Kiddushin, Daf Gimmel, Part 3

 

Introduction

This section is substantially different from what we learned before. Here the Talmud is interested in why the mishnah has to use the word three. Why not just say, a woman is acquired through money, a document and intercourse. This is a frequent trope of the anonymous voice in the Talmud. The author of these sections tries to derive extra meaning from unnecessary words in the Mishnah just as earlier rabbis tried to derive meaning from words they perceived to be extra in the Torah.

 

מניינא דרישא למעוטי מאי מניינא דסיפא למעוטי מאי?

מניינא דרישא למעוטי חופה

 

What does the number of the first clause exclude, and what does the number of the second exclude? The number of the first clause excludes huppah.

 

The number in the first clause, concerning how a woman is acquired comes to exclude the huppah. A woman who enters the huppah but has not been acquired through money, documents or intercourse, is not married to her husband.

I should note that huppah in the Talmud is not what huppah is today. It is not entirely clear what this word means, but it seems closer to an actual room that the husband brings the woman into. Perhaps this originally was the room in which they would live. Today our huppot are symbolic.

 

ולרב הונא דאמר חופה קונה מק"ו למעוטי מאי? למעוטי חליפין ס"ד אמינא הואיל וגמר קיחה קיחה משדה עפרון מה שדה מקניא בחליפין אף אשה נמי מקניא בחליפין קמ"ל

 

But according to R. Huna, who holds that huppah does acquires [a woman through betrothal], from a kal vehomer argument, what does it exclude? It excludes a symbolic exchange, lest I would think that since we learn the meaning of taking from Ephron’s field then just as a field may be acquired by a symbolic exchange, so too may a woman be acquired by a symbolic exchange: therefore it teaches us [that she is not].

 

R. Huna says that betrothal can be done through huppah. We will return to this statement later so I am not going to dig deeper now. If so, then what does the number in the mishnah exclude?

The Talmud answers that it excludes betrothal through a symbolic exchange. Today we do this with a handkerchief or some other small object. The idea is that one person has an object and he symbolically transfers it to the other person and in exchange the person who symbolically receiving the hanky transfers something to the other person. This is also called kinyan. It is a convenient way to exchange either abstract goods or goods that are not present at the time of exchange.

We might have thought that since some of the laws of betrothal are derived from the verses in which Abraham buys a field from Ephron, and a field can be acquired through a symbolic exchange, so too betrothal can be enacted through a symbolic exchange. The mishnah, by using the word three teaches that it cannot.

 

ואימא הכי נמי חליפין איתנהו בפחות משוה פרוטה ואשה בפחות משוה פרוטה לא מקניא נפשה

 

And let us say that it is so [that she can be acquired by symbolic exchange]?

Symbolic exchange is possible with less than the value of a perutah but a woman will not give herself over in marriage for less than a perutah.

 

Symbolic exchange can be done with anything, even something not worth a perutah. But betrothal, as we learn in the Mishnah, can only be done with at least the value of a perutah. That is why betrothal cannot be done through symbolic exchange.