Q&A: An Agent for Betrothal in the Course of a Transgression
Originally published:
This is an English translation (via GPT-5.4). Read the original Hebrew version.
An Agent for Betrothal in the Course of a Transgression
Question
1. If a kohen betroths a divorced woman through an agent, do we say that there is no agency for a transgression, and therefore the betrothal does not take effect? Because if it does take effect, then how is he an agent if there is no agency for a transgression?
2. If someone swore not to betroth a certain woman via an agent and then sends an agent to betroth her, do we say that there is no agency for a transgression, and therefore the betrothal does not take effect?
Answer
- See Tosafot on Bava Metzia 10b. The question there is whether, when the agent is not personally subject to the transgression, agency does or does not apply (that is a dispute there in the Talmudic text). Beyond that, even if there is no agency for a transgression, the question is whether the agency itself is void, or only that the sender is not punished. That is a dispute between the different answers in Tosafot.
- Again, the same two possibilities. One could also analyze it from the angle of the agent violating “do not place a stumbling block,” but this is not the place to go into it.
Discussion on Answer
The Noda B’Yehuda himself points to a dispute among the medieval authorities on this, and this is an old, well-known discussion. There’s no point listing all the sources here, so I didn’t bring him.
Omri — what is actually the meaning of the rule that there is no agency for a transgression: that the agency never takes effect at all (and in this case the woman is not betrothed), or only that the transgression is not attributed to the sender (in which case she is betrothed)? The later authorities (the Noda B’Yehuda and Rabbi Shimon Shkop, if I remember correctly) disagreed about this. But as was already noted, this is apparently a dispute between the different answers of Tosafot in Bava Metzia 10b.