The Torah, as a source of universal timeless truth, is by no means bound to a single cultural interpretation. Its call for such seeming barbarities as animal slaughter and capital punishment, though difficult to accept in our “advanced” age of enlightenment, cannot be dismissed as customs of an archaic era; instead, we are forced to consider how modern society has obfuscated these ideals of old, to consider which age truly is – or was – enlightened.
Can one simply dismiss the words of a Rishon as the culturally confined interpretation of a ubiquitous Written Law? No, not without undercutting all validity of that Rishon’s remarks. Each Rishon’s words can most certainly be critiqued, but must first be understood in a universal context, as defiant as they might seem from our most cherished modern ideals.
But can Rashi’s comments on the process of divorce (Devarim 24:1-4) find their place in even our skeptical post-feminist world. Granted, the Torah never stood for equal rights between men and women, but Rashi inexplicably places all blame for unsuccessful marriage squarely on the woman’s shoulders!
[After the woman is divorced,] she will [wed] an “other” man. [By calling him an “other,” the pasuk informs us that] he is not like the first husband, for the [first husband] sent a wicked woman from his house, whereas this man brought her in.
Rashi, Devarim 24:2
In short, can Rashi’s comments find their place in reality? Is every divorced woman a wicked soul for having separated from her husband, and is every divorced man righteous? It is a distorted image indeed that casts the divorcee in a more positive light than his “counterpart,” the one who remarries. And what is to be of the man who remarries? Rashi notes that pasuk 3 continues with two possible scenarios; either this second husband will too dislike this woman and divorce her, or he will die young! What ever happened to the possibility that the husband mistreats his wife and is forced to separate from her? Would we still consider the wife wicked? Would we consider the husband a saint? Would we cast a single aspersion on the “other” man, who was kind enough to start a second marriage with this woman in need?
Before we blindly dismiss Rashi’s perspective as the product of a medieval culture and chauvinist society, we should first consider whether Rashi is highlighting the only case of divorce, or perhaps one scenario out of many. Maybe Rashi accepts that the husband could be at fault for a poor marriage, but the Torah only assumes such a case, and does not explicitly address it here. The question remains, though, why not address it equally? Why focus solely on the rotten wife? The assessment still screams of a double standard.
A step back from the individual clauses of these pasukim reveals a much broader understanding of the Mitzvah of divorce, one that looks beyond the petty differences that cause breakup and instead looks at the Gerushin’s aftermath:
When a man takes a woman… and she does not find favor in his eyes for he finds something concealed [and improper] about her, he writes her a divorce contract, puts it in her hand, and sends her from his house. And she goes from his house and marries an other man. And the latter man hates her and writes her a divorce contract, places it in her hand and sends her from his house… The first husband, who sent her from his house, is unable to retake her as a wife, for this is an abomination before Hashem…
Devarim 24:1-4
By our initial concept of divorce, the first pasuk teaches the primary law, whereas the remaining three pasukim teach addendums. We learn she can remarry, and we learn she cannot remarry the same man. But there’s something choppy about the syntax. The first pasuk establishes a full sentence, when such-and-such happens, the man writes a Get. But the remaining pasukim are all fragments. We do not say “the woman may remarry,” but rather “the woman “remarries.” We do not say “the first husband may not remarry,” but rather, “the first husband is unable to remarry,” as if it is a continuation of the earlier storyline.
Rashi understands these pasukim as one long run-on sentence, beginning from the first word “When.” As Rashi sees the Torah’s command, these pasukim dictate, “When a couple gets divorced, if the woman finds herself single, the ex-husband cannot remarry her.” Undoubtedly an odd approach to the basic concept of divorce, but such a concept does explain why the Torah would indeed prefer to focus on the man’s obligation to divorce his wife. The Torah identifies the man as the individual with both the power and the desire to stay married to and/or remarry this woman. And in spite of this desire, he must divorce her and stay divorced to her.
We often consider the chiddush of these pasukim to be the very existence of divorce, a counterweight against the overbearing magnitude of marriage. But this new outlook turns our perspective upside down. The obliglation of divorce works against the indelibility of marriage; the Get may be circumstantial and certainly not ideal, but it still bears potential as a Mitzvah LiChatichila! And unlike marriage, it can never be undone, not even if the husband wishes to retake the woman into his home. Not even if she changes for the better.
These pasukim truly do encroach on our culturally influenced vision of marriage. In some modern circles, marriage is considered so holy that divorce is collectively frowned upon, even for separated couples. And even if we accept the importance and validity of divorce, would we ever consider it more binding than the actual marriage?!
When Reish Lakish would open a shiur about Sotah, he would say, “a man must only marry a woman according to his deeds (i.e. a righteous man with a righteous woman)… Is this truly so? Didn’t Rav Yehuda say in Rav’s name that before each soul is born, a Bas Kol emerges and states “so-and-so will marry so-and-so, and will own such-and-such house and field.” [Although one’s status as a Tzadik or Rashah is not determined by Shamayim, one’s future wife is determined, so how can one be expected to only marry according to his deeds if the person he marries is out of his hands?] [Answers the gemara,]This is not a difficulty, [Rav] refers to a first marriage, whereas [Reish Lakish] refers to a second marriage.
Mesechet Sotah, 2a
The gemara makes no guarantees that a first marriage will work. Perhaps either the husband or wife will go rotten; such a fate is not slated in Shamayim and cannot be avoided by the predictions of the prenatal Bas Kol. All the same, the first marriage is decreed in Shamayim; only by a second marriage are we obligated to match the proper pair together. Therefore, it is the second husband in our pasukim who is threatened with early death if he does not marry properly, while no such consequence is alluded to by the first husband.
The power of a marriage is truly a strong statement, an edict decreed in the Heavens! But it pales in comparison to the statement made at a divorce. When the husband divorces his wife, he in essence claims “I am fated a Tzadik, whereas you are fated a Risha’h, and so this G-d given marriage cannot work and must permanently end.” The two may remarry, but never to each other. The husband’s action may not universally or objectively define his ex-wife, but the Get subjectively defines her forever, and subjectively defines any other husband as an “Eesh Acheir.”
We may not believe in the cultural definition of ubiquitous Law, but we still maintain Torah Lo BaShamayim Hi. Our actions and behaviors are above predictions of the Beis Din Shel Ma’alah, and our perception of the world is what shapes it. We may never attest to an obsolete Mitzvas Gerushin, but the Mitzvah does nothing to confine our vision of the world eother. Rather, it is the mechanism that enables us to define those around us and expand our currently limited vision – potentially for better but unfortunately often for worse – in a way that even marriage cannot.
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