Q&A: Annulment of Kiddushin
Annulment of Kiddushin
Question
What is the Rabbi's position regarding enactments to annul kiddushin (as a solution to the problem of agunot)?
Is there a problem of authority? Does any institution today have the authority to enact a regulation such that automatically "whoever betroths, betroths subject to the rabbis," and the kiddushin will be annulled? Or is there no need to enact anything, and it is enough to create a consensus, so that the condition exists automatically?
Is this more a matter of halakhic policy? For example, people bring the claim that in all the enactments of rabbinic annulment by the Sages there was an invalid get which, by means of their enactment, was validated. That is not a principled argument, but the idea is to preserve the form of kiddushin and divorce according to the Torah… Does the Rabbi agree, or does he hold that on the basis of decisions by the religious courts it is possible to establish situations in which the kiddushin will be annulled?
(The same question applies to other solutions that have been proposed over the generations, such as making kiddushin conditional, which solves the first question; alternatively, giving a conditional get at the time of the kiddushin…)
Answer
Hello.
This is too broad a question to discuss here. I will say a few things briefly.
"Whoever betroths…" is an authority given to the supreme religious court of the generation, not to every religious court. There is no logic in every religious court being able to annul kiddushin and say that the betrothal was made subject to its view. Today there is no such authority (certainly not the caricature called the "Chief Rabbinate"). This depends on the question whether the annulment is based on a condition (the medieval authorities tie this to the phrase "according to the law of Moses and Israel"), in which case of course one can make it conditional on whomever one wants (although there is still a question of whom they really had in mind in such a case), or whether it is a built-in halakhic mechanism (that is my view), in which case it is clear that Jewish law does not make this dependent on the agreement of every religious court.
In any case, it is clear that you do not need an invalid get in order to annul kiddushin (though I am familiar with this unreasonable claim). It is also not true that in all the cases in the Talmud there was an invalid get. For example, in the case of one who betroths a woman against her will, they annulled his kiddushin.
A condition in kiddushin is an excellent mechanism in my opinion (although an overwhelming majority of halakhic decisors oppose it for some reason).
Discussion on Answer
Reasonable.
It seems that the opposition is a matter of halakhic policy… that the form of kiddushin and divorce (by means of a get) should be preserved among the Jewish people..
Therefore they oppose a condition that would cause the kiddushin to be annulled midway…
And they limit rabbinic annulment to cases where there was no kiddushin at all (invalid kiddushin) or where there is a get (validation of gittin)