The
Laws of the Torah for Ladies: Terrifying Problems, and the Mightiest Holiness
Rabbi
Dovid E. Eidensohn
My dear friends! I am writing for you the Law of the Torah for Ladies,
Jewish ladies. Terrifying problems exist, and the Mightiest Holiness. It takes
great courage to discuss such things, which amaze and confuse to a degree
perhaps not found anywhere in the Torah. My style is always the same, no matter
what I discuss. I present sources, but these sources themselves often conflict
terribly with other sources. How then can I entertain hopes of not utterly
overwhelming people so they can’t get to the bottom of these problems? But I studied
under the greatest rabbis of the past generation, the Geonim Reb Aharon Kotler,
Reb Moshe Feinstein, Reb Yaacov Kaminetsky, Reb Yosef Shalom Elyashev, Reb Shmuel
HaLevi Wosner, and Rav Ephraim Herschel, all of the zt”l. I have semicha from
them in writing and orally, that I can plunge into deep halacha problems and
produce a clarified response to do away with confusion. I have no fear of this.
I say all the time[1],
“One who serves his rebbe is greater than one who learns Torah.” Does this mean
that one who brings his rebbe a cup of coffee is greater than one who learns
Torah? It means that one who learns Torah is confused with many conflicting
teachings, but one who serves his rebbe and ascertains how to plunge to the
depth of these conflicting teachings merits the pure truth, which is Torah
without the confusion.
In my work which I publish frequently I often explain things that
stun even me, and I realize that it was beyond me, but an act of HaShem to
reveal these thoughts. My rebbe in this world and the next, Rav Shmuel Toledano
zt”l, the Gaon of the Jerusalem Kabbalists, wrote many very deep Kabbala books,
and he gave me permission to rewrite them at my leisure. The senior Kabbalist
Rav Yitschok Kaduri zt”l wrote about my rebbe, “He wrote with Ruach HaKodesh,”
not mere brilliance. The rebbe’s books make me dizzy, but I struggle, and
struggle some more. Torah is not easy.
Now, let us get to work, to discuss the Torah for Jewish women,
problems and solutions.
Let us begin with Berochos 17A, “Greater is the trust HaShem has in
women more than His trust in men, as it is said, ‘Trusting women hearken to my
words.” This seems to conflict with the teaching of Shlomo HaMelech in Shir
HaShirim,[2] “I am
black and I am beautiful, daughters of Jerusalem, as the tents of Kador and the
tents of Solomon.” The Ari z”l explains that black means justice and stress and
beauty means a sweetening of the justice and stress, so the tents of Solomon
were a beautiful white and the tents of black were strict justice and ugly.
“Do not look at me that I am extremely black, because the sun has
blackened me. The sons of my mother turned against me, and made me guard the
vineyards. My vineyard I did not guard.” Thus a woman can suffer from her own
brothers and her mother did not intervene. This is terrible suffering.
We now get into a Kabbalistic teaching that makes us dizzy, but it
is critical to understand our topic. The great Kabbalistic Reb Moshe Chaim
Lutsato tells us that there are ten worlds in this world, and that the worlds
are called Sefirose. The bottom Sefira right next to our world and its sins, is
called MALCHUSE, or monarchy. This MALCHUSE is deluged with the terrible sins
of humans and she suffers terribly. This is part of her agony of being black
and turning white. In Kabbala it means as follows. The highest of the ten
levels is called KESER or crown. Now, pay attention. The highest sefira or
KESER is so high and heavenly, that it is wrong to even say that it exists!
This means that its level of existence is not an earthly finite existence but
one of the higher world, which we may not understand in this world. But this highest
world in our world, KESER, is one with MALCHUSE and plunges down to greet her,
and raises her up to the top of the ten Sefirose, and then, incredibly, raises
her into the very heaven to the AIN SOFE place of pure heaven, and there the
sins she deal with in this world are dealt with and somehow returned to earth
in a state that improves them, similar to the teaching of the Ari z”l that the
female begins with blackness and becomes a beautiful white. I want to stop the
Kabbala at this point, because we want to get into the basic teaching for women
of their role in the Torah without the very complicated Kabbala ideas. But keep
in mind black to white and realize that women have a very high place before
HaShem, although in this world we may sense the opposite, as we will discuss.
We want now to go directly to this, the pain and suffering of the
woman, not with Kabbala, but with basic teachings of the Talmud and the Shulchan
Aruch.
We come now to the marriage of women, with two ways permitted by
the Torah. See Sanhedrin 21A as taught by the Vilna Gaon in the beginning of
the Laws of Kiddushin. One way is for a woman to marry with Kiddushin, and the
other way, is for a woman to marry with Pilegesh. Both of these have positive
and negative capacities, as we will explain.
We will now turn to the Rambam who promotes both Kiddushin and Pilegesh,
but also clearly states the problems with both of them. In the volume of the
Rashbo called Meyuchesses where the vast majority of the teshuvose are from the
Rashbo, two of them are from the Ramban, and one of these is about Pilegesh.
Today there are many women whose marriages are in trouble. There
are two types of Torah marriages: One is with Kiddushin, and the other is with
Pilegesh. The Vilna Gaon in the beginning of the Laws of Kiddushin talks about
both Kiddushin and Pilegesh, and says that the gemora in Sanhedrin 21A approves
of both Kiddushin and Pilgesh as valid marriages for Torah Jews. The Vilna Gaon
also says that the major authorities Ramban and Rambam also approve of Pilegesh
as well as Kiddushin.
To understand what both Kiddushin and Pilgesh mean for the wife,
let us examine the teachings of the Ramban, one of the greatest Rishonim. In
the volume of the teshuvose of the Rashbo known as meyuchesses[3] we
find in teshuva 284 a teshuva signed clearly by the Ramban, not the Rashbo.
The Ramban there is about Pilegesh and Kiddushin and he writes,
“Kiddushin and marriage in a chupah tent is a mitsvas esseh. One who comes to
marry a woman who will be forbidden to all men and possessed by him to inherit
her and to be defiled by her [when she dies he goes to the grave and becomes
tomay] the Torah commands him to make Kiddushin and enter the chupah tent, and
he must recite before ten men the blessings of a wedding. And if one sleeps
with his wife in the house of his father-in-law (before chupah) he is beaten
with makose marduse. And if after he brought her to his house he hurried and
slept with her without having the blessings of marriage she is forbidden to him
as if she was a nida. And anyone who did not give her two hundred zuz for
marrying her, she thinks that since he does not treat her as a real husband,
that he has determined to divorce her. She is then as one who is divorced in
the heart of the husband.
“However, if the husband wants the wife not to be married with
Kiddushin but as a Pilegesh, so that she will not be owned by him, and not
forbidden to other men (meaning that a woman married with Kiddushin who gets a
divorce and marries a second person, is forbidden to get a divorce from the
second husband and return to her first husband, because the first husband still
has power over the woman even after she was divorced by him and the second
husband. But this applies only to a woman who married two men and was divorced
by both. But if she was a Pilegesh or zonah she is not owned by anyone and can
return to anyone as long as she is not burdened with two Kiddushin marriages.)
Furthermore, she has no level of Kedusha at all (it seems that Kiddushin
creates a relation of holiness that the husband uses to hold some level of
control over the woman even after he divorces her, but Pilegesh does not create
such a level of holiness, although it is certainly a kosher marriage and their
children are completely kosher children.)”
In the beginning of the laws of Kiddushin, the Vilna Gaon says that
the gemora in Sanhedrin 21A permits Pilegesh, and that the Rambam and Ramban
agree to this.
Ladies who find Relief by being Pilegesh
What relief does a married woman achieve by marrying not with
Kiddushin, but as Pilegesh? But we mentioned the teaching of the Ramban before,
that Kiddushin gives the man great power over the woman, power that continues
even after he divorces her. Pilegesh does not recognize any power in the
husband. When the husband and wife decide on a true marriage, without zenuse
but with Pilegesh, husband and wife are married with the permission of the
Torah. This permission of the Torah means that whenever husband or wife wants
to leave the marriage, for any reason, they may. This is the opposite of marriage
with Kiddushin, which until the husband dies, does not relax his hold over his
wife.
With all this, there is a second side of Pilegesh which can be a
problem, maybe worse than Kiddushin. That is mentioned in the Rambam himself,
who permits Pilegesh, but writes afterwards a letter to his rebbe Rabbeinu
Yona, that in Rabbeinu Yona’s city, he should not permit Pilegesh. The reason
is, that precisely because Pilegesh is so easy to achieve with both marriage
and divorce, that people may be led to believe that Pilegesh can lead them to
do zenuse. Each city must consult with its great rabbis if Pilegesh is
appropriate in their community. We find the same attitude in the greatest of
lenient rabbis regarding Pilegesh, Rabbi Yaacov Emden, who after extoling
Pilegesh, writes that the Pilegesh couple must consult with the great rabbis of
their community. If so, what do I say about this? I received strong semicha to
pasken difficult questions in halacha from the Gaon Reb Moshe Feinstein zt”l,
the Gaon Reb Yaacov Kaminetsky zt”l, and the Gaon Reb Yosef Shalom Elyashev zt”l. This is what I
feel, and feel strongly about, if Pilegesh is permitted or forbidden.
Ideally, and such as the case in earlier generations, every
generation had its great rabbis who had power over the community. Today, this
is not true. In America and even Israel, there are great problems, especially
regarding women who married with Kiddushin and the husband won’t give them a
GET willingly. Many of those considered the major rabbis of the community
obviously don’t know the laws of Gittin properly. They therefore encourage
women to force a GET from their husbands. A forced GET, says Rambam, is
worthless and this means that if the woman remarries with an invalid GET her
children from the second husband are mamzerim. This itself should caution us
against Kiddushin, because every marriage of Kiddushin, if it doesn’t work out
well, could lead the woman to demand a GET, and if the husband does not give a
GET willingly, the woman has no GET and if she remarries with the invalid GET,
her children are mamzerim.
Another idea being practiced in America and even Israel, as well as
other countries, is for a rabbi to tell a woman that because of ridiculous
reasons, she was never married in the first place.
If so, I surely feel that better Pilegesh then mamzerim with
Kiddushin, and the reality is that the senior rabbis in America are very weak
in dealing with women who have Kiddushin. There was not long ago a group of
rabbis who charged sixty thousand dollars to torture a husband with electric
shocks to force him to give his wife a GET until the FBI arrested them and made
the Trenton case which results in jail terms and fines. There are also major
rabbis who openly encourage women to force their husbands to give a GET which
makes an invalid GET. A woman remarried with an invalid GET who has a child
from her new husband has produced a mamzer. Better, I feel, is Pilegesh, which
does not produce mamzerim, than Kiddushin, which increasingly, is producing
mamzerim.
On the other hand, Ramban, who certainly permits Pilegesh, writes a
letter to his mentor, Rabbeinu Yonah, that in his community Pilegesh should be
forbidden, because people will turn it into zenuse, do to the fact that it is
so easy to get married with Pilegesh and to leave that marriage with no penalty,
no GET and no pain. And I say that while that is surely a factor, the major
factor is the terror of women making mamzerim because they have Kiddushin,
which is much worse than Pilegesh. Even Pilegesh which may with some people
lead to zenuse does not produce mamzerim but forcing a husband to divorce his
wife does make mamzerim.
We will stop here.
[1] גדול שמושה של
תורה יותר מלמודו שנאמר פה אלישע בן שפט אשר יצק מים על ידי אליהו – ברכות ז
ע"ב
[2] Shir
HaShirim I:5 and I:6
[3] The
volume of the Rashbo entitled meyuchess means that it is the teachings of the
Rashbo with two exceptions signed by the Ramban, 283 and 284. 284 is about
Pilegesh and Kiddushin and their differences.
