Sunday, March 13, 2016

Strings Attached?

Lirfuas Eliyana Rina bas Eliezer Yaakov bi-soch shear cholei yisrael. 
Li-zchus the TZADIK who gave in her name.


לרפואת נעמי בת טובה, להצלחת ר' שמואל בנימין בן תשנה רחל לאה, משה יהודה בן פעשע דינה, שיינדי חנה בת מלכה ורבקה אסתר בת אליהו פרץ

The gemara in Gittin [21a] says that if one places a get in his courtyard and then gives the courtyard to his wife as a present she acquires the get and is divorced.

This raises a SERIOUS problemo! 

It is known that one may retract the giving of a gift תוך כדי דיבור, so if the husband decides [in our case] that he doesn't want to give his wife the courtyard after all, the gift is nullified and she is not divorced. 

If so, how can he divorce her this way - it is similar to the case where he gives her a get with a string attached and he can pull it back at any second. In such an instance she is not divorced [even after he lets go of the string] because at the time of the giving, it wasn't כריתות - he was still attached to the get [Gittin 78a]. Here too, at the time of the giving of the get [i.e. the relinquishing of the courtyard to her], he was still attached to the get because he could change his mind for the first few seconds. A regular get is not a problem because there is a din that with regard to get we don't say that he can retract תוך כדי דיבור, so at the moment of giving the get is activated and she is divorced.  But here, he is divorcing her by giving her the courtyard as a gift and as such he may retract תוך כדי דיבור. It emerges then that at the time of the giving of the get she was not divorced [because the courtyard still belongs to him until after כדי דיבור] and after תוך כדי דיבור when the get is in her possession it is too late because it is as if she received it without him giving it to her - כטלי גיטך מעל גבי הקרקע [which is not valid].     

To summarize: How can one divorce his wife by putting the get in his courtyard and then giving her the courtyard as a gift? Since he may retract the gift for the first few seconds it is similar to a case where at the time of the giving of the get it was still attached to the husband by a string and the husband can pull it back in which case she is not divorced??

There are at least 8 answers to this bomb - can you think of any?

[Based on a shiur by Mori Vi-rabi Shlita - he has a VERY "glach", smooth terutz that I saw in his קבא דקשייתא that he once loaned me]