Q&A: One Witness / Agent Is Trusted in Matters of Prohibition
One Witness / Agent Is Trusted in Matters of Prohibition
Question
Is the agent who brings a bill of divorce from overseas defined as a witness, or as the husband's extended hand—that is, an agent?
Basically, is this a case where there is a need to validate the document even without the husband's objection (whether because of lack of expertise or simply because the witnesses are far away)?
Why not wait for the husband to object?
If I understood correctly, in the end this is a rabbinic stringency (what are the chances that one would find a document with exactly the same names and then it would not have been written for her sake)?
I would appreciate an answer without Aramaic; it isn't my native language.
Thanks,
A beginning student
Answer
Hello.
Any agent who brings a bill of divorce, from anywhere in the world (from overseas or not), is first and foremost an agent. Regarding the relationship between an agent and the one who appoints him, there is a well-known conceptual inquiry whether he is the principal's extended hand or an authorized representative, and that can of course apply to an agent delivering a bill of divorce as well.
There is a rabbinic enactment that the agent must say, "It was written in my presence and signed in my presence," and in that respect he serves as a witness. But that is by force of the enactment, not an essential role of an agent as such.
It would not make sense to wait for the husband to object, because that could happen even years later, and by then the agent may no longer be here, and perhaps witnesses will not be available to validate it. So they required every agent who brings a bill of divorce from overseas to validate the bill of divorce, and that resolves the future problems.
It is not only a concern about a document with the same names. Forgery is also a possibility.