[Avodah] Your brother's a Mumar; here's the solution!

[Moshe Y. Gluck]

R' ZS:
> It *may* therefore be reasonable to assume that every
> man is capable of making such a tnai, each and every time, even in the
> heat of passion, and mean it.

Am I missing something elementary here? Why do you keep on insisting that
there is a lack of Gemiras Daas when a T'nai was made K'vnei Gad U'k'vney
Reuvein, in front of Eidim with a Kabbalas Kinyan? Even if there _was_ a
lack of Gemiras Daas, it wouldn't matter because BD would enforce it. (I
have the same problem with the people who are worried about lack of Gemiras
Daas by Mechiras Chometz. Who cares? If BD (and here, the courts)
could/would enforce the Shtar, then the Chometz, by definition, doesn't
belong to him...) 
(BTW, because this is such a complicated Kiddushin and embarrassing subject,
the AhS relates (157:15) that in Prague, the Minhag was to make the
Kiddushin privately in front of two eidim with the T'nai, call in another
eight to make the Birchos Eirusin, and then under the Chuppah (presumably
back at the wedding hall) to only read the Kesubah and make the Sheva
Berachos, no Kiddushin.)

R' MB:
> > The AhS proposed this idea for avoiding her becoming a yevamah, and RMYG
> > asked why the same tenai couldn't be used to avoid agunos. I think what
> > RZS is now saying boils down to ein adam oseh be'ilaso be'ilas zenus,
> > and not even bitenai.
R' ZS: 
> No.  Ein adam oseh... is about people's yosher.  A person doesn't
> leave a chaticha dehetera to take an identical chaticha de'isura.
> That's why RMF says it doesn't apply to secular people today, since
> it's quite obvious that they think nothing of be'ilat zenut.
> But an honest and upright person may very well agree to do a be'ilat
> zenut in order to save his wife from a terrible fate.  Ein omrim
> la'adam chatei bishvil sheyizkeh chaver'cha, but he may well be willing
> to do so, especially when it's not just chaver'cha but ishto kegufo.
> The AhS's position isn't muchrach, but at the same time it isn't
> mushlal.

It's a moot point, even if correct, because the AhS holds that it isn't a
B'ilas Zenus.


R' ZS:
> And yet I think even those couples were in love; at first not with the
> actual person they were marrying, whom they didn't yet know, but with
> the *idea* they'd formed of that person.  They knew each other's names,
> even if not their faces, and I assume they did hear general descriptions
> of each other's appearances, on which they could hang their fantasies
> of what married life would be like, so by the time they actually met
> it's quite shayach that they felt enough love that they didn't go into
> it like a cold business transaction, with the possibility of divorce
> looming high in their minds.   Especially if they didn't see a lot of
> divorces around them, so that possibility was mostly theoretical in
> their minds.

I think you're presuming overmuch. FWIW, the Torah doesn't tell us that
Yitzchok loved Rivka until after they were married, or that Yaakov loved
Rochel until after they met. (It doesn't say that Avrohom loved Sorah at
all, but that's a different story.)

KT,
MYG