Q&A: Recognition of a Priest’s Marriage to a Divorced Woman After the Fact
Recognition of a Priest’s Marriage to a Divorced Woman After the Fact
Question
I read that if a priest betroths a divorced woman in the presence of two witnesses, with a ketubah and the whole ceremony, the Rabbinate recognizes them after the fact as married.
These would be second marriages, and there will be no children together.
The man has children from a first marriage to a woman who had never been married before.
1. How is this done מול the Rabbinate? Who exactly does one contact?
2. Does he lose his priestly status? If so, do his children from the first marriage also lose it?
Thank you 🙂
Answer
According to Jewish law, a priest may not marry a divorced woman, but if they marry anyway, the marriage is valid. This does nothing to his previous children, but if they were to have children together, those children would be considered desecrated priests, meaning they are not priests (a priest whose status has been invalidated).
I am not familiar with the procedures מול the Rabbinate, and unfortunately I also cannot advise people how to commit transgressions in a more “proper” way. I can say that if you approach the Rabbinate (or any rabbi committed to Jewish law), they will not marry you.
I’m sorry I can’t help.
Discussion on Answer
It’s interesting how reliable the tradition about priestly status is at all. What would stop someone from deciding in some town in Poland that from today he’ll be called Katz, and then during the Second Aliyah to the Land of Israel telling everyone that he’s a priest from a long line of priests. Especially after the Holocaust, when exhausted refugees arrived—one from a town and two from a family.
Hof, and what exactly would he get out of it? To be called up first? Nu, so what.
What, is honor some trivial matter? Maybe it was just a mistake. When there’s no oversight, you can’t rely on anything. And in any case, the ways of swindlers are marvelous. What did the Tzva, who was a great Torah scholar, gain by forging Sefer Ha-Eshkol? What did the failed forger of Jerusalem Talmud Kodashim gain? “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can know it?”
Truly, today’s priests are priests by presumption, not priests by testimony. Something really very weak…
Now, insofar as the reason for the prohibition regarding a divorced woman is that her presumption is that she is promiscuous [in biblical times], and nowadays it is clear that no such presumption exists, and the reasons for divorce are certainly varied and astonishingly flexible—doesn’t that, together with the fact that priests today are established only by presumption and not testimony, give some basis to permit a divorced woman to someone presumed to be a priest?
A prohibition that has outlived its time. Just emend a few things in the Humash and a few emendations in the words of the Sages, and all will be well with Israel.
Presumption is a valid halakhic principle. If you had a majority against it, there would be room to discuss it, but as I understand it that is not the situation today.
Where did you get this scriptural rationale, that the prohibition of a divorced woman is because her presumption is that she is promiscuous?
I assume there are many.
But you can certainly start with the education-oriented work Sefer HaChinukh, commandment 268.
By the way, regarding a female convert even if she converted at the age of three years and one day, it is explicit in the Talmud that this is the reason. And of course that’s absurd nowadays…
Building a halakhic argument on the reasons for the commandment in Sefer HaChinukh is not serious. Even if we were to derive law from scriptural reasons—and we do not.
And regarding a female convert, that is a dispute among the Tannaim, and the medieval authorities (Rishonim) also disagreed about it (whether when it is known that no one had relations with her yet, there is still a prohibition). But there there may perhaps be room for discussion, because that is not a case of deriving law from the scriptural reason. There the prohibition does not appear in the Torah, and if there is a prohibition it is based on the rationale. That is not like the case of a divorced woman, regarding whom the prohibition is explicit in the verse and you are only interpreting it according to a certain rationale.
As for a divorced woman, Sefer HaChinukh is probably not alone in this.
And with a female convert?
It’s explicit in the Talmud that this is the reason…
You helped a lot! Thank you very much