daf bit: Ketuvot 61

[cellio]

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. :-)

Comments

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

I also want to point out that, in cases of multiple marriages, EACH wife gets that much. And concubines count, as well. And "Slam-bam-thank-you-ma'am" doesn't cut it -- it has to be what she WANTS.

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.

[cellio]

:-)

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? :-)

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

All those women are living together. That means that their cycles will synchronize.

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.

[cellio]

I'm rusty on book of Kings. Are they really all living under one roof? I guess I imagined clusters of living quarters, not 900 women, one dorm, and three bathrooms. (Ok, I both exaggerate and anachronize.)

[zevabe.livejournal.com]

This is a dispute between the Rambam & I-forget-who. I think it is addressed in Yevamot somehow. I suppose the Rambam & Rishon B dispute how to interpret the Gemara there. It is somehow suggested that on the basis of A) Scholars being weekly B) No woman should have to wait more than a month for her turn and C) Scholars being the default (arguably about the middle of the spectrum), that a person shouldn't (as a suggestion) take more than 4 wives.

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.