Q&A: Question
Question
Question
I heard in one of your podcasts the paradox about a man (Shimon, for the sake of the example) who gave a woman a bill of divorce on condition that she not marry a certain man (Reuven, for this example). And the paradox is that if that woman marries Reuven, then the divorce is nullified and she is a married woman, so she cannot marry Reuven; and if she cannot marry Reuven, then the divorce was not nullified. The answer you gave was interesting, if I remember correctly: “something that is meant from the outset to come apart does not take effect,” and therefore the marriage to Reuven does not take effect. I think maybe this is not a paradox, though the conclusion is a bit strange. A woman is forbidden to marry two men, but maybe she is allowed to be married to two men. If you look at the condition in the divorce, only if the woman marries Reuven is the divorce nullified; meaning she first has to be married to Reuven for the divorce to be nullified, and when that happens she is married both to Reuven and to Shimon, but she did not marry either of them in a forbidden way.
I would be happy to hear your opinion.
Answer
I did not understand the explanation.
Discussion on Answer
Yair, it is not clear to me exactly what you mean. In any case, there are two different things here. 1. The prohibition of a married woman. 2. Betrothal with a married woman does not take effect; that is not a matter of prohibition (there is no prohibition on performing an act of betrothal by money or document, rather the act simply has no halakhic legal significance). The paradox above stems from the second point, not the first.
I will try to explain myself better.
There is a prohibition against a woman marrying a man while she is married to another man. The condition of the divorce that Shimon gave was that if that woman marries Reuven then the divorce is void. The meaning is that only after the woman marries Reuven does the divorce become void. A situation is created in which she is married to two men, but she married each of them permissibly. The order in which things happen is:
conditional divorce -> permissible marriage to Reuven -> nullification of the divorce -> the current situation in which the woman is married to two men, but married each of them permissibly. The emphasis in the answer is that a married woman is forbidden to marry another man, but not the state in which she is married to two men.
I hope this time my answer is clear 🙏🏻
I understood that the problem is that betrothal with a married woman does not take effect. My answer is that at the time the woman married Reuven she was not a married woman; only after she married Reuven did the divorce lapse (that is the condition), and then the situation was created in which she was married to two men.
But why do you stop here? She married Shimon (the second), so her divorce from Reuven is nullified, and consequently she is not married to Shimon, so her divorce was not nullified, and so on endlessly.
I stop here because in my opinion the marriage to Shimon (the second) is not nullified. If I understood correctly, the divorce is valid as long as the woman has not violated the condition (to marry Shimon). When she violated the condition and married Shimon, the divorce was nullified and the marriage to Reuven (the first) came back into force; but since at the time of the marriage to Shimon she was not a married woman, there is no reason for that marriage to be nullified.
It is important to note, and perhaps this is where I am mistaken, that when people say the divorce was nullified, I understand that until now the divorce was valid, and only after she violated the condition did it become invalid.
Only if the meaning of “the divorce was nullified” is that it is as though it had never been given in the first place do I understand why my answer is wrong.
Yair, indeed your initial assumption is incorrect. The divorce is null from the outset, not only from this point onward.
This is a condition of “from now.” The divorce is nullified retroactively.
I understood the mistake. Thanks to the Rabbi and to the other respondents 🙏🏻🙏🏻
See column 617.