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Aug. 17th, 2023 02:23 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
seekingferretDaf 4
So one of the methods of effecting Kiddushin is kesef, an exchange of money for the woman's commitment. It can technically be a de minimis amount of money, the value of a perutah, but it's nonetheless actual money. Who gets the money, the woman or her father?
R' Linzer sees this whole debate as being the Gemara grappling with the Kinyan model vs. the Kiddushin model: Is marriage the acquisition of a woman by a man, or is it the union of two souls?
Everybody agrees that if the kiddushin happens when the girl is under 12 years old, her father gets the money, because the kallah in that case is not legally competent to accept the money and her father is acting in loco parentis. Or the father is entitled to the labor of her hands, if we want the awful patriarchal language that the Talmud uses, but I think it amounts to the same thing. If she is 12 years old, she is legally competent to accept a marriage on her own (!), but the Gemara still wants to say that her father gets the money. This seems to accord with the acquisition model. But what the Gemara is stuck on, and takes all of the daf and then apparently more tomorrow, is why the father gets the money. R' Linzer mostly diagnoses this, and I think I agree, to the fact that the rules of marriage is not very explicit in the Torah and so there isn't a good textual basis to decide one way or another.
So one of the methods of effecting Kiddushin is kesef, an exchange of money for the woman's commitment. It can technically be a de minimis amount of money, the value of a perutah, but it's nonetheless actual money. Who gets the money, the woman or her father?
R' Linzer sees this whole debate as being the Gemara grappling with the Kinyan model vs. the Kiddushin model: Is marriage the acquisition of a woman by a man, or is it the union of two souls?
Everybody agrees that if the kiddushin happens when the girl is under 12 years old, her father gets the money, because the kallah in that case is not legally competent to accept the money and her father is acting in loco parentis. Or the father is entitled to the labor of her hands, if we want the awful patriarchal language that the Talmud uses, but I think it amounts to the same thing. If she is 12 years old, she is legally competent to accept a marriage on her own (!), but the Gemara still wants to say that her father gets the money. This seems to accord with the acquisition model. But what the Gemara is stuck on, and takes all of the daf and then apparently more tomorrow, is why the father gets the money. R' Linzer mostly diagnoses this, and I think I agree, to the fact that the rules of marriage is not very explicit in the Torah and so there isn't a good textual basis to decide one way or another.