DANIEL SCHIFF

Mishnah : Just as she is prohibited to the husband[asurah le­ba’alah], so is she prohibited to the paramour[asurah le­vo'alah]; as it is said:“Defiled...and is defiled”[Num. 5:14, 29]. This is the statement of Rabbi Akiva . Rabbi Josiah said:“Thus did Zechariah ben Ha-Katzav use to expound: Rabbi said:‘The word“defiled’ occurs twice in the scriptural portion, one referring[to her being prohibited] to her husband and the other to the paramour.”

As a consequence, in a case of proven adultery, the adulteress was to be divorced from her husband, forbidden to her paramour, and probably would have faced a bleak future, with little prospect of finding a new partner. Moreover, whereas capital punishment had been possible only on the testimony of two unimpeachable witnesses, defilement separation of the parties could be called for on the basis of a single witness, even if that witness was the self-incriminating adulteress or the aggrieved husband. Two

witnesses, however, remained the standard if the beit din were to demand a divorce.”

The“forced separation” penalty enshrined within the tradi­tional halakhah implied a blatant inequality between men and women that remains a systemic feature to this day. Since the adul­terer was not subject to the same defilement as the adulteress, he was not required to divorce his wife, although his adultery was certainly grounds upon which his wife could expect successfully to petition the beit din to impel her husband toward giving her a get. In a way this inequality could be seen as having been protective of the aggrieved wife in centuries past: if divorce had been enforced, she would not only have suffered the adultery of her husband, but Would also then have been required to relinquish her marriage, with significant attendant economic and social implications, as well.

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