi Zekharia ben Hakatzav was a priest, and he was living in Jerusalem during the siege and was with his wife and children and somehow they managed to stay together and stay safe. Afterward, the Sages said that his wife was forbidden to him, but he demurred, insisting that his wife had never left his sight and he knew she had not been raped. They still held him to the letter of the law and told him she was now prohibited to him. But here's the awful but romantic part. He refused to divorce her but built her a house in his courtyard so that he could stay with her but never ever be allowed to be alone in the same room as her. And they lived the rest of their lives together but apart. Awww. So romantic. Also this sucks so much.
Daf 28
The Gemara returns to discussion of how we know somebody who hasn't been acting as a Kohen is actually a kohen. This is a really fascinating discussion not for the legal questions, but because it reveals a lot about how social class was constructed in the society the Talmud is describing. The (Jewish) slaves of Kohanim were allowed to eat terumah, the special offering/tax of first produce given as an entitlement to the Kohanim by all of Israel as recognition of their central role as intercessors on behalf of the people. Why were they entitled to eat Terumah? Presumably because their master was responsible for feeding them, and the Terumah might be the only food they had, so the Torah needed to make sure they would be fed. But there was apparently an importance given to making a distinction between the Kohanim being entitled to the Terumah, and the slaves being able to eat Terumah, so a slave cannot directly receive Terumah as an offering and eat it, they have to be given it by their master specifically.
(no subject)
Date: 2022-10-31 03:01 pm (UTC)I mean, obviously, liberal Jews are more likely to construct a conception of priesthood that doesn't overemphasize marital purity in this way is the real answer, but it's still so fascinating to me that this halacha depends on our overall perception of how just the non-Jewish carceral system is at the moment.