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If a couple goes abroad and the wife comes back saying her husband has died, do we believe her? This chapter is essentially a long series of variations on this question. The opening Mishna offers the a baseline case, and the Tana Kama – the Mishna’s first opinion – offers the framing answer. If it’s in peacetime and the couple seems to be at peace, the Tanka Kama explains, then we assume that the story is true. If the couple is fighting or there’s war, however, we don’t inherently believe her. If the couple is fighting maybe she’s lying to get out of the marriage. In times of war the wife may be merely presuming that her husband was killed, without actually knowing that this is the case.
From here, the chapter proceeds to disagreements with and variations on this basic premise. For instance, assuming we believe the wife’s story, does this mean we also obligate the husband’s family to pay her the ketubah? (Mishnah 3; Beit Shamai says yes; Beit Hillel says no.) What if the husband went abroad with two wives – one of whom claims the husband died and the other who claims the husband is still alive? (Mishnah 5; we let each wife proceed as if she’s telling the truth and ignore the other one’s claims.) The chapter also explores who else’s testimony we believe to say a husband has died (Mishnah 4; essentially everyone in the Jewish community, except for people whom we assume might have a reason to bode the wife ill).
Obviously, trusting testimony that a husband has died also means that the wife is free to go on with her life and remarry. Equally obviously, if the husband is in fact alive then the couple is still married, and any “new” marriage would actually be adultery. Given the seriousness of adultery in Jewish law, plus our strict demand for two thoroughly vetted witnesses in most legal situations, it’s by no means a given that we would believe pretty much anyone who says that a woman’s husband has died. So why are we so surprisingly lenient here?
The answer (and I’m paraphrasing Kehati’s commentary here) is there are two reasons for leniency, working in tandem. Part of the source of leniency is that the last thing the wife wants is for her presumed-to-be-dead husband to show up after she’s remarried. Because that’s so, we can assume she’ll take great pains to know for certain that presumably dead husband has truly passed away. That’s the more factual part of the answer.
But relying on the wife’s own research is itself a leniency—and the reason we allow for that leniency gets to Reason Number 2. We want to prevent agunot – we want to let women go on with their lives and get married again. (This was especially crucial in the times of the Mishna, when widows were often in dire financial straits.) To prevent a woman from becoming an agunah, we’ll be lenient. Even with huge moral risks on the line, sometimes there are more important principles at stake than absolute certainty.
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