DEUT1051 See [[DEUT645]] Deuteronomy 13:16 sword GREENBERG 183-4

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DEUT1050 In a number of instances the Rabbis fixed conditions which, to all intents and purposes, made a law inoperative. They did this in the case of the "disloyal and defiant son" (Deuteronomy 21:18-21) Sanhedrin 68b-71b, the law regarding capital punishment, Tosafot, Sanhedrin 15b on aymah liktala, and Sanhedrin chap. 5. Makkot 7a, and the law regarding the excommunicated city (Deuteronomy 13:13-19). Sanhedrin 111b-113a. Note particularly Rabbi Eliezer's opinion 113a, quoted also ibid. 71a.

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DEUT1164 See [[EXOD398]] Exodus 20:10 cattle GREENBERG 77

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DEUT1190 There is no greater a travesty of the truth than the often-repeated statement that underlying the Jewish laws of marriage is the concept of the wife as the property of a husband, he having bought her from her father. If that were so, the Rabbis would have had little difficulty in finding a way to dissolve the marriage without the husband's consent, for we have noted that the power of the court to declare property ownerless was one of the most firmly fixed assumptions of rabbinic legislation. Rabbinic law, however, places marriage in a category all its own. It is not like any other interpersonal relationship. There are aspects to it which give a transcendent ethical significance. Marriage involves man's and woman's total personality--physical, intellectual, and spiritual --more fully than any other relationship into which any two human beings can enter. It is, moreover, a union in which God is to be an ever-present partner; it is sanctioned ultimately by Him and dedicated primarily to His glory. A violation of marriage involving a married woman is punishable by death for both participants [this and preceding verse]. It is on a par with idolatry and murder as a transgression which a man is required to avoid even at the price of martyrdom. Sanhedrin 74a

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DEUT1194 That one is to accept martyrdom rather than commit adultery was based by Rabbi on [this verse] which compairs the raping of a betrothed woman to murder.

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DEUT1299 "O Lord, who shall sojourn in Thy tent?… He who… swears to his own hurt and changeth not" (Psalm 51:1,4). ... Obviously, a pledge implies that it will be honored even when it may involve considerable loss or discomfort, even when it can be violated with impunity. The Psalmist does not praise the man who merely fulfills a pledge. He praises one who does so when it is to his hurt, and when presumably he could have avoided fulfilling it. Such an act belongs in our category of the moral.

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DEUT1326 The literal meaning of this verse indicates that the husband is the exclusive initiator of the proceedings that culminate either in marriage or divorce. Rabbi Simeon said: "Why does the Torah say 'when a man takes a wife,' and not 'when a woman takes a husband'? Because it is in the nature of man to seek after the woman and not in the nature of the woman to seek after the man." Kiddushin 2b. Although neither Jewish nor general law places the woman at a disadvantage in initiating the process culminating in marriage, biology, society, and long-standing tradition have limited her freedom even in this realm much more than that of the man. In the matter of terminating a marriage, however, the biblical law, as at present [i.e., 1977-AJL] interpreted and applied, places the Jewish woman, in countries where the Jewish community exercises no legally enforceable authority over its members, completely in the power of her alienated husband. Even though the man may have been granted a civil divorce and even have remarried, he may nevertheless refuse to grant her a get, a rabbinically sanctioned religious divorce, or may consent to grant it only on conditions that he sets. The hardships that this frequently imposes on innocent women were recognized early in Jewish history, and, as we shall see, the Rabbis tried to overcome them. But the problem was not altogether solved evening in periods when the Jewish community exercised considerable legal authority over its members and could severely punish those who transgressed its enactments. The scope of the problem infinitely increased in modern times, when most Jewish diaspora communities ceased to exercise any significant legally enforceable authority over their members. Attempts to find a solution, therefore, we made on the level of both theory and practice, and a vast literature dealing with the subject has been developed over the centuries. (See e.g. Freiman, Avraham Hayyim. Seder Kiddushin Unsuin. Jerusalem: Mosad Harav Kook, 5707 = 1945). But no solution has yet been suggested by anyone which has won widespread acceptance both in theory and in practice. The dimensions of the problem have in the meantime continue to increase rather than to diminish.

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DEUT1435 See [[EXOD398]] Exodus 20:10 cattle GREENBERG 77

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DEUT1625 See [[DEUT551]] Deuteronomy 11:26 set GREENBERG 45

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