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daf bit: Gittin 24
A bill of divorce (get) must be written carefully and precisely,
so a husband hired (and I believe still hires) a scribe to prepare the
document. (This is similar to how, today, many hire a lawyer to prepare
a will.) The mishna teaches: any bill of divorce that was not written
specifically for the woman being divorced is invalid. If a scribe is
practicing and writes a get for Ploni to divorce Sarah, and a man
says "I'm Ploni and my wife is Sarah and I want to divorce her", he
can't use that document. Similarly, if a man wrote (or hired a scribe
to write) a get to divorce his wife and then changed his mind,
he can't pass it along for somebody else with the same name to use -- so
even though it was written with the intention of divorcing (rather than
practicing, as in the first case), it still doesn't count. And further, if
a man has two wives with the same name, he can't tell the scribe to write
the name and he'll decide later which one to divorce; it has to be written
about a specific wife. (24a-b)
On 26a, the next mishna is going to talk about forms -- even in rabbinic times, apparently scribes wrote out documents with blanks to fill in the names and dates later. There is a dispute about whether you can do this with a get.
(Today's daf is 25.)
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Yep. In my case[1], there was a Rabbi was helping out, so he organized the scribe (and witnesses), but I was definitely paying for the scribe. Today, a get (or at least, the I was directly involved with) is very specific. So the get that was written identifies me by my hebrew name (Ploni Ulmoni ben Ploni), my full english name, and also "Goljerp". It wasn't a fun experience, but the surreal experience of listening to the scribe and the rabbi deciding how to write "Goljerp" in hebrew characters did lighten the moment.
[1] this was years ago -- Joy and I are still married. :-)
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Oh whew!
Thank you for confirming modern practice. I wasn't sure if, these days, perhaps somebody just typed it.
"Goljerp"? Wow, I wouldn't have thought that Internet handles and other informal aliases would be included. Your anecdote made me chuckle -- you're right; the transliteration into Hebrew there is not at all obvious. :-)
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Wow, I wouldn't have thought that Internet handles and other informal aliases would be included.
Informal aliases/nicknames (like "Dave" for a man named "David", or even something like "Yogi") are definitely included. As far as internet goes, I'm not sure how this has evolved -- In my case, there are actually friends of mine who use "Goljerp" as a nickname for me outside of the internet. It's a good idea (although not required) to bring a friend along for this process (for both parties -- I imagine there's a lot of waiting around in another room for the woman). The friend I brought along is one of my friends who calls me "Goljerp" in person (and did in the presence of the Rabbi), so I didn't force the poor Rabbi to make a ruling on whether internet aliases that nobody ever speaks out loud count or not. All he (and the scribe) had to figure out was how to spell it, which was probably bad enough. :-)
[1] My ex and I split up the divorce chores: I handled the secular stuff; she found the Rabbi who would coordinate the Get. My memory was that the Conservative Rabbi she found didn't want to do the Get until the civil divorce was totally done, but in the state we were filing, there was a 1-year period between filing and when it was "totally done". She didn't want to wait the year, and I said that I would work with whatever Rabbi she chose to give her the get. So, Orthodox it was.
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Do you happen to know if it's usual these days for the couple to go together as opposed to using a messenger to deliver the document?
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I think a lot depends on circumstances. In my case, ex and I both lived in NYC, and were both pretty poor, so why pay for a shaliach if we didn't need to?
My brave Orthodox friend whose husband turned out to be a shmuck, and whose family tried every dirty trick in the book in the civil divorce, would probably never have gotten a get if she hadn't seized a moment of civility. I wasn't there, but my impression was that he said that he would give a get, so she basically said, "don't move", called a Rabbi, and stayed with her husband until he finished the get. In her case, I doubt she trusted him to use a messenger. Alas, the subsequent civil divorce was, as I implied, messy.
The Second Jewish Catalogue (1976) has an anecdote of a couple going together for a get, but also talks about messengers as a solution still being used for various reasons, including geography and emotional.