2,711 pages of Talmud. A gem a day.

What a scene we have today!

As Rabba bar bar Ḥana said: We were five elders sitting before Rabbi Yoshiya from Usha. A certain man came before him, and Rabbi Yoshiya extracted the authorization to write a bill of divorce from him against his will. Rabbi Yoshiya said to us: Go hide and write for her a bill of divorce, so that the husband will not find you and render the bill of divorce void after it has been written. 
Gets, meaning Jewish divorces, are sexist. The woman had to pay for them but only a man can give them. So, what do we do when a man is abusive? When the woman wants a divorce? Well, a court can “compel” the husband to give it. That’s todays gem. A court forcing a man to divorce his wife and protecting her from him trying to take it back. Bravo rabbis. Only thing better would be to let her give the divorce herself…

Before quoting the daf, let’s quote Bruno Mars:

Although it hurts
I’ll be the first to say that I was wrong
Oh, I know I’m probably much too late
To try and apologize for my mistakes
But I just want you to know

I hope he buys you flowers
I hope he holds your hand
Give you all his hours
When he has the chance
Take you to every party
‘Cause I remember how much you loved to dance
Do all the things I should have done
When I was your man

It’s a song all about regretting breaking up with his girlfriend and wishing he would have treated her better. Todays daf reminds me of the song.

The mishna states: If he stated that he regretted giving the divorce and don’t mean it once the bill of divorce had entered her possession, he can no longer render it void, as the divorce had already taken effect. The Gemara asks: Isn’t this obvious? Once the bill of divorce has entered her possession, they are divorced. The Gemara answers: No, it is necessary for the mishna to state that even in a case where he was going around searching for the bill of divorce from the beginning in order to render it void before it reached his wife, once it enters her possession it is too late. 

It’s too late guy. Here a man sends a divorce to his wife by agent but regrets his decision. If he can intercept the messenger he can save the marriage. But if it has already reached her – there is no turning back.
He’ll be singing Bruno Mars.

A reminder on the daf to be nice.

The Gemara relates that Rav Huna and Rav Ḥisda were sitting, and Geneiva passed by them. One said to the other: Let us stand before him, as he is a son of the Torah. The other said to him: Shall we stand before a quarrelsome person?

so just remember that no matter how important you are, if you are not kind, people will not show you respect. Hi how are you?

A new daf, a new Mishna.

With regard to one who lends money to a priest, or to a Levite, or to a poor person, with the understanding that he will separate their portion of the teruma and tithes from his produce on the basis of that money, i.e., he will subtract from the debt owed by the priest or Levite the value of the teruma and tithes separated from the produce, he may separate the teruma and tithes from his produce on the basis of that money with the presumption that they are still alive, and he need not be concerned that perhaps the priest or the Levite died in the interim, or that the poor person became richand is no longer eligible to be given the poor man’s tithe.
Now, the gem is the Gemara:

And according to the Sages, what is different about death, when the poor man dies, that they instituted an ordinanceto enable the homeowner to continue to separate tithes based on other poor people, and what is different about wealth,when the poor man becomes wealthy, that they did not institute an ordinance? The Gemara answers: Death is common, whereas wealth is not common, and the Sages did not enact an ordinance for an uncommon circumstance. Rav Pappa said: This explains the folk saying that people say: If one says to you that your friend died, then believe it; but if one says to you that your friend became wealthy, do not believe it until it has been proven.

This made me chuckle out loud. If someone claims someone is dead, believe them. But if someone claims to be rich…. Better check.

The daf is discussing if an agent appointed by a husband to deliver a divorce can have someone else do it in their stead (examples are given as to why they might need to including sickness, circumstances beyond their control, not knowing who the woman is…)

There was an incident involving a certain man who sent a bill of divorce to his wife with an agent. The agent said: I do not know her. The husband said to him: Go give the bill of divorce to Abba bar Minyumi, as he knows her, and he will go and give it to her. So now, the agents job is not to deliver the divorce to the woman, but to deliver it to Abba bar Minyumi. The agent came and did not find Abba bar Minyumi, and he did not know what to do. He found Rabbi Abbahu and Rabbi Ḥanina bar Pappa and Rabbi Yitzḥak Nappaḥa, and Rav Safra was sitting among them. The agent asked them what he should do. The first three Sages said to him: Transfer your words, i.e., your agency, before us, as when Abba bar Minyumi comes, we will give the bill of divorce to him, and he will go and give it to her.

Rav Safra said to them: But isn’t he an agent who is not granted the ability to effect divorce, as he was given only the authority to transfer the bill of divorce to Abba bar Minyumi? Therefore, he cannot transfer the agency to another person. These Sages were embarrassed that they ruled improperly.

Rava said: Rav Safra struck [kappeḥinhu] a blow to three ordained Sages, as although he was from Babylonia and not ordained, he was correct. 

This is my gem. It’s like kids saying “you got burned” or that someone “schooled” them. It’s amazing and hilarious and reminds us that this document was written by a bunch of boys being boys – really smart boys but still.

Today we get a new Mishna!

MISHNA: In the case of an agent who brings a bill of divorce to a woman, and when he had left the husband was elderly or sick, the agent gives her the bill of divorce based on the presumption that the husband is still alive, and there is no concern that in the meantime he has died, thereby canceling the bill of divorce.

But what, the Gemara wonders, is an elderly man??

GEMARA: Rava says: They taught that this presumptive status exists only concerning an elderly man who has not reached his years of strength, i.e., the age of eighty, and an ordinary sick person, as the majority of sick people continue to live and recover from their illnesses. But if the husband was an elderly man who had reached his years of strength, or if he was moribund, then, as the majority of moribund people proceed to die, he does not have this presumptive status.

But the Mishna was more specific: Abaye raised an objection to Rava’s statement from a baraita: With regard to an agent who brings a bill of divorce and left the husband when he was old, even one hundred years old, he gives the bill of divorce to the wife, based on the presumption that her husband is still alive. The Gemara concludes: This is a conclusive refutation, and Rava’s statement is rejected.

I love this. What is old? Is it 70? 80? 100? This could be a debate from today. I remember as a child that 60 was officially old. 40 was “over the hill” and that all grammas had short tight, white curls. But today? They say 60 is the new 40 and 40 is the new 20. Grandmas look ridiculously amazing and moms look like their teenaged equivalents from the back. What is old?

I think we all know it when we see it and it hits us all at different ages. All the sudden my dad was old. Complaining of his bones, unable to really walk. But I know people decades older than him who could our run me.
The Mishna is worried about if should assume someone is alive or not and tries to base it on age. But one persons 80 is very different from another’s. So what can we assume? Nothing. Each of us ages differently and in fits and starts.

May our minds grow wise and our bodies stay agile.

On our daf we get a new Mishna that says: MISHNA: With regard to an agent who brings a bill of divorce and it was lost from him, if he finds it immediately then the bill of divorce is valid.

The rest of the daf debates what immediately means. I love this because I am currently on an organized tour and learning that time is very much subjective. “Be right there” can mean instant or 30 minutes later. I guess that was a problem in Talmudic times as well.

(the danger here on the daf is if too much time passes or a caravan passes or other people pass by then there is a possibility that it’s not the same divorce document…)

So, it’s not a new thing for a man to say he wants to marry a woman one day to get her in bed and then changes his mind after. But, when one of the ways you legally marry a woman is through intercourse things might get tricky.
If a man said to a woman: I am engaging in sexual intercourse with you for the purpose of betrothal on the condition that my father will desire our betrothal, and then he married her without specification, then even if the father did not desire it she is nevertheless betrothed through this act of intercourse. Rabbi Shimon ben Yehuda says in the name of Rabbi Shimon: If the father desires it, she is betrothed, and if the father does not desire it, she is not betrothed. It is therefore evident that according to Rabbi Shimon, there is retroactive clarification when one makes the outcome dependent on the decision of others, as in this case whether or not this betrothal takes effect is dependent on the desire of the father.

Did he ever think his dad would approve? Would his dad have approved if they didn’t go about it this way?
The only gem is that we no longer live in those times. Okay, many of us, especially in North America no longer have to worry about losing value when we los our virginity and don’t have to worry so much about parental approval.

Growing up as a “Rachel,” I was never the only one in Jewish settings. now, I am a rabbi at a congregation with a day school (15 months-5th grade) with over 500 kids and there is not a single Rachel. All to say, names go in and out of style, even in the Jewish world.

Todays we get a new Mishna that begins by teaching, Any bill of divorce that was not written for the sake of a specific woman is invalid. What is the main concern here? That a divorce document would have her name on it – but the intent of the original writing was that it be given to someone ELSE who happens to have the same name. Moreover, if one wrote a bill of divorce with which to divorce his wife but later reconsidered, and a resident of his town found him and said to him: My name is the same as your name, and my wife’s name is the same as your wife’s name, and we reside in the same town; give me the bill of divorce and I will use it; the bill of divorce is unfit for the second man to divorce his wife with it. Moreover, if one had two wives and their names were identical, and he wrote a bill of divorce to divorce the older one and then reconsidered, he may not divorce the younger one with it.

Now, how rare would that be? Two men with the same name married to two women with the same name in the same town? Or a man with two wives – both who have the same name?! But we have already learned as a general concept that the Talmud does not base a law on something that only happens very rarely. So it must happen.

Our congregation has two Miriam Singers, three Jeff Cohens, three Richard Cohens, two Adam Goldsteins, two Robert Behars, two Richard Hoffmans – none related to one another- and those are just off the top of my head, so I believe it.

Two wonderful gems in our daf. The first is pushback from Rav Yosef when his colleagues say a blind person cannot serve as a witness to a divorce since they can’t say they “saw” the writing and signing.

Rav Yosef objects to this: If there is a concern that a blind person cannot distinguish between different people, then how is a blind man permitted to have sexual relations with his wife? How does he know that she is in fact his wife? Similarly, how are all people permitted to have sexual relations with their wives at night? If it is dark, they cannot see them. Rather, you must say that they are permitted through voice recognition [teviut eina dekala]. They can recognize each other based on their voices. Here too, with regard to a blind person, he can recognize the giver and receiver of the bill of divorce through voice recognition.

YES!!!! Want to know why he’s such a phenomenal advocate? Because he himself went blind. Sefaria describes him as:

“A contemporary of Rabbah, Rav Yosef became the head of the academy in Pumpedita after Rabbah’s death. He was known for his humility and for his mastery of the corpus of Jewish law. While wealthy, Rav Yosef had health issues which brought him blindness and the loss of memory.”

Disability is something some to almost all of us experience at some point in our lives. We should all squash that narrative that those with disabilities are somehow less than. Diversity makes us all better and the world less boring.

Second gem you have heard from me before, but I care passionately about women’s health care and abortion right. So here’s ANOTHER Talmudic text that gives backing to a woman being able to have autonomy over her own body.

In accordance with the opinion of Rabbi Yehuda HaNasi, who says: With regard to one who emancipates half of his slave,the slave acquires freedom for half of himself, and one of them added an explanation and said: What is the reasoning of Rabbi Yehuda HaNasi for this ruling? He holds: A fetus is considered as its mother’s thigh, i.e., a part of its mother’s body, and it is as though the master transferred ownership of one of her limbs to her. Since the maidservant is pregnant, the child is considered to be a part of her, and it is as though he emancipated a portion of her body. Therefore, the mother is not acting as an agent for the child, and this halakha does not present a difficulty for Rabbi Yoḥanan’s opinion.