[Avodah] Ma'aseh eretz Mitzrayim
T613K at aol.com
T613K at aol.com
Wed Nov 22 03:11:49 PST 2006
RMB writes:
>>How is this defined? Rashi speaks of people marrying each other, but
how does one define marriage without invoking the concepts of eirusin
and niru'in? Are we talking about common law, just living together
monogamously?
What's the ma'aseh aveirah of KMEM aside from that of actual MZ or
nashim hamesolelot?<<
.
>>>>>
My husband, R' Michael Katz, did a lot of research into this when he used to
teach Noahide classes. Goyim are not allowed to commit adultery, but what
constitutes marriage for them? Roughly, there are two opinions: one is that
if they live together as man and wife they are married, and the other is that
if they make any kind of public declaration (like a church wedding or
getting married before a justice of the peace) then they are married. A subset of
the first opinion is that if they just sleep together once they are married.
The next question is, how do they get divorced? Again there are different
opinions. One opinion is that indeed goyim cannot get divorced, once married
is forever married. You might call this the Catholic opinion. :- ) The
other opinion is that if they publicly separate and live in different houses and
declare that they are divorced, then they are divorced. (The Protestant
option.) A subset of this is that they can get divorced by just saying, "I
divorce you." (The Moslem option.)
In the specific case of Mitzrayim -- changing the subject a bit -- I think
from what happened with Avraham and Sarah we can deduce that Egyptians would
not sleep with a married woman, but WOULD kill her husband in order to make
her "not a married woman." That kind of "morality" is not, needless to say,
Torah morality.
--Toby Katz
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