Profile Rabbi Dovid E. Eidensohn

Showing posts with label Plus and Minus for Ladies with Kiddushin or Pilegesh. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Plus and Minus for Ladies with Kiddushin or Pilegesh. Show all posts

Monday, July 30, 2018

Kiddushin and Pilegesh for Torah Ladies, Plus and Minus


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.