Q&A: The Laws of Niddah
The Laws of Niddah
Question
It is explained in the Mishnah that a woman who caused her husband to stumble with respect to niddah leaves the marriage without receiving her ketubah. And the Rosh explains that this is specifically because she caused her husband to stumble, but a woman’s own abandonment of religious observance is not itself a reason for her to leave without a ketubah (if she herself does not observe Torah and commandments, as long as she does not cause him to stumble, she leaves with her ketubah).
I very much understand why there is placing a stumbling block here on the part of the woman, but I have a hard time understanding why the husband was in fact “caused to stumble.” Since the Torah said that a woman is trusted regarding her state of purity, the husband acted properly in relying on her words. Aside from the fact that he missed the “ideas” involved in the prohibition of niddah, practically speaking he did not violate the statement of the Merciful One. That is, he did not violate the warning, “And to a woman in the impurity of her niddah you shall not come near to uncover…” On the contrary, the Torah itself commanded him to act permissibly on the basis of her word.
Answer
This thread was apparently deleted because of a glitch. I’ll briefly reconstruct it.
The husband acted according to Jewish law, but he still stumbled into a prohibition unintentionally or under compulsion. Someone who causes another person to stumble into a prohibition unintentionally or under compulsion violates “do not place a stumbling block”; when the person who stumbled was under compulsion, the one who caused it violated an even graver prohibition, because the sin is attributed to him. But beyond all that, leaving without a ketubah is because the woman is not fulfilling her role of helping him with procreation, and not because of the prohibition he transgressed, nor because she is a sinner (otherwise, even if she caused others to stumble she would leave without a ketubah).
She leaves him without a ketubah because she damaged the mutual religious trust between them.
And in a case where she caused others to stumble, she is only a religious offender,
and not someone who violated the religious trust between the two of them, and therefore she leaves with a ketubah.