daf bit: Ketuvot 82

If a man divorces his wife he is required to pay her ketubah. In order to ensure that he can, the rabbis require him to set aside property to cover this possible debt. Today's daf discusses the case of levirate marriage: if a man dies before his wife has had a child, the torah calls for his brother to marry her to continue the family line. When that happens, the rabbis ask, who owes her ketubah -- the new husband, or the first husband's estate? The rabbis say the first husband's estate, because the second husband did not choose to marry her ("heaven provided his wife"), but if she is unable to collect, the second husband is liable, to make it hard for him to divorce her. (82b)

(Yes, they can get out of this marriage. I wonder how much levirate marriage ever happened, or happens.)

Thanksgiving

I commend this post about George Washington and thanksgiving by osewalrus to your attention.

And so I say to my coreligionists that spurn Thanksgiving as a "goyish holiday," to the secularists who deride Thanksgiving as a recognition of a false "higher power," to those for whom the real injustices and oppressions that they have suffered -- and in many cases continue to suffer -- make the expression of Thanksgiving seem a bitter irony, and to those who see a recreation of the "First Thanksgiving" a celebration of the prelude to genocide, I beg you to consider this. Is it not worthy to take one moment to reflect on the creation -- whether by accident or Design -- of the dream and ideal of George Washington spoke? Fear not that recognition of this good renders injustice more palatable or forgives the unforgivable. Rather, I shall argue, if we refuse to recognize even this bit of good, if we refuse to acknowledge that nobility of spirit and ideals to inspire can arise in all places out of the complexity of the human spirit, then it is we who have proven the hypocrite.

I don't think I can add anything to that.