ALIYAH: CONFLICT AND AMBIVALENCE

How does Maimonides apply these criteria to our case of the deceitful husband from Alexandria? We see here that he was not only an academic teacher of the Law and codifier of halakhot, but an administrator of justice in specific matters of case law.

Now this“little fox,”” who makes this claim or another like it, is allied with criminals® and joins hands with wickedness. Thus it is with all those who make false charges in order to avoid an obligation that they have undertaken, like withholding the wages of an employee, which is exploitation no less than the deeds of a robber. In my mind there is no difference between one who withholds wages until the end of the day and then afterward finds some specious reason not to pay the worker and one who contrives to deprive his wife of her marriage contract... Indeed it is easy for most men to afflict their wives to avoid paying their ketubah. Tt would be appropriate to beware of this iniquity and stop those who perpetrate it,“break the arm of the wicked and evildoer,™' and“rescue the oppressed from the hand of the oppressor.” Signed, Moshe.

The Rambam points out that most men can easily afflict their wives. They can make these poor women’s lives miserable, but if the latter were to protest too much, they might be considered rebellious wives, who could be divorced without recompense. The wife is in the position of the oppressed, about whom the Torah and the Prophets were forever concerned. The Maimoni has no hesitancy in comparing this man’s misdeeds with sinning against the Torah prohibition of oppressing the needy wage earner. Maimonides did not limit himself to the strict letter of the law, which he himself had codified. On the

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