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daf bit: Ketuvot 61
A mishna teaches: if a married man makes a vow of celibacy, Beit
Shammai says his wife must tolerate it for two weeks. Beit Hillel
says one week. Rav says that this is only so when the man specifies
a duration for the vow; if he does not, Rav says that both Shammai
and Hillel require him to immediately divorce his wife and pay her
ketubah. Samuel permits him to delay the divorce while looking for
a way to be excused from the vow. (61b)
(There is no discussion here of limits on the duration, but I'll bet there is later in the gemara. Oh, and I don't know who Samuel is.)
This same mishna also gives the requirements for how often a man owes his wife intercourse (if she wants it), by the way. It varies by occupation, ranging from daily for men who don't work at all to every six months for sailors. I don't see scholars on the list. :-)
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Beit Hillel-Beit Shammai
Amoraim:
Rav-Shmuel
Abaye-Rava
Rebbe Yochanan-Resh Lakish
Ravina-Rav Ashi
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As for the vow of celibacy, Shammai's ruling makes a lot of sense in view of the usual practices of taharat hamishpachah (sp?). Unless of course the man vows to be celibate for the two weeks following his wife's trip to the mikveh. In which case he could well be vowing celibacy for 4 weeks, and Hillel makes a whole lot of sense.
I love this section of Talmud. For me it illustrates that the Rabbis were thinking about real life.
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Is fertility linear with nookie incidents? Or is time of month much more important? Of course more nookie means more chances; I'm just wondering what the function is. I wouldn't be too surprised to learn that, say, daily nookie is only twice as productive as weekly nookie, on average. But I don't know.
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According to most medieval Kabbalists, including HaAri, it's once a week: Friday nights.
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(Come to think of it, I thought I had learned once that every husband owes his wife on Shabbat, in permsisible weeks of course. I wonder how that and this passage are reconciled.)
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On the flip side, surely scholare are sometimes away for more than a week and the independently-wealthy overnight. I'll bet they don't have to make extra trips home.
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And kings are in the "once-a-day" category.
This is how we know that King Schlomo was blessed by G-d. Because he, alone among humans, was able to manage to satisfy 900 women per day.
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I had assumed that most of the wives didn't require this of him every day. (Statistics will get it down to an average of about 500 a day, once we factor in niddah. If they can agree on weekly, that's about 72 per day. Even with all that hedging -- just when did the man have time to rule? :-)
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Which, for all SORTS of reasons is a truly horrific thought -- I can't imagine 900 simultaneous cases of PMS.
The important thing, I guess, would be to make sure to be able to truck enough snow down from the mountaintops to make 900 gallons of ice cream a month. Which would help, but since chocolate is a New World plant, I can't help but thinking that this must have been once of the most hellish events in the history of the world.
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Or I could be remembering this entirely wrong. But I am fairly sure that it is a matter of debate as to whether A wife must be satisfied at least this often or if EVERY wife must be satisfied at least this often.
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As a married man, I can't imagine wanting to make a vow of celibacy. As a married man whose wife was once very observant, I can't begin to imagine doing so at any time other than when she was niddah. :-)
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As a married man, I can't imagine wanting to make a vow of celibacy.
I suspect that's true for most. But consider the case where Something Awful has happened that causes you to be much, much less attracted to her, but you're a greedy/lazy SOB who doesn't wnat to have to pay her ketubah. This would be a handy dodge -- "gee sorry, honey, don't know what I was thinking, but vows to the almighty are unbreakable, so I guess we're stuck".
I have no idea at all if the rabbis saw that as a possibility. Given some of the other places the rabbinic imagination goes, I don't dismiss it out of hand.
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Length of list is only meaningful if weighted by magnitude. For example, he has to support her in the manner to which they have become accustomed; she has to make his bed, cook his food, and wash his hands and feet. That's not one versus three in most cases. :-)
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Not exactly: under Jewish law the get is the divorce, so from the gemara's point of view (i.e. looking only at Jewish law) the situation you're describing is non-existent. It only occurs when Jewish law and local law aren't one and the same. When they are, he can remarry freely (in the sense of marrying a second/additional wife) but if he wants to be free of the first wife he has to divorce her & thus free her to marry someone else.
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