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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