[Avodah] Rambam on Agunah

[Micha Berger]

On Wed, Jun 18, 2008 at 10:58:47PM -0400, Henry Topas wrote:
: I believe he quotes the Rambam as stating something to the effect that it
: would take great courage to find Kulos to "unchain" agunos.

The Rambam was speaking of real agunos, at least the rabbanan sort of
mayim she'ein lahem sof.

MSLS is rare nowadays. Telecom has made it very hard for someone to be
in the din of mei'ever layam. If shalom lo veshalom la (not a runaway
candidate), he would have contacted her. Unless his plane went down in
the Amazon rainforest...

Being a derabbanan that we aren't even sure is applicable, a woman whose
husband was lost in a near-MSLS can be freed by adding senifim lehaqeil.

Agunah today is more about mesarvei get. And what kind of
heteirim? Repealing tav lemeisav wouldn't have crossed the Rambam's
mind -- in his day the locals rarely let women out of their homes (his
famous 2x a month was a required MINIMUM), never mind being financially
and otherwise independent.

Would the Rambam's statement even be nogei'ah to any modern discussion?

Good luck finding it, though. I never heard of this before. It makes
sense, since mamzeirus can be forever. Which is the whole reason for
the taqanah of MSLS. And an agunah who thinks she's an almanah can
marry with the permission of BD, all the chazaqos and rovim in line,
and still produce a mamzeir.

This ties into the metaphysical consequences thread. Mamzeirus is a
clear case of negative impact even where the halkhah is followed.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             Man is a drop of intellect drowning in a sea
micha at aishdas.org        of instincts.
http://www.aishdas.org                         - Rav Yisrael Salanter
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