Hillel as Halachic Innovator
Tuesday, December 1, 2009/ 14 Kislev, 5770
Hillel as Halachic Innovator
At the turn of the Common Era, in antiquity, there arose a great problem amongst the Jewish Community of Alexandria, one of the largest Diaspora communities of its day. It was the custom of that time, as in much of the ancient Near East, for women to be betrothed one year prior to their actual marriage. During this one year interval between betrothal and marriage, many of the women took different men as husbands than were designated in their original betrothal. This happened with such frequency that large numbers of the younger generation in Alexandria were going to be declared as Mamzerim, illegitimate, by the local Sages. Their decision was based on the halacha that a woman who is betrothed by Kiddushin, is considered a married woman, and any subsequent sexual relationships with other men are considered adulterous, with children produced from these relationships mamzerim.
The people, greatly distressed, appealed to Hillel the Elder, a Sage of the Land of Israel, and a great authority of his day, for help. In a most interesting twist of legal interpretation, Hillel asked the young people whose status was in question to bring to him their mother’s ketubot, the legal documents of their original betrothal. In that day, ketubot were usually written by Lay Persons, with common vernaculars, and Hillel found this line in the ketubot which he used to annul the betrothal and the subsequent de-facto marriages of these women:
- “Lecheshetikansi L’Chuppah Hevi Li Leitenu” ” When you enter the Chuppah, be my wife.”
Hillel interpreted this line to mean literally, when you enter the Chuppah, then and only then shall you be my wife. His reasoning being that women who did not enter under the chuppah with the men they were originally betrothed to never consumated the terms of the Ketubah and therefore these betrothals could be retroactively annulled… an extraordinary legal decision with little prior precedent to support it. The Talmud says Hillel “Haya Doresh Leshon Hedyot”– used the common language as if it were written by rabbinic/legal authority. In this way, Hillel gave an Halachic precedent to the lay custom of writing legal documents by lay persons in the vernacular with the weight of law.
In many ways, Hillel actually invented a new halachic precedent which was then used to supercede a mitzvah deoraita, a scriptural commandment, which in this case states that a woman must obtain a divorce before marrying another. It is a supposed hard and fast fundamental of Halacha that a mitvah deoraita is inviolatable, yet here Hillel is blatently doing just that, and inventing halachic procedure on the spot to do it. Why? Because he felt the overwhelming human need of the moment required to do just that.
Hillel the Elder, great Halachic Innovator– Todah Rabah Hillel!!
– See Baba Metzia, Talmud Bavli, 104a for original citation of this halacha
Rabbi Sarah Etz Alon, Eber-Lat Living Lab
