I'm trying to remember the first couple I ever heard of getting divorced. As a child, it was a jarring piece of news. Wait, not all marriages last forever? Suddenly, you start paying a little closer attention to how your parents speak to each other—quietly gauging if your own family might come undone too.
I've always been oddly fascinated by divorce. My favorite tractate of Talmud? You guessed it—Tractate Gittin, the one all about divorce. Trust me, my wife didn't find it very charming when I told her. Thankfully, we're happily married.
:)
Even now, whenever I hear about a couple getting divorced, I can’t help but feel curious. I wonder: Why? When did they first know? Could it have lasted if they had tried harder?
I don't ask these questions out loud, and I don’t gossip to find the answers, but I'd be lying if I said they weren’t on my mind. They're compelling questions because the nature of romantic relationships and commitment is so mysterious—and so central to our sense of self.
The mystery of divorce truly begins with its presentation in the Torah.
In the beginning of the 24th chapter of Sefer Devarim we are presented with the source for divorce in the Torah:
כִּי־יִקַּח אִישׁ אִשָּׁה וּבְעָלָהּ וְהָיָה אִם־לֹא תִמְצָא־חֵן בְּעֵינָיו כִּי־מָצָא בָהּ עֶרְוַת דָּבָר וְכָתַב לָהּ סֵפֶר כְּרִיתֻת וְנָתַן בְּיָדָהּ וְשִׁלְּחָהּ מִבֵּיתוֹ׃
A man takes a woman [into his household as his wife] and becomes her husband. She fails to please him because he finds something obnoxious about her, and he writes her a bill of divorcement, hands it to her, and sends her away from his house
וְיָצְאָה מִבֵּיתוֹ וְהָלְכָה וְהָיְתָה לְאִישׁ־אַחֵר׃
And she leaves his household and becomes [the wife] of another man
The way that the laws of marriage and divorce are portrayed seems almost backward. The Torah spends a great deal of time detailing the laws of divorce but barely says a word about the details of actual marriage. In fact, many laws of marriage are learned from the laws of divorce! That seems ominous.
A principle throughout the Talmud’s discussion of the laws of marriage and divorce is that marriage laws are derived from divorce because of the juxtaposition of the Torah’s description of the dissolution of the marriage (ויצאה) and the creation of a new marital bond following the divorce (והיתה). The Talmud calls this מקיש הויה ליציאה — connecting the “becoming” of marriage to the “leaving” of divorce.
In one incident in the Talmud, Reish Lakish literally screams at the top of his lungs like a squawking bird, “We must juxtapose the laws of divorce to the laws of marriage!”
Why is divorce presented in such a strange way in the Torah? And why do we rely on divorce to derive so many of the laws of marriage? It almost feels like divorce is the main event, while the details of marriage itself are left so unarticulated in the Torah and the Talmud.
To understand the significance of Jewish divorce and marriage, let’s explore some of the most famous divorces in Jewish history.
Read the rest on Substack, and listen to the full shiur above!