ETHICAL IMPERATIVE AND HALAKHIC INNOVATION

Moshe Zemer

I. HILLEL THE ELDER - A SOLUTION FOR ILLEGITIMACY

An epidemic of mamszerut swept over the Jewish

community of Alexandria around the first year of the Common Era. It was the custom of Alexandrian Jewish men to betroth their wives a year before a marriage(a practice not dissimilar to that in the Biblical period and among Yemenite Jews of recent generations). In this hiatus between giddushin(betrothal) and nessuin(marriage), other Jewish men would often take these betrothed women as their wives. The sages of Alexandria were about to pronounce the children fathered by these“second husbands” as mamgzerim (illegitimate). They relied on the established halakhah that a woman betrothed by giddushin, is considered a married woman, her relationship with another man is adulterous and their issue mamgerim.

These troubled people turned to Hillel the Elder in Eretz Yisrael for help. He instructed representatives of the younger generation:“Bring me your mothers’ ketubot(marriage contracts).”! At that time the ketubah was composed by laypeople and varied in its text from place to place. Hillel scrutinized the document and found the following: lekheshetikansi lahuppah, hevi li leintu-“when you enter the huppah(marriage canopy), be thou my wife.”

Hillel the Elder took this phrase out of context and interpreted it as though it were a condition: Only when you enter the huppah will you be wife, but if you don't enter the huppah with