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Erev Shabbat Shalom and Tzom Kal, chevra. May today be an עת רצון.
So here’s the SPECIAL MESSAGE: As had been noted, Yevamot is one of the most difficult Masechtot to get through, and if you’ve fallen off the Mishna Yomit wagon a little over the past weeks (I know I have), relief is in sight! Today we begin the final perek of Yevamot, and we begin Ketubot on Wednesday. So back on the wagon everyone 😊! Indeed you can (please!) sign up HERE to write one or more of the Ketubot summaries!
Meanwhile:
Our first two Mishnayot explores “yibbum” applications of the rule that almost any form of testimony concerning a husband’s demise suffices to allow his wife to remarry. Mishna One points out that if the husband is question has more than one wife, is childless, and this second wife had been travelling with him when he died, then the first wife has to await two pieces of information before she can move forward. She needs to know not only that her husband has died, but also whether her co-wife (“tzarah”) is pregnant. The latter piece of information obviously impacts whether or not the wives are now tied to the deceased husband’ s brother in a “yibbum / chalitzah” relationship.
The wrinkle introduced in Mishna Two is that while a woman’s testimony that her husband is dead is sufficient to permit her to remarry (despite the absence of conventional legal evidence to that effect), her testimony does not permit another person to remarry. Thus in the Mishna’s case (the wives of two brothers who are both testifying that their respective husbands have died), each widow needs further corroboration of her yavam’s (her brother-in- law’s) passing before being able to marry whomever she chooses.
Mishnayot 3-7 are, as Rabbi Benny Lau points out in his book “Chachamim”, windows into the original, tragic context of this entire halachik project of permitting women to remarry with less than the legally conventional standard of evidence being available: the context of the crushing of the Bar Kochba Revolt , when men (and women and children) were slaughtered in unspeakably large numbers. Mishna 7 , even though it appears as the final Mishna of the Massechet, is actually the “origin text” of the all of the assumptions that we have been making for numerous perkaim now.
A lot of the same principles were employed as the Beth Din of America worked hard to untangle the Halachik status of women whose husbands apparently perished on 9/11, but whose remains were never recovered. Two summary articles are here and here.
The masechta ends on this sad note. And in so many ways we look upward from here.
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