[Avodah] RYBS's Talk on Hafkaas Kiddushin, Talmud Torahand Kabalas Ol Malchus

[Chana Luntz via Avodah]

RTK writes:
> I think "kulan mezanos" refers to all women, and  it means all women  can 
> be seduced, 

You may be able to derive, from other contexts, that all women can
be seduced - but that is not what is being discussed in the specific
gemorros referred to. Our gemora is discussing what happens specifically
in tav l'meisiv marriages - it gives examples of such marriages, and
then concludes that such marriages result in adultery (and consequent
hidden mamzerim). There is just no way of reading what you want to read
into this piece

> Yes, a woman in a loveless marriage is much more tempted to commit
> adultery, given the right set of circumstances, but  
>it is certainly not inevitable. Nor is it correct to deduce that a rav must
>make sure, before he marries a couple, that the woman is not entering a 
>loveless  marriage!  He doesn't have to creep into her heart and mind before  
>conducting the wedding, doesn't have to fathom the depths of her motives in
>marrying this man.  There are so many motives, so many emotions, how could
>you ever fathom them all?

Remember, none of what I have described is necessarily a consequence
of these gemoros unless you read the gemora with the chiddush of RYBS:
that inherent in the existential condition of womankind is that if a
woman is offered only an inappropriate marriage she will take it because
she cannot bear not to be married.

If you understand it merely that there are and have been women, in
some times and places, who when offered an inappropriate marriage,
will sometimes take it because she cannot bear not to be married, but in
other circumstances and times and places there are women who would refuse
such a marriage - you have no idea what you are faced with in any given
circumstance. And it is of course possible that she knows what she is
doing and has seen what you cannot see, meaning that in fact the marriage
will indeed be a good one. And it would be, as you describe, inappropriate
to creep into her heart and try and fathom what is going on there.

But according to RYBS we know what is going on there, in the woman's
heart - we know it from RYBS's understanding of the pasuk in Breishis
(one certainly does not have to understand the pasuk in Breishis the
way RYBS does, but he is darshaning a pasuk to tell us about the human
condition). A woman wants to be married above all else because she cannot
bear to be alone, she is not capable of making an assessment that any
given marriage, without alternative, may not be the best thing. She is
never capable of that, according to RYBS's understanding of Chazal, this
being an existential condition of womankind. In which case what happens
if an outsider is capable of assessing the reality of the marriage in
question as being one where the parties are fundamentally incompatible?
Does he have an obligation to try and stop the marriage given that the
woman is incapable of protecting herself? Well one might say - tough
luck, it is not an outsider's job, any more than it is an outsider's job
to protect others from a bad bargain in business. But that is where
this further statement of the gemora comes in. A marriage which the
woman has only entered into because she cannot existentially bear to be
unmarried is one with the consequence that such marriage will not in fact
be enough for her and she will commit adultery and produce mamzerim who
are attributed incorrectly to the husband. So if the outsider does not
intervene, he is not just failing to protect the woman from herself, he is
failing to protect society from inherent danger. That raises the stakes
considerably, and would seem to mean that outsiders (such as Rabbaim,
shadchanim etc) do need to be vigilant, and not enable such marriages,
so long as what RYBS says is true, in order to protect our society.

Now I don't think we need a Rav to check a marriage out, before he
marries a couple, to try and determine it is not a tav l'meisiv marriage.
But that is because I think it relatively rare, in our society, that a
woman will take a loveless marriage merely because she cannot bear to
be alone (and I certainly do not think it is a irrebuttable presumption
as per RYBS. Nor, as Rav Lichtenstein says, does the halacha over
the centuries take this as an irrebuttable presumption despite RYBS's
vehemence). And we don't have spend our lives worrying about uncommon
cases even if we acknowledge that such cases may exist (and even if, in
hindsight, if a marriage turns out to be unquestionably inappropriate,
we might need to consider whether perhaps the woman in question *might*
have been willing to go through with it anyway). But if RYBS were
right and it is indeed a fundamental existential part of a woman's
nature, unchanging throughout time and not infrequently occurring,
to take whatever marriage is on offer, then we as a society do need
such safeguards, because of the potential consequences, and if there
is any hint that in fact this might be a tav l'meisiv marriage, since
the woman is not able, according to RYBS, to protect herself from it,
the Rav/shadchan etc would seem to have the obligation to investigate
and if in doubt, to protect our society by preventing the marriage.


>Toby Katz
>t613k at aol.com

Regards
Chana