166 Selected Reform Responsa
contain no false material(Git. 10b, 87b; Yad Hil. Ishut 3.8). No problem ever existed for women who were widowed or divorced; they were so designated in the ketubah. Their status was public knowledge and there was no reason to hide it or to be ashamed of it. If a woman was no longer a virgin, due to accident or intercourse, this should have been so designated. Yet we find that in ancient Judea , where premarital intercourse seems to have been frequent, the Judeans did not permit such a reflection to be cast on their women and insisted on a mohar of two hundred zuzim for everyone including the widowed and divorced. In other words, all women were automatically classified as virgins. It seems that at this time it was not customary to mention the status of the bride when her name appeared in the ketubah(Ket. 10b, 12a; Tos. Ket. 1.4; J. Ket. 25¢). There were a number of other periods in Jewish history when loose standards of conduct were widespread. However, this does not seem to have affected the wording of the ketubot(Isaac b. Sheshet quoting Nahmanides#6, 395, 398, 425; L. Epstein, Sex Laws and Customs in Judaism , p. 128). There is some likelihood that the joining together of erusin and nisuin, which occurred in the Middle Ages , was due to illicit intercourse which took place during the longer interval between the two ceremonies, which were often separated by as much as a year(Z. W Falk, Jewish Matrimonial Law in the Middle Ages, pp. 43 ff, A. Freiman, Seder Qidushin Venisuin).
Let us now look at the document itself and the various categories of nonvirgins, such as widows and divorcees. In the case of a divorcee, this designation is placed in the kefubah in order to indicate that she is prohibited from marrying a priest. In the case of someone who has been raped or seduced, this lack of virginity may be omitted in the ketubah in order to refrain from shaming her through this memory; some scholars insisted that it be mentioned and made public knowledge(Nahalat Shivah 12.15). However, we should also note that no authorities demand an inquiry to see whether the individual involved is in fact a virgin. B. Schereschewsky states that