This week's parsha (24:1-4) discusses the concept of divorce. The pasuk says (24:1) "If a man marries a woman and lives with her, and it will be that she will not find favor in his eyes, for he found in her a matter of immorality, and he wrote her a bill of divorce..." There are a few points I would like to focus on here.
The first point is "for he found in her a matter of immorality" this part of the pasuk is a little confusing. The first part said she did not find favor in his eyes now it says because she did something immoral. Well what if he just did not like her? Can a man just give his wife Get because he does not like the way she brushes her teeth or something like that?
A second point I want to talk about is a sefer kritut "bill of divorce." What exactly does the term mean. The torah never uses the word Get instead it uses the phrase "a book of separation." This word comes from the same root as the word karet. This is a punishment where your neshama is actually removed from Hashem's presence. When this happens you just stop existing. It is the worst possible thing that can happen to a person. While dying is not permanent your neshama being destroyed is not something that can be fixed. What does this word karet have to do with divorce?
There is a very interesting chazal on the subject. A rabbi comes to a few of his friends and tells them that he wants to get a divorce with his wife because he cannot even find one positive quality about her. So they ask if she is pretty, he says no. They ask if she is smart, he says no. They ask if she comes from a good family or if she is a good mother or if she can cook or... and at each question he answers that she cannot and is not any of those things. So they ask him what her name is he answers that her name is the Aramaic equivalent to the word 'dirt'. They say that is the perfect name for someone like her and for this reason he should not divorce her. This is quite a puzzling chazal. With all of those negative traits more men nowadays would not stay married to her for more than a week. The torah has a very different understanding about what marriage means that many people nowadays just do not get (no pun intended).
According to the torah marriage is more than just a physical and emotional connection between two people. Marriage is the connection of two parts into one whole. "It is not good that man be alone." (Bereishit 2:18) When a man marries a woman she becomes part of him. Now if someone's leg started hurting him he would never think to remove it he would go to the doctor to get it better so too if someone did not get along with his wife he should try to disconnect rather he should fix their relationship. Chazal say that a woman does not really have free will for the way she acts towards her husband and that everything that she does to him is from Hashem. Therefore if someone is in a fight with his wife he should not get angry at her instead he should figure out which sin he has committed and fix his relationship with Hashem. This is what this pasuk is trying to tell us. It is not enough for someone to not like his wife to give her a divorce, because any problem he sees in her is a problem with him. The only reason to get a divorce is because she did something immoral. Also this explains the second point, the sefer kritut. A Get is not just a separation between the two people it is literally a separation of an organ from the body. When Hashem created Chava from Adam's rib He was showing Adam that his wife is literally part of him. So a divorce is actually removing part of your body from you.
Now for a deeper meaning behind these pasukim. We have discussed earlier the idea that the Gra brings down that the man represents the neshama and the woman represents the guf. So now let us go through these four pasukim again with this in mind. Hashem places the neshama into the guf and the neshama is so disgusted by all of the bad things that the guf is doing that he wants out. So just like the story in Yonah the neshama leaves the guf (the boat). Now the guf leaves the neshama meaning that they get separated. The neshama goes to be judged while the guf gets buried in the ground. The Gra explains in Yonah that there is an angel named Dumah that is in charge of all of the bodies in the graveyard so this may be the man spoken about in pasuk two. Now the guf is in the ground being watched by Dumah and it is time for techiyat hamaitim "rising of the dead." So Dumah leaves all of the bodies. Now in pasuk four the guf wants to be connected to the neshama again but they can no longer be connected. The Gra explains that in the time of techiyat hamaitim not all of the bodies come back, only that guf which perfected itself will be able to come back but all other bodies are disconnected from their neshama forever. (Of course there are many who disagree with the Gra...) I do not know for sure how well this works but I think it fits pretty well.
Nice blog, I'm glad I found it.
ReplyDeleteThis is the first post I am reading so it's my first chance to give you feedback but I think it's important to leave my comment on this one.
You make it sound like a husband and wife can only get divorced because of immorality on the woman's end. There are plenty of other reasons why a man and woman would get divorced and it is not always the woman's fault - even though this is what it sounds like from your post.
What if the husband was abusive, mentally unstable or not healthy? Should a woman let herself and her children be in danger?
I think that this post should have been a little bit more open-minded and accepting towards divorce. There are situations where it is neccessary and if it is done right (without fighting in front of children) it is also beneficial for all parties involved.
Thank you for the feedback. I did not mean it in that way and I apologize for the confusion. I saw in the Gra (Kol Eliyahu) on this pasuk (after posting my dvar torah) that a man can only divorce his first wife because of the reason of immorality. But once it comes to the second wife then even if he does not like her that is enough of a reason for him to give her a Get.
ReplyDeleteBut we know that sometimes a marriage does not work out. The reason why the case of a bad husband is not presented in the gemara is because (as can be found in a sefer by Rav Yaakov Hillel) that each Rabbi named in the gemara was on the highest level of the Briata/sa of Rabbi Yishmael (the briata/sa that the Mesilat Yesharim is based on). Therefore, there was never a case of a tanna doing something bad. Therefore, no cases of a bad husband were presented in the gemara. But the Rambam brings the famous case of the husband who will not give his wife a Get that he should be beat until he says that he wants to give her a Get. So it may be possible to say that a bad husband is not from Hashem and therefore the man can be forced to (willingly) give a Get to his wife for those reasons. But, in order for him to find a fault big enough in his wife it must be equal to the sin of immorality. Much like a man and his slave (not that I am trying to say that a wife her husband's slave, but many Rabbis have brought this same analogy) The pasuk says that a man must treat his slave like his brother. But yet, the slave must act like a slave. So which is it? It the slave like a brother or is he like a slave? The answer is that from the perspective of the master the slave is like his brother but from the perspective of the slave the he is just a master. The Rambam brings the requirements that a husband must do for his wife in one perek and the requirements of the wife in another perek. One halacha is that the husband must treat his wife like a queen and support her. But a different halacha says that the woman must treat her husband like a king and cook for him. But if he is acting like a king and she is acting like a queen and neither of them is helping out the other then this relationship will not go anywhere. It is only when each side treats the other like royalty that the relationship will work. As Rav Eliyahu Dessler famously said the word love in hebrew Ahava comes from the root "Hav" to give in Aramaic. Therefore, a couple's relationship will only work if they are constantly thinking about what they can give to their spouse.
Again I apologize for the misinterpretation and I hope this clarifies things. Thank you for taking the time to read my blog.