Moses Maimonides (1135-1204) has achieved lasting fame as the outstanding philosopher of the Jewish Middle Ages. Philosophy was only one of his accomplishments. The fourteen volumes of his Mishneh Torah are a topical arrangement of the totality of the Jewish Law, and Maimonides is, therefore, regarded as the foremost systematizer in the history of the Law. In addition to writing his legal code, Maimonides took the time to answer questions of the Law addressed to him from all over the Jewish world, and so became an important contributor to the literature of Responsa. In this branch of Jewish literature, the questions are published along with the answers, and together they afford an insight for the latter-day historian into the social and economic circumstances in which the questions arose.
The following Responsum is No. 45 of the Responsa of Maimonides, published, in the original Arabic and a Hebrew translation, in Jerusalem, 1957.—Jakob J. Petuchowski
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Question: May our Master instruct us concerning the case of a Jew who has been married to a woman for a number of years. During one year he had to travel away on business, and he has been away from his city at intervals for a period of four years. When he returned to his home, he found that his brother-in-law, his wife’s brother, had become a schoolteacher, and that his wife was assisting her brother in his teaching. Her husband had taught her a little Torah, and during her husband’s absence she had taught herself the rest of the Torah. Her husband said to her: “It is not at all fitting that you should be teaching the children. I have misgivings about their fathers, who will come to visit them and who will put you into an embarrassing position. For your own sake as well as for mine, I do not want this to happen.”
When the said wife heard this from him, she made life miserable for her husband, refraining from doing the work which Jewish women are obligated to do for their husbands. She refrained from kneading [bread], from cooking, from sexual intercourse, from sweeping the house, from washing clothes, and from fulfilling her obligations toward her children. Instead, she continued teaching together with her brother from morning to night. Whenever the man needs to have something done—such as cooking or kneading [bread] or washing a garment, and the like—he is obliged to hire someone at full pay to do these tasks for him.
The man has been living with this woman under such circumstances for four years now, and is now tired of it. But the woman is pant owner in a property together with her sister and with her mother-in-law, her husband-in-law, her husband’s mother; and the man is afraid to divorce her, lest she take the said share of the property and sell it, to give [the money] to the next man who would marry her, and thus leave her children by her present husband deprived.
Moreover, the said woman has a clause in her marriage contract which prohibits her husband from taking an additional wife, or having a maidservant whom she dislikes stay in the house. And if he takes another wife, or has a maidservant stay who is hateful to his wife, then the husband is obliged to pay his wife the complete sum [to which her marriage contract entitles her], and to put in writing that he divorces her—even though only she wishes to be divorced, while he does not want to divorce her.
May His Excellency instruct us whether or not the man is permitted to take an additional wife, in such a manner that his first wife remains under his jurisdiction—lest she hasten to divest herself of her share of the property. And may he explain to us clearly what the Law requires in every single aspect [of this case]. And may his reward be double.
Answer: He is forbidden to take an additional wife except with his first wife’s permission, or after he has paid the sum due her. But he is permitted to restrain her from the teaching of children. And the count of law must reprove her on this account, and restrain her. In case She demands a divorce because her husband restrains her from teaching, it shall not be given to her. Rather do we lock the doors before her, and block the ways to this, and take charge of her affairs in the interim—until she changes her mind and agrees to conduct herself uprightly with her husband.
Written by
Moses
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