Tel Conf #17 - Your Kesubo - Is it Kosher?

Tel Conf #17 - Your Kesubo – Is it Kosher? Aug 26 Wed 9:30 PM Call 605-562-3130 enter code 411161#Rabbi Dovid E. Eidensohn

Your Kesubo – is it kosher? Why not? Probably, some reliable person supervised the Kesubo writing at your wedding. Torah scholars were present.  So, what is the problem? We list below three problems. One is Reb Moshe Feinstein’s ruling that in large cities some kesubose may be invalid. And today most people are probably in such cities, certainly those in New York City. Another problem is that our Kesubose don’t really assure  a woman that she will be paid. And  the Talmud considers this an invalid Kesubo, and the marriage is considered Zenuse. This is even if the Kesubo is a proper legal document but the wife is not sure of that. Surely if there are real problems in making her sure of herself with the Kesubo. The third problem is that the Kesubo is read publicly, and some information in it may be hugely humiliating. Rabbeinu Yona considers such a humiliation to be worse than murder.

 Problem number one is from the Gaon Reb Moshe Feinstein אג"מ א"ה א' קעח' – The main thing in the Kesubo is the names of the husband and wife. But these names are Hebrew names. And there are many people with the same Hebrew names. For instance, how many people are named Reuven ben Yaacov in New York City? How many are named Yoel ben Chaim? If the wife produces the Kesubo and demands money from Yoel ben Chaim, the husband can claim that it was another Yoel ben Chaim not him who signed the document.

It would seem from the teshuva there that even in a GET, there are circumstances when it could be a problem because nobody knows exactly who the husband or wife is because in a large city more than one person has this name or these names. The only difference between a Kesubo and a GET says Reb Moshe is that in a GET we write names and nicknames so that each person usually has more than one name. So we are not so concerned that there may be two people with the same exact name. But with a Kesubo when we write only one name, it is a problem in a big city. And even in a small city, since basic Hebrew names are not so plentiful, who guarantees that nobody has such a name even in smaller cities? And if they do, the Kesubo is not a valid monetary document. And if the GET was written so that a name is that of one other person in the whole city, the GET could be invalid.

Problem Number Two is that a Kesubo is not like ordinary monetary documents, where A signs he owes money to B. The Kesubo was established by the rabbis so that a woman can be comfortable getting married. She needs a document that will make her sure she will get her money with no trouble. (See Rosh in  Kesubose 56b kol hapochase, and Tosfose Kesubose 51Aמני ר,מ היא  )But do our Kesubos allow her this peace of mind? And the answer is that our present Kesubo definitely provide no peace of mind for the wife, therefore, they are a problem.

The whole purpose of the Kesubo is to give the woman a guarantee that she will get a certain sum of money. (See above) But nobody in the world knows what the amount of money in any Kesubo is, for the simple reason that nobody knows the value of a ZUZ. So the document is essentially worthless in monetary terms.  A Beth Din rabbi once hired a brilliant scholar to figure out the value and he could not do it. The term Zuz goes back thousands of years, and the documents that refer to it come from countries throughout the world in various ages. What is there to convince anyone what a Zuz is in today’s climate? Even the Shekel in Israel where money is always going between America and Israel and people have to know the exact value of both coinages, the value changes every day. So what does a woman get in a Kesubo besides a word ZUZ that changes in value every day, and nobody in the world knows the true value ever? Of course we have in Yoreh Dayah 294:6 the value of a Peruto which is related to a piece of silver the size of a barley grain. One opinion is that it is the value of a half a grain of barley of silver. But then we have to know if we follow the value of a grain of barley in our country or just what. And is the value wholesale or retail? And doesn’t silver fluctuate in value sometimes very strongly? If so, the Kesubo can be interpreted as the value of its being written or the time of the wedding, or it can be when it gets collected? And the Shach brings other opinions. And even if you understand this, if the wife does not feel comfortable and secure in her kesubo, it is invalid. And how can she be secure if nobody knows for sure what the value of the kesubo is because kesubo can be dirabonon or diorayso and we will stop with that.

Problem number three is a problem of murder. A problem of murder? I feel that the present Kesubo system is a problem of murder. The kesubo in ancient times had to clarify the monetary value of a woman’s kesubo. And that was rooted in the reality of her marital status. That is, if she was never married and a virgin, she got two hundred zuz for her kesubo. But if she was married and no longer a besulo or virgin, she got a hundred zuz for her kesubo. But what happens if a woman is not a virgin and she was never married? This is very common today. And every woman whose marital status is an embarrassment must get married with a kesubo and somebody will read the kesubo out loud, announcing to the world that she is not a virgin. This is a humiliation in public that Rabbeinu Yona  in Shaarei Teshuva 139 considers to be worse than murder. There is a gemora in Berochos 23a  that some lowly pagan humiliated a Torah scholar, and he killed himself for the shame. The shame was that she found his tephilin outside a public toilet and brought it to the Yeshiva and claimed that he had slept with her and given her the tephilin as payment. Now, this was obviously a lie. And yet the shame was too terrible and he killed himself. What about a woman who is not a virgin and the kesubo will tell the truth? Is this not murder?

So what is the solution?

The solution is to make a Kesubo using names, addresses and family names, exactly as they are used in legal civil documents.  The sum of money the husband promises is in dollars. It is much easier to collect money with such a document than one with Hebrew names and Hebrew texts. And yet, people will continue doing what everybody else does, to write Hebrew Kesubos with Hebrew names that have problems.  Therefore, we need two Kesubos. One written in Hebrew and one in English. The English one is probably more kosher than the Hebrew one. Therefore, we will add to the English one, “This document will be part of the Hebrew Kesubo, and will override any conflict between the two documents.” This way the wife cannot collect twice with two Kesubos.

But she will be confident of collecting her Kesubo, and be comfortable that her Kesubo is kosher.