Yevamot 106b — the Talmud in English

Mishna:

The mitzva of chalitza

This is its procedure:

He comes,

the yavam,

and his yevama to the court. And

if he is young and she is elderly, or he is elderly and she is young,

they give him the counsel appropriate for him. They say to him: Go to a woman like yourself, who is suitable for you, and do not bring quarrel into your house .

They say to him: Go to a woman like yourself, who is suitable for you, and do not bring quarrels into your home.

And this matter is learned from what

is stated: “And they shall call to him the elders of his city, and they shall speak to him.”

And the counsel that they give him is precisely the words that the elders speak to him.

And she says: “My yavam has refused

to establish a name for his brother in Israel; he has not desired me as a yevama.”

And he says: “I have not desired to take her.”

And in the Holy Tongue they would say

these words.

And afterward:

“And his yevama shall approach him before the eyes of the elders, and she shall remove his shoe from his foot and spit before him,” a spittle visible to the judges.

And afterward:

“And she shall respond and say: So shall be done to the man who will not build his brother’s house.”

Until here they would recite.

That is, until this verse they would tell the yavam and the yevama to recite, as above.

And when Rabbi Horkanos recited under the terebinth in Kefar Etam,

when a yevama came before him,

and he completed

reciting

the entire passage,

that is, he also recited for them, “And his name shall be called in Israel, The house of the one whose shoe was removed,”

they became accustomed

to complete the entire passage.

“And his name shall be called in Israel, The house of the one whose shoe was removed,”

it is a mitzva for the judges

to recite “The one whose shoe was removed” ,

but it is not a mitzva for the students

who sit there before their teacher to study. For they do not have to recite it.

Rabbi Yehuda says: It is a mitzva for all those standing there to say, “The one whose shoe was removed” .

Gemara:

Rav Yehuda said:

The order of

the mitzva of chalitza

is as follows:

She recites

the yevama, “My yavam has refused,” and so on,

and he recites

the yavam, “I have not desired to take her,”

and she removes the shoe and spits,

and

finally

she recites

the yevama: “So shall be done to the man,” and so on.

And we raise a difficulty:

What does he teach us

Rav Yehuda? This

Mishna

of ours

is it!

For the entire order of the matters that Rav Yehuda stated is written in our Mishna!

And we explain:

This he teaches us

Rav Yehuda, that only

a mitzva

is to do

so. But if he reverses

the order,

we have no concern.

It was also taught so: Whether he preceded chalitza to spitting, or he preceded spitting to chalitza, what he did is valid.

Abaye said: One who dictates to a woman

the chalitza document ]the formula of chalitza] at the time of her chalitza, so that she will know what to say,

the text of the chalitza] while she performs chalitza, so that she will know what to say,

should not dictate to her

he should not have her recite]

“not” by itself

separately,

and “he has desired me as a yevama” by itself.

Because

if

she says it this way,

it implies: “He has desired me as a yevama!”

Rather,

he should dictate these words to her together:

“He has not desired me as a yevama.”

And

likewise

he should not dictate to him,

to the yavam, the word

“not” by itself,

and the word

“desired” by itself, for

then it will be

understood as: “I have desired to take her!”

Rather,

he should dictate it to him together:

“I have not desired to take her.”

Rava said: Separating a word

merely

is what it is, and we have no concern about separating a word.

Rav Ashi found Rav Kahana exerting himself trying hard

exerting himself]

and dictating to her

together

“He has not desired me as a yevama.”

He said to him

Rav Ashi: Is it that

the Master does not accept this ruling of Rava,

who said that we have no concern?

He said to him: Rava concedes in the case of “He has not desired me as a yevama”

that one must not interrupt. For if she interrupts, it implies that what she says, “not,” applies to the beginning of her words, where she said, “My yavam has refused to establish a name for his brother in Israel,” and she concludes by saying, “not.” That is, not “My yavam has refused,” but rather, “He has desired me as a yevama.”

This is not so with “I have not desired to take her,” which is the beginning of the yavam’s words; it is not applicable to say that “not” applies to the beginning of his speech. Therefore, we do not care if he interrupts .

Abaye said: One who writes the chalitza document a deed of evidence concerning the chalitza

a document attesting to the chalitza],

should write as follows:

“We dictated to her we recited it to the yevama

we had the yevama recite]

from ‘My yavam has refused’ until ‘he has desired me as a yevama,’ and we dictated it to him we recited it to the yavam

we had the yavam recite]

from ‘not’ until ‘to take her,’ and

again

we dictated to her from ‘So shall be done’ until ‘the one whose shoe was removed.’”

And the reason is that the chalitza document is not ruled, and one does not write four words from a verse without ruling.

But

Mar Zutra

was

ruling

the chalitza document,

and

he would

write the entire passage.

That is: “We dictated to her, ‘My yavam has refused to establish a name,’ and so on,” and so forth.

Mar bar Idi raised an objection against him: But it is not permitted to write

a passage separately! For thus we learned in tractate Gittin [60a]: One may not write a scroll for a child to study from it!

And we conclude:

And the halakha is in accordance with Mar Zutra

that one writes the verses of chalitza.

And this is not comparable to writing a scroll for a child to study from it, for there his intention is to write a passage, so that it will be like a small scroll. And we have an established principle [there]: The Torah was given as a sealed whole [a complete book], and not as scrolls, scrolls. But the chalitza document is merely a record of words, and it does not retain its sanctity; and in a place of a mitzva it is permitted.

Abaye said:

If

she spat,

the yevama,

and the wind caught it

and carried it away from before the yavam,

she has done nothing.

What is the reason?

Because

we require “and she shall spit before him,”

and the spittle was not before him.

Therefore,

if

he,

the yavam,

was tall, and she was short,

and

the wind caught it the spittle,

the spittle],

there is “and she shall spit

before him.”

For as soon as it left her mouth, it was before him.

For as soon as it left her mouth, it was before him.

But if

she was tall and he was short, we require it to reach

the spittle

opposite his face facing his face,

facing his face],

and afterward it goes

by means of the wind .

Rava said: If she ate garlic garlic cloves

garlic cloves]

and spat and expectorated, or if

and expectorated], or if she

she ate gargeshta a type of earth

a type of soil]

and spat, she has done nothing.

What is the reason?

Because

we require “and she shall spit” of her own accord, and this is absent.

For her spitting was caused by eating the garlic and the gargeshta.

And Rava said: The judges must see the spittle as it leaves the yevama’s mouth. For it is written: “Before the eyes of the elders, and she shall spit.”

We learned in our Mishna:

“And his name shall be called in Israel, The house of the one whose shoe was removed”; it is a mitzva for the judges and not for the students.

It was taught: Rabbi Yehuda said: Once we were sitting before Rabbi Tarfon, and a yevama came to perform chalitza, and he said to us: Answer all of you

and say:

“The one whose shoe was removed, the one whose shoe was removed, the one whose shoe was removed,”

three times .

We have completed the chapter “The mitzva of chalitza.”

The chapter before us deals with the matter of

mi'un.

A minor girl, according to Torah law, becomes betrothed only through her father, and leaves her husband through a bill of divorce, even while she is a minor, when her father receives her bill of divorce.

But once she has grown up, she is divorced through receiving the bill of divorce herself.

And the Sages instituted that the mother of the minor girl, or her brother, may betroth her and marry her off while she is a minor. Likewise, if a minor girl became betrothed with her own consent, her betrothal takes effect, by rabbinic law.

And they likewise instituted that the minor girl may perform mi'un with her husband and leave him without a bill of divorce.

And there are several ways in which a minor girl performs mi'un, and some of them will be explained in this Mishna.

And Beit Shammai and Beit Hillel disagreed concerning several of the laws: for example, whether she may perform mi'un also after her marriage or only after her betrothal, and whether she may perform mi'un also with a yavam, or only with her husband while he is alive, and whether the mi'un must be in the presence of the husband, and likewise whether it must be performed in a court.

And below, in the Gemara, it will be explained whether the mi'un is with the husband, that she does not wish to continue being his wife, or whether the mi'un is with the betrothal with which her mother or brother betrothed her.

And likewise, the Gemara discusses whether she may perform mi'un with regard to her bond to one yavam and leave her bond existing to other yevamin, or whether mi'un with one yavam causes the uprooting of all the betrothal.

D.

The nature of mi'un] -

According to Rashi, it is a disclosure of her position that she is a minor and that her acts have no effect. Therefore, if she leaves one husband through a bill of divorce and returns and marries a second husband, and performs mi'un with the second, the mi'un with her second husband reveals that her acts are “acts of a minor,” which have no effect,

and the betrothal of her first husband is also uprooted retroactively [

except that there are circumstances concerning which the Sages decreed regarding a “woman who had received a bill of divorce,” as will be explained below].

E.

The uprooting of the marriage through mi'un] -

It is retroactive,

as though she had never been betrothed at all; and from the time she performs mi'un, she is not forbidden to his relatives, and he is not forbidden to her relatives.

And see the note, that the uprooting is from now onward retroactively, and not literally retroactively.