Thursday, August 30, 2007

Yevamos 120b - 121a - Following ROV to Permit Her to Remarry

The mishnah 120a says that you can't testify (even with 2 witnesses) that someone died by simply seeing them in a situation where they are likely to die. It is clear from the mishnah that the testimony of him being in a state where he will likely die, will not be matir his wife. Although there is certainly a ROV that most people in this state will certainly die, we can't be matir her. Tosafos writes this explicitly on 121a that we don't follow ROV to be matir his wife - that is the reason that both by a goses and by mayim sh'ein lahem sof, we can't allow him to remarry. Tosafos on 36a d.h. hu lo shaha, seems to offer 2 possibilities why we are machmir not to follow the rov. 1. the mi'ut is a mi'ut hamatzuy and we are choshesh for it. 2. it is a chumrah of ervah and eishes ish. It would seem that both approaches would only be m'drabonon, but m'doraysa you certainly can be matir based on rov. Based on the assumption that not following the ROV is only a takana d'rabonon, the Nodeh B'yehuda (brought in Pischei Teshuva 17:130) that if we find someone who is cut up so that he will likely die, he then disappears and we find a dead body that is cut up in the same area, but we have no simanim at all on the body - since m'doraysa she can remarry just by the fact that her husband was likely to die, so m'drabonon we can rely on the assumption that the body that was found is her husband. Similarly, we find Teshuvos brought in Pischei Teshuva (133) from R' Chaim Volozhin (and others) that if there is a double ROV you can also be matir her.

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