Monthly Archives: May 2021

by Rabbi Aryeh Klapper

Every once in a while a verse from Tanakh comes and just smacks you upside the head like a flounder. How could I not have known that? Why did the opposite always seem obvious?

    This week I was fishsmacked by Yechezkel 47:21-23:

:וְחִלַּקְתֶּ֞ם אֶת־הָאָ֧רֶץ הַזֹּ֛את לָכֶ֖ם לְשִׁבְטֵ֥י יִשְׂרָאֵֽל

וְהָיָ֗ה תַּפִּ֣לוּ אוֹתָהּ֘ בְּנַחֲלָה֒ לָכֶ֗ם

וּלְהַגֵּרִים֙ הַגָּרִ֣ים בְּתוֹכְכֶ֔ם אֲשֶׁר־הוֹלִ֥דוּ בָנִ֖ים בְּתֽוֹכְכֶ֑ם

וְהָי֣וּ לָכֶ֗ם כְּאֶזְרָח֙ בִּבְנֵ֣י יִשְׂרָאֵ֔ל

:אִתְּכֶם֙ יִפְּל֣וּ בְנַחֲלָ֔ה בְּת֖וֹךְ שִׁבְטֵ֥י יִשְׂרָאֵֽל

וְהָיָ֣ה בַשֵּׁ֔בֶט אֲשֶׁר־גָּ֥ר הַגֵּ֖ר אִתּ֑וֹ שָׁ֚ם תִּתְּנ֣וּ נַחֲלָת֔וֹ

נְאֻ֖ם אֲ-דֹנָ֥י יְקֹוִֽק: ס

You must divide this land to yourselves, to the tribes of Israel.

It will be that you will make it fall-by-lot as a homestead to you,

and to the gerim/converts who are gar/dwell among you, who have sired children in your midst.

They shall be to you like the ezrach/citizen of the Children of Israel;

 with you they will fall-by-lot into homestead,

 in the midst of the Tribes of Israel.

It will be in the tribe with which the convert dwells – there you will place his homestead. 

The word of Hashem Elokim.

     I always took for granted that converts did not have hereditary portions in the Land of Israel.  How could they, when the Land was fully distributed in the time of Yehoshua?! Also, I knew that according to Mishnah Bikkurim 1:4, converts do not read the Bikkurim declaration “because they cannot say that Hashem promised to our ancestors to give to us”, and that Rabbeinu Tam went so far as to suggest that converts could not be obligated in Grace after Meals because the second blessing expresses gratitude for the Land.

True, we rule against Rabbeinu Tam, and many hold against the Mishnah that converts read the Bikkurim declaration, on the ground that the Torah etymologizes Avraham as “av hamon goyim”, “father of (converts from) many nations”. True, the land is overall given to the collective Jewish people, including the converts among us. But converts don’t have hereditary homesteads that their children inherit, do they? Perhaps this is one of the contradictions between Yechezkel and Torah that Chananyah ben Chizkiyah stayed up all night resolving in order to keep it off the banned books list (Chagigah 13a).

 None of the standard traditional commentaries seem bothered. See for example Metzudat David 47:22:

 אתכם יפלו = עמכם יירשו בנחלה

with you they will fall-by-lot = they will inherit homesteads together with you.

As for the land being fully divided amongst the “original” clans – Abravanel spells out the standard resolution:

But why was this not also so in Yehoshua’s division of the Land?  Because the erev rav that ascended with Israel from Mitzrayim did not join them in their exile, and did not suffer their sufferings; rather, when they saw their success and redemption, they mixed into them, as Shemot 12:38 says: Also an erev rav/mixed multitude ascended with them, because they joined them only in their time of ascension, not before then, and also because they became a stumbling rock and tripping block to the Children of Israel in the Golden Calf episode and the other occasions of sin in the wilderness, and therefore it was not fitting for them to merit gaining homesteads with them.

But regarding the Future-To-Come, the prophet did not say here that the converts who would join them in the time of Redemption would homestead with the Children of Israel, because the Sages already said (Yebamot 24b) that “we must not accept converts in the Days of the Messiah”; rather he commanded this regarding the converts who dwelled among the Jews in Israel’s time of exile and accepted the holy covenant and endured the suffering of exile, because it is fit for them, that just as they became Israel to endure suffering, so too they should be part of the homesteading of the land, and this is what (Yechezkel 47:21-23) means  . . . that they will take their share of the good which Hashem will give-as-benefit to Israel = שמהטוב אשר יטיב השם לישראל יקחו חלקם.

 On this understanding, contemporary converts and their descendants will have full hereditary shares of the Land when it is reapportioned in Messianic times.

I read Abravanel’s last line as a deliberate allusion to Bamidbar 10:33, where Mosheh promises his in-laws that if they remain with the Jews,

 וְהָיָ֖ה כִּי־תֵלֵ֣ךְ עִמָּ֑נוּ

:וְהָיָ֣ה׀ הַטּ֣וֹב הַה֗וּא אֲשֶׁ֨ר יֵיטִ֧יב יְקֹוָ֛ק עִמָּ֖נוּ וְהֵטַ֥בְנוּ לָֽךְ

It will be that if you travel with us,

then it will be that the good which Hashem will give-as-benefit to us, we will give as benefit to you.

In other words, Mosheh promised them a share in the Land.  This reading is borne out by a beraita (Yerushalmi Bikkurim 1:4) which holds that specifically the descendants of Yitro could recite the Bikkurim declaration in full. (This connection is made by Torah Temimah. Note also that Kapot Temarim to Sukkah 34a explains that all converts can recite the declaration because it can be read as referring to the future – “to give to us” – and converts will have Hashem-given land in Messianic times.)

 Or HaChayyim takes a slightly more limited approach, suggesting that Mosheh offered a share specifically in the “Lands of Sichon and Og”, i.e. TransJordan, which was not part of the original Divine promise. This approach requires Mosheh to know in advance that Sichon and Og will refuse Israel permission to cross.

 Rashi, following Sifri, points to an even more limited approach. Mosheh offered Yitro the usufruct of a vast tract around Yericho, extending to Yerushalayim. According to some tannaim, this tract was left unapportioned so that the Temple could be built on unapportioned land. When the Temple was built, Yitro’s descendants were evicted after 440 years of tenancy.  

 These narrower approaches recognize that Bamidbar 10:32 is Mosheh’s second offer. His first offer is in 10:29:

:וַיֹּ֣אמֶר מֹשֶׁ֗ה לְ֠חֹבָב בֶּן־רְעוּאֵ֣ל הַמִּדְיָנִי֘ חֹתֵ֣ן מֹשֶׁה֒

נֹסְעִ֣ים׀ אֲנַ֗חְנוּ אֶל־הַמָּקוֹם֙ אֲשֶׁ֣ר אָמַ֣ר יְקֹוָ֔ק ‘אֹת֖וֹ אֶתֵּ֣ן לָכֶ֑ם’

לְכָ֤ה אִתָּ֙נוּ֙ וְהֵטַ֣בְנוּ לָ֔ךְ

:כִּֽי־יְקֹוָ֥ק דִּבֶּר־ט֖וֹב עַל־יִשְׂרָאֵֽל

Mosheh said to Chovev ben Reuel the Midianite, Mosheh’s in-law:

We are traveling to the place about which Hashem said “I will give it to you”;

go with us and we will give good-as-benefit to you

for Hashem has spoken of giving good to Israel.

This offer is rejected in 10:30:

:וַיֹּ֥אמֶר אֵלָ֖יו

לֹ֣א אֵלֵ֑ךְ

:כִּ֧י אִם־אֶל־אַרְצִ֛י וְאֶל־מוֹלַדְתִּ֖י אֵלֵֽךְ

He said to him:

I will not go

rather I will go to my land and my culture.

Sifri records a position in which Mosheh’s second offer is also rejected, presumably because it still implies second-class citizenship.    

  Sifri also records positions that greatly narrow the implications of Yechezkel 47. “If the verses cannot relate to homesteading; then apply them to atonement”, meaning that converts are atoned for by the sacrifices of the tribes they accompany; “If the verses cannot relate to homesteading, then apply them to burial”, meaning that converts have a right to be buried in the Land. These positions begin by reading Mosheh’s first offer as specifically excluding any land rights: “the place about which Hashem said “I will give it to you” – and not converts.”

 What sort of negotiation is taking place? Many commentaries understand Mosheh as interested in preserving Yitro’s status as a powerful symbol of the persuasive truth of Judaism: “If you leave now, everyone will say that your conversion was for gain, and you left when the gain was disappointing.” If that is correct, then perhaps Yitro’s reply should be understood as: “If your religion is true, then how can you not give converts’ genuinely equal status? Isn’t that both unjust and hypocritical, when your own Torah says there must be one law for them, for the convert and the citizen”?

 Chizkuni seems to acknowledge the moral force of Yitro’s argument, with Mosheh’s first response being that his hands are bound by Halakhah.

,והטבנו לך – מן השלל

אבל לתת לו חלק בארץ, לא היה הרשות בידם

we will give good-as-benefit to you from the spoils we take,

but to give him a portion in the land – they did not have the authority.

But when Yitro rejects that offer, Mosheh finds a loophole – the verse excluding converts did not apply to lands conquered beyond G-d’s original grant. Maybe that was enough to satisfy Yitro – Ramban thinks so –  but maybe not.

 Keli Yakar adopts a wholly different approach.

ואח”כ הבטיחו בטובה רוחנית

שיהיה מכלל הסנהדרין

שנקראו עיני העדה

כמ”ש והיית לנו לעינים

After (Yitro rejected the first offer) Mosheh promised him a spiritual good

namely that he would be included in the Sanhedrin

which are called “the eyes of the congregation”

as 10:31 says “and you will be eyes for us”

Mosheh’s second offer was not land but authority itself – he promised Yitro a seat on the Sanhedrin, a share in making the laws. (We will leave for another time how this promise can be squared with the halakhah excluding converts from positions of serarah.)

 If Yitro accepted this version of the second offer, then he probably joined the Sanhedrin with the express ambition of modifying halakhah to give converts fully equal inheritance rights. Perhaps the verses in Yechezkel reflect his success. But then the Mishnah, and Sifri, and Rabbeinu Tam all pushed back against that outcome, and also met with some success. The moral history of halakhic interpretation is not linear.

 Yitro accepted all of halakhah as binding even while maintaining his moral critique, and that is a powerful lesson for our generation. But we must also recognize that Yitro accepted only after Mosheh acknowledged that all those subject to halakhah must have seats at the highest tables of halakhic conversation and decisionmaking.

by Rabbi Aryeh Klapper

Law and limericks rarely mix. So I was astonished to run across the following introduction to a responsum from Rabbi Yitzchok Elchonon Spector, perhaps the greatest Ashkenazi posek of the late 19^th century:

A mostly frum lady named Etta

indulged in unhekhshered feta.

It was Ibsen’s great play,

that led her astray,

so that day a rav called her Hedda.

The urgent question presented to R. Spektor was about the woman’s divorce document. Obviously, it should have read עטא/Etta, but in fact read העדא/Hedda. A get must properly identify both parties to be valid. The husband had disappeared, so invalidating the get might make the woman an agunah for life. Yet could any reasonable person say that her name was “Hedda”?

R. Spektor was the international address for agunah questions, known for his broad shoulders, creativity, sensitivity, and diligence in resolving such issues. Rabbis referred their questions to him not as an abdication of responsibility but because they were confident that a permission from him would carry more weight than their own, and that there was no risk that he would forbid in any case where permission was possible. He did not disappoint in this case.

At first glance the gates of permission are locked with regard to this get, as this seems a case where the scribe “changed her name” from the one she is called by and uses as her autograph, and at first evaluation I see no clear permission because of the gravity of the issue. But with the help of G-d I now see that there is a way to permit her . . .

R. Spektor points to a Beit Shmuel that validates a get that is written for someone who was given a nickname rather than an ordinary name at birth, say “Bill” instead of “William”, even if one writes “William” in the get, so long as the vowels remain the same and everyone recognizes the relationship between the names. “Hedda” and “Etta” are close enough in the same way.

Here I need to confess: It was actually the other way around. The woman’s name was “Hetta”, and the get called her “Etta”. I changed the facts to match the limerick, which of course is also my invention. Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler opened in 1891, and R. Spektor’s responsum is dated 5652=1892, but the get was written no later than 5650, and Etta presumably ate only gevinat Yisroel with a mehadrin hekhsher her entire life.

But here’s the thing: the actual fact-pattern presented to Rav Elchanan contains many astonishing details that seem as halakhically irrelevant as Hetta’s taste in cheese. So why include them?

Here is a (partial) plot outline, which will take up almost the rest of this essay:

Shabtai, a struggling alum of Slobodka Yeshiva, shows up at Chief Rabbi Moshe Shimon Sivitz’s door in Pittsburgh with a letter of introduction. Rabbi Sivitz offers Shabtai money, but he refuses it, even though he isn’t earning enough to support his wife and baby in Europe. What he wants instead is a daily chavrusa, because it’s impossible to learn well by himself after a long day of hard and unremunerative work as a peddler. The chavrusa ends up involving much listening to moaning about economic failure and guilt.

A year later, Shabtai’s wife and toddler arrive in America. They all come together to Rabbi Sivitz’s house. He asks her: Why are you here? She replies that her father sent her to America to ask for a divorce, because her husband simply can’t support them, and she can’t make enough on her own as a sheitelmacher to survive. The rabbi turns to Shabtai and asks: What do you want? He replies, with his daughter clutching his hand, that he cannot bear the parting, but that his wife deserves the opportunity for a better life. Rabbi Sivitz tells them to come back tomorrow evening. If they still want the divorce, he will supervise it.

Meanwhile, he swings into action. An appeal to the local shochtim (kosher slaughterers) raises enough money to rent a nice apartment and stock it with food for a month, and more. The local day school needs a teacher. The local sheitelmacher has a place for someone with experience.

When the couple returns, he tells them that the get will be arranged in a different apartment. They look like prisoners being led off to jail as they follow him. There’s a banquet in progress when they arrive, and he tells them to join in – we’ll do the get afterward. The husband is honored with leading Grace after Meals, and only then does Rabbi Sivitz drop the news – this apartment is for you! You have jobs! Here’s money you can invest! Ecstasy ensues. The couple lives happily ever after and becomes very wealthy.   

Shabtai’s sister works for a rich man in Boston. He pays her well enough that she has real savings, which she sends to Shabtai, who entrusts them to Rabbi Sivitz for his free loan fund. One day, Shabtai shows up accompanied by an exceedingly handsome and broadly knowledgeable young man. The man introduces himself as a secretary working in the office of Andrew Carnegie, with a princely salary. Then Shabtai brings out his sister Hetta from Boston – mazal tov! They’re engaged!

But Hetta is as plain as her groom is handsome, and Rabbi Sivitz is suspicious. “Do you have any relatives here in Pittsburgh?” “No.” “How long have you been here?” “One month”. He calls over Shabtai and tells him: “Check this man out thoroughly, because I think he’ll take Hetta’s money and leave her an agunah!”. Not a day passes before Shabtai appears and demands Hetta’s money back then and there, because he’s heard “rumors” that the rabbi has wasted it. The rabbi is forced to borrow from short-term lenders (read: usurers) to repay it.  Shabtai then insists that the rabbi perform the wedding. Rabbi Sivitz tries to select invalid witnesses, and tells Shabtai “It’s for your sister’s good, so I can permit her when he leaves her an agunah!”, but Shabtai thwarts his plans.

Of course, the husband is gone without a trace the next morning. Shabtai goes from rabbi to rabbi in town seeking sgulot (supernatural assistance), and follows all their esoteric instructions without fail – but to no avail. Finally, as a last desperate measure, he shows up at our author’s door and insists: “You must give me a sgulah to bring her husband back for a get! If I sinned, why should my sister suffer?”

Rabbi Sivitz is fed up by now, and aside from that, does not believe in sgulot. But Shabtai won’t leave! So he decides to have a little fun. He writes out a long prayer and hands it to Shabtai with the following instructions: “First, you must memorize this. Then, place it in your chumash facing the verses in Parashat Ki Teitzei setting out the get process. Then put your chumash in the Holy Ark. Every night between and 2 am, go to the shul in the dark and put your head inside the Ark and recite this prayer.  Tell no one what you are doing!” Shabtai finally leaves. Rabbi Sivitz assumes that he’ll realize by the next day that this is ridiculous, but meanwhile at least he’s out of the house.

Next week, Shabtai is arrested as a thief. People caught him breaking into shul after midnight! He tells Rabbi Sivitz that he’s not bitter – it’s just a little hard that people follow him wherever he goes, especially when he goes to shul at 1 every morning. But his sister matters above all, so he’ll keep doing it. Rabbi Sivitz has nothing to say. He heads off to Cleveland for an extended business trip with a heavy heart.

On his return, his wife meets him at the door excitedly: “Did you hear? A rabbi in Baltimore sent a letter saying that a man showed up saying that he couldn’t live with himself having left a woman an agunah in Pittsburgh, and he wanted a get right away, so please send the wife’s names for the get immediately! You weren’t here, so I asked R. Ploni to send the names, and he did, and here’s Hetta’s get!”. Except of course that Hetta’s get was written “Etta”.

Reading this amazing story, I had to wonder. None of it matters halakhically other than the names and the reality that the woman would be an agunah if the get were invalidated. So why did Rabbi Sivitz write the whole story out?

Some of the Chavot Yair’s fact-patterns seem similarly baroque (I am not the first to notice this), so perhaps there is an undiscovered genre of Rabbinic short stories. Maybe limericks will yet emerge.

Or maybe one really needs to write the full story, every time. Let me briefly explain why.

An Israeli rabbanut beit din some years ago heard the case of an American man who serially married Christian woman and absconded immediately with all the wedding gifts. He then discovered his Jewish heritage and moved to Israel, where he found a Jewish victim, and promptly vanished again overseas. She asked to have the marriage annulled as a mekach taut, a mistaken transaction. One dayyan argued that since Rav Yitzchok Elchonon (and Rabbi Sivitz, and Rabbi Yaakov Yosef of New York) all validated Hetta’s questionable get rather than annulling her marriage, obviously they held that women would knowingly marry such scoundrels, and so annulment was impossible.

With Rabbi Sivitz’s narrative in hand, we can easily reject the comparison. Rabbi Sivitz presumably warned Hetta via Shabtai, and she was persuaded to go ahead anyway. That case where a specific woman accepted a known risk cannot be generalized to one in which the marriage took place in perfect innocence, with no obvious way (I believe this was pre-Google) to investigate the groom’s past career in a different country.

On the other hand, the rabbi citing the case had Rabbi Sivitz’s narrative in hand; I followed his citation to L’veit Yaakov, Shu”t Uvirurei Halakhah #4. So I wonder in turn whether the summary in the rabbanut decision conveys the full facts of the case.

That Rabbanut decision also includes separate opinions from four rather than three dayyanim, and each opinion ends without an actual ruling. Some years later, one of the dayyanim went outside the rabbanut system and convened an ad hoc beit din for the purpose of issuing a leniency in a case with a similar but more detailed fact-pattern. Perhaps there is a plague of such wedding-jumpers, but I suspect that the story of that decision as well would make a fine film.   

by Rabbi Aryeh Klapper

Sefer Bamidbar opens by describing G-d as speaking to Moshe “in the wilderness of Sinai, in the Tent of Appointment”.  Why “in the Tent of Appointment”?  Bamidbar Rabbah answers as follows:

Because G-d spoke to Moshe

at Sinai through the shrub, in Midian, in Egypt, and at Sinai,

but once the Tent of Appointment was stood up,

He said:

“יפה הוא הצניעות”

“tzeniut is beautiful”,

as Scripture says (Mikhah 6):

והצנע לכת עם א-להיך

“and walking in tzeniut with your Divinity”,

so He spoke with him (only) from within the Tent of Appointment.

 Why does G-d only realize that tzeniut is beautiful now?  Furthermore, there is a vast difference between Moshe’s private experiences in the Wilderness and the very public Revelation at Sinai.  Does G-d k’b’yakhol regret that Revelation, and decide in retrospect that He would have been better off speaking only to Mosheh? 

 The answers to these questions have immediate implications for human behavior, because the Rabbis clearly situate this Divine tzeniut as a model for human tzeniut.  First, they likely read the prooftext as “and walking in tzeniut together with your Divinity”.  Second, the midrash continues by citing Tehillim 41:11, כל כבודה בת מלך פנימה ממשבצות לבושה.  After an initial interpretation in which the בת מלך = daughter of the king is Mosheh, and the משבצות זהב לבושה = the one wearing the gold settings = Aharon the High Priest, we read:

:מיכן אמרו

,אשה שהיא מצנעת עצמה

,אפי’ היא ישראלית

ראויה היא שתנשא לכהן

,ותעמיד כהנים גדולים

שנא’

“ממשבצות זהב לבושה”

On this basis they said:

A woman who is matznia herself,

even if she does not descend from kohanim,

she is worthy to marry a Kohen

and to raise High Priests

as Scripture writes: 

“her garments will be from those with golden settings”.

So there is a parallel between the tzeniut of G-d and the tzeniut that is praiseworthy in human women.  Does tzeniut for women become a primary value only once they enter their appointed tents, whereas until then the goal is to attract their bashert, as G-d needed to attract Moshe at the Smoldering Shrub?  Was Sinai a chuppah?

 Resh Lakish (Shemot Rabbah 41:5) uses Shemot 31:18 to make a similar connection.

– “ויתן אל ממשה כככלתו לדבר אתו בהר סיני”

אמר רשב”ל

מה כלה זו

כל ימים שהיא בבית אביה מצנעת עצמה ואין אדם מכירה

וכשבאת ליכנס לחופתה היא מגלה פניה

,כלומר כל מי שהוא יודע לי עדות יבא ויעיד עלי

כך תלמיד חכם

צריך להיות צנוע ככלה הזו

ומפורסם במעשים טובים

ככלה הזו שהיא מפרסמת עצמה

“He gave to Mosheh kekallato speaking with him at Mount Sinai” –

Said Resh Lakish:

Just as a kallah=bride –

all the days in her father’s house she is matznia herself, and no one can recognize her,

but when she comes to enter the bridal canopy she reveals her face,

as if to say “Let anyone who knows testimony against me (that I have been untzanua)”,

So too a Torah scholar

must be tzanua as this bride

and publicly known for his good deeds

like this bride who publicizes herself.

This line of interpretation does not merely see G-d’s tzeniut as a model for women to emulate.  It sees Mosheh as the groom and G-d as the bride.  The Rabbis had no difficulty imagining G-d as feminine.  

 To make the analogy between G-d and bride account for G-d’s pre-Sinai conversations with Mosheh, we must say that the Bride does reveal Her face to one man (Mosheh) before the chuppah, where She unveils herself publicly to demonstrate to all present that they have never seen Her face.  Sinai is not an arranged marriage, but rather k’b’yakhol follows dates at the shrub, in Midyan, and in Mitzrayim. 

 The truth is that even Mosheh never sees G-d’s face.  That gap is important, because it is tempting to read Resh Lakish as setting up objective requirements of physical tzeniut.  With the gap acknowledged, Resh Lakish must be read instead as establishing a standard relative to the general and specific social circumstances of the bride.

 Moreover, the midrash taken as a whole radically desexualizes the concept of tzeniut.  There is no fear of eroticism behind Resh Lakish’s requirement for scholars to avoid publicizing their specific good deeds, and given Resh Lakish, no need to eroticize G-d’s preference for tzeniut in Revelation.  The midrash instead assumes and demands a conceptualization capable of encompassing tzeniut all three contexts: physical, deeds, and Divine.

 One might still ask: Why does the analogy generate physical tzeniut for women, and deed tzeniut for men?  In the end, don’t the Rabbis imagine G-d as female only to protect their eyes and souls from the sight of actual women? 

My reply is that both premises of the question are incorrect.  Resh Lakish’s requirement for deed tzeniut applies to female scholars – why should it not?  And I will now seek to demonstrate that the requirements of physical tzeniut derived from G-d’s choices apply to both men and women.

 We saw above that a woman who is matznia herself merits raising High Priests; because she emulates G-d’s tzeniut in Revelation, she merits having her children be the intimates of that Revelation.  What does this meritorious tzeniut entail?

 The generic woman of our midrash is an abstraction drawn of the case of Kimchit.  In Vayikra Rabbah (Acharei Mot 20), we read:

.שבעה בנים היו לה לקמחית, וכולן שמשו בכהונה גדולה

?אמרו לה חכמים: מה עשית שזכית לכך

.אמרה להם: מימי לא ראו קורות ביתי קלעי שערי

.אמרו לה: הרבה עשו כן, ולא הועילו

A beraita:

Kimchit had seven sons, and all of them served as High Priest.

The Sages said to her: “What have you done to merit this?”

She replied: “In all my days the walls of my house never saw the braids of my hair.”

They said to her: “Kimchit, all the kemach=flour you have made is finely sifted”.

They applied to her the verse “כל כבודה בת מלך פנימה ממשבצות לבושה”.

 This seems to be a valorization of extreme tzeniut.  Kimchit apparently kept her hair covered at all times, even in her own house, even when it was braided, and even when there was no one to see it but the walls.

 On Yoma 47a, the same story is told with at least a hint of ambivalence.  In this version, the Rabbis respond not with praise but with skepticism:

הרבה עשו כן ולא הועילו

“Many have done what you did, without achieving the same result”,

and they make no mention of our verse.

 The phrase “many have done … but … ” most famously appears on Berakhot 35b as Abbayay’s verdict on the position of Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai that Jews should do nothing but study Torah, and trust that G-d will arrange for their fields to be harvested by others.  This nonetheless remains a live controversy to our own day, and the text certainly can be read as saying that this is a fundamentally praiseworthy path that only an elite can properly take.  One might therefore understand Kimchit’s extreme tzeniut in the same vein.

 However, I think that a better parallel is found on Niddah 69b-71a, where the people of Alexandria ask Rabbi Yehoshua ben Chananya three questions related to derekh eretz:  How does one become wise?  How does one become rich?  How does one have male children?  Rabbi Yehoshua’s answers are likely playful – for example, his answers make wisdom and wealth mutually exclusive.  Regardless, the Alexandrians respond that “Many have done what you suggest, without achieving the desired result”. Rabbi Yehoshua responds that ultimately one must pray, but that – at least according to the Talmud – prayer will be more effective if accompanied by his recommended actions. 

 Kimchit likely gave the same answer to the Sages – I prayed for my sons to become High Priests, but my prayers were answered only because of my supreme tzeniut.  Perhaps she was correct, and her path was praiseworthy, even if most women would not do well trying to follow it.

 But Rabbi Yehoshua’s answer to the last question asked by the Alexandrians – How does one have male children? –  is

 He must marry a woman who is appropriate for him, and sanctify himself during sex.

Rashi comments:

“sanctify himself” – to have sex with tzeniut.

(see also Masekhet Derekh Eretz 6:2)

With this text in mind, it seems to me likely that Kimchit’s answer itself was tzanua – she meant that she did not uncover her hair even during sex. 

 So it turns out that both men and women go to the same extremes of tzeniut in hopes of reward.  And as a result, it is clear that the extremes of tzeniut discussed here have nothing to do with a hypothetical male gaze, or for that matter any real or hypothetical human gaze.  The concern is rather for the Divine gaze, that sexuality per se is inherently embarrassing. 

 Practitioners of extreme tzeniut are constantly sewing fig leaves lest G-d come walking through their garden.  I submit that their actions may be profound expressions of fear of G-d, but that they are not engaged in imitatio dei.       Shabbat Shalom and Chag Sameach!

by Rabbi Aryeh Klapper

Practical Halakhah exists in constant dialogue with the world around it. Competent poskim know and respond to the social, political, and economic realities of their communities. In turn, halakhah shapes those realities in important ways. Consider for example the effect of capitalism on the laws of interest, and the effect of halakhah on the price of ungrafted citrons.

Igrot Mosheh EH 1:49 was written when Rav Moshe Feinstein was living in Luban, Belarus. According to the biography printed at the start of Igrot Mosheh vol. 8, most of Rav Moshe’s teshuvot written in that period were lost in transit. The ones that survive often establish themes that recur in his halakhic decisions. In general, while Rav Moshe’s specific halakhic positions sometimes shifted over time, his underlying commitments were rock-solid. One of those commitments was to freeing agunot, and more, to an expansive notion of what constitutes a situation of iggun.   

Belarus had joined the USSR in 1922, and Stalin had come to power in 1924. The combination of ideological opposition to religion and totalitarianism changed the reality of agunah cases in three ways. First, many women had a real option of leaving the religious community if the rabbis refused them permission to remarry. Second, even women who stayed within the community might see halakhah on this issue as an obstacle course rather than as a substantive moral guide. Third, husbands might very well be “disappeared” forever without notice and without record. Each of these factors potentially altered the classical calculus of credibility.  

Mishnah Yebamot 15:1 states that if a couple goes abroad, and the woman returns alone claiming to be a widow, she is believed, even if her ground for the claim is hearsay. Ordinarily, two valid direct witnesses are necessary to undo a presumption of marriage. The Talmud offers a complex explanation for why the standards of evidence are relaxed here. There is a stick: if a court allows the remarriage and the husband turns up alive, she is forbidden to both men, and her children from the remarriage are now considered mamzerim.  There is a motive: the Rabbis were lenient in order to free women from being agunot. And there is a rationale, framed as a chazakah or legal presumption: a woman investigates (her husband’s alleged death) comprehensively before remarrying.

Rav Moshe’s interlocutor questions whether the chazakah is still applicable. He notes that in the Talmud, a woman is believed if she claims in her presumptive husband’s presence that he has divorced her. The ground for believing her is a chazakah attributed to Rav Hamnuna that “A woman is not brazen in the presence of her husband”. But RAMO EH 17:2 codifies the position that because of societal changes, this chazakah no longer generates the credibility necessary to allow remarriage. Perhaps the same is true for the chazakah that women investigate comprehensively before remarrying?

Rav Moshe responds with an emphatic no. The changes that led RAMO to sideline Rav Hamnuna’s chazakah regarding divorce have no necessary implications for the chazakah regarding death. Rav Moshe ignores entirely, and I suggest deliberately, the question of whether changes specific to his own time and place have weakened the latter chazakah. Everything he says could have been written identically in the late 16^th century.

Two halakhic issues remain, however.

The first is that the Mishnah says that the widow is believed only if “there is peace in the world and peace among them”. If there is war, then perhaps the husband is alive and prevented from returning or communicating. If there was marital strife, then perhaps the husband is maliciously staying out of contact precisely to make his wife an agunah. Rav Moshe notes that even by the woman’s account, the husband had been completely out of touch for twenty years before his death. That seems to show clearly that he was in fact willing and maybe eager to leave her an agunah, so why is she believed?

He offers three responses.

The first is entirely technical. Talmud Yebamot 116a limits “lack of peace between them” to the extreme case in which the wife has previously made a false claim of divorce. RAMO EH 17:48 cites a position that adds the case of a husband who apostasized. Rav Moshe argues that RAMO does not intend to broaden the category to cases like those two cases, but only to add that one case. He contends that this is a better reading of RAMO’s source in Shiltei Gibborim. (I am not sure why.)

Rav Moshe’s second response is that in this case, there are witnesses that the woman behaved as a widow the moment she reported the husband’s death. He contends that this enhances her credibility. (I am not sure why.)

The third response is that even the extension to apostasy is controversial.

Rav Moshe does not address the question whether the gulag might play the same role as “lack of peace in the world”.

Overall, Rav Moshe’s responses seem weak if his goal is to convince us that the woman is obviously being truthful. However, they make a great deal of sense in light of Maharik #72.

Maharik notes that Mishnah Yebamot 15:2 frames the decision to relax the standards of evidence as resulting from a specific case in which a beit din investigated a woman’s claim to be widowed and it proved true. Tosafot Yebamot 116b comments that “because they saw that there would be many agunot if they did not believe her”. Maharik explains that the specific case taught the Rabbis that even women who told the truth would often be unable to find sufficient formal evidence. The Rabbis knew that some women would falsely claim to be widows; it would be ridiculous to conclude from one case that all women always told the truth in such situations. But they created the legal presumption anyway, because the consequences of the higher standard were unbearable.

Rav Moshe does essentially the same thing. He presumably knows that the situation in the USSR made false claims more likely, but it also made more true claims impossible to prove. The balance of those changes meant that the rule should be left intact.

However, a compromise is available. Rav Moshe has the option of saying that the rabbi should at least make a good faith effort to verify the woman’s claim before permitting her to remarry. Pitchei Teshuvah 17:158 cited Radbaz as saying that in some cases where an investigation can be easily done, it must be done.

Rav Moshe declines the compromise, on two grounds. First, he asserts that Radbaz required this only in cases where a woman was reputed to be licentious, and he sees no grounds for making this a general rule. (It seems likely that Rav Moshe did not see the original of Shu”t Radbaz 3:542, which strongly confirms his position. Radbaz seems to be dealing with a case in which a woman had made previous false claims of widowhood.) Second, Rav Moshe writes that since there is a man prepared to marry the widow in his case, and that man may not be willing to wait around while the rabbi investigates – the case is one of iggun gamur, just as if the woman were being prevented from marrying at all. (It’s not clear whether Rav Mosheh would have the same objection if the woman did not have a proposal in hand.)

I derive three principles from this teshuvah of Rav Moshe.

1)      While chazakot are influenced by social changes, there is no straight line from a change in circumstances to a change in law. The legal presumptions that Chazal created via chazakot resulted from an interplay between their evaluation of reality and their sense of what halakhic outcomes were necessary or desirable.

2)      Decisions in agunah cases are not properly classified as chumrot or kullot. Preventing a woman from remarrying is a wrong comparable to the stringency of allowing a woman to commit adultery. I don’t mean that 50/50 cases should be decided by a coin flip, or even necessarily that one can permit remarriage when the odds are less than 999,999,999 to 1. What I mean is that Chazal set up a very precise balance, and that any deviation from that balance, either way, is equally problematic.

3)      For agunot, justice delayed can be equivalent to justice denied.

Shabbat shalom!