Q&A: A Divorcee to a Kohen via Annulment of the Marriage
A Divorcee to a Kohen via Annulment of the Marriage
Question
A case occurred involving a kohen who wanted to marry a divorcee who had been divorced properly according to Jewish law. They came before the religious court, and the court annulled the marriage (because it was discovered that he had certain inclinations, etc.), and thereby permitted her to marry a kohen, since if there was no valid marriage, then there was no bill of divorce, and she is therefore considered like an unmarried woman.
But the problem is built into it: the judge noted in the ruling that he would not permit a married woman to the world at large on this basis, but since she had already been divorced, he relies on the annulment in order to permit her to a kohen.
And the difficulty in his words is that, after all, you are necessarily in need of a bill of divorce because of the prohibition of her being a married woman, as the judge himself wrote that as a married woman he would not permit her??
Answer
An excellent question. They sent me this article this evening, and I was thinking of writing about it. In my view this is absurd, although one cannot deny that this is a common halakhic policy.
If he does not permit a married woman on this basis, how can this be taken seriously? It seems absurd to me. Even if a person is attracted to a certain married woman and married a woman, are his marriage proceedings invalid because of mistaken transaction? Jewish law does not recognize sexual orientation, only attraction to forbidden relations.
Likewise, the decisor admits that one cannot permit a married woman here. That means he admits she was married. If she was married, she needed a bill of divorce. If she received a bill of divorce, she is a divorcee and therefore forbidden to a kohen. There is an internal contradiction here. At best, she was doubtfully married. Although even there, marriage to a kohen is Torah-level, so one should be stringent.