Wednesday, August 29, 2007

Yevamos 118b - Mezakeh a Gett to a Woman

The gemara remains with a question regarding being mezakeh a get to prevent yibum would be considered beneficial and is effective, or detrimental and therefore ineffective. It is clear from the rashi that we are speaking of a situation where the purpose of this divorce is only to exempt her from yibum i.e. he is dying or he makes the get chal a moment before he dies, but in a normal situation we always assume that it is detrimental for her to receive a get since she prefers to stay married. Even when there are fights between them (to a point where she claims she is already divorced, as the gemara explained the term "ketata" on 116a), we still assume that she prefers to stay married. The Nimukei Yosef points out that even if we ask her afterward if she was happy to receive the get and she confirms that she was, we cannot consider it a z'chus since we must make the determination of whether it is a chov or z'chus at the time it is received, and not figure it out in retrospect. Similarly, if she made it clear that she wants to receive a get, we still cannot be mezakeh a get to her, since we are concerned she changed her mind.
Nevertheless, when a women is a mumeres and literally moves in with someone else, the Rama (140:5 and also the end of siman 1) writes that it is certainly a z'chus for her to receive the get to prevent her from doing a continuous aveirah and therefore is considered a z'chus. It seems that even if she claims that she doesn't want it, we only use "will" as a method of determining z'chus or chov, when something is a physical benefit since the "will" to receive it or not to receive it is the factor that determines whether it is a benefit for this person. But, when it comes to an aveirah, "will" alone does not determine z'chus or chov since her yetzer horah blocks her from realizing the severity of the issur, therefore we ignore her "will and instead look at whether it is inherently beneficial.

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