A Borrower and a Lender Be! — BT Ketubot 72a — #32

Rav Kahana said: A man who imposes a vow on his wife that she should neither borrow nor lend a sieve, strainer, millstones, or oven must divorce her and pay her ketubah because he has caused her to have a bad name among her neighbors. A baraita taught the same thing: A man who imposes a vow on his wife that she should neither borrow nor lend a sieve, strainer, millstones, or oven must divorce her and pay her ketubah because he has caused her to have a bad name among her neighbors. Similarly, if [the wife] vowed to neither borrow nor lend a sieve, strainer, millstones, or oven, or not to weave beautiful garments for his children, she may be divorced without her ketubah because she has caused him to have a bad name among the neighbors.

INTRODUCTION

Long before a ketubah became the object of decorative art, it was a legal lien on a man’s property that he gave his wife when he married her. The Rabbis innovated the ketubah, which replaced the biblical mohar (bride price), as a protection for the woman in case the marriage ended, lest she be left with nothing. It stipulated how much money and property she would retain in case of death or divorce. In a sense, it functioned (in part) as a prenuptial agreement.  Today, in some Jewish communities, it is still a lien (albeit beautifully illuminated) and in more liberal communities the text has been modified to reflect the financial and social realities of life in the 21st century.

Prior to this passage, the Rabbis have been discussing mean-spirited vows that a husband might make; if they subject his wife to various forms of privation he must divorce her and pay her ketubah. These include forbidding her to visit her parents, attend a house of mourning, or visit a house of feasting. Many commentators try to invert the plain meaning of the text to say that these mishnayot concern foolish and inappropriate vows a wife makes that her husband fails to forbid. The text makes little sense understood this way and its very language must be contorted to squeeze this meaning out of it.

COMMENTARY

Rav Kahana paints a scenario for us of a husband who forbids his wife (through the device of a vow) from engaging in the ordinary day-to-day social interactions that make for good neighbors: borrowing and lending kitchen utensils. (We might be inclined to add the proverbial cup or sugar or two eggs to Rav Kahana’s examples.) In the world of the Talmud, women regularly borrowed  kitchen utensils from one another, and doing so fostered and cemented good relationships between neighbors in the community. Refusing to lend someone a cake pan or electric mixer (to translate into our parlance) could generate resentment and seriously damage relationships with neighbors and quite possibly threaten friendships. Imagine you asked a friend to borrow a loaf pan and your friend said no. What would you think? How would you feel? The husband’s vow destabilizes his wife’s position vis-a-vis her neighbors and friends: “he gives her a bad reputation” resulting in her social isolation. If the wife does not mourn or celebrate with others, lend and borrow simple kitchen utensils, she is cut off from her community. The husband divorces her and must pay her ketubah because she has done nothing wrong that would suggest she should forfeit it. But why does Talmud say he must divorce her? Perhaps, in the eyes of the Rabbis, a vow such as this is a sign that their relationship is seriously unhealthy. The husband’s behavior—socially isolating his wife and ruining her reputation with her neighbors and friends—raises a red flag: What else is he doing to her?

Conversely, if the wife vows to neither lend nor borrow in the way of a good friend and neighbor—and Gemara adds if she refuses to make nice clothing for his (i.e., her own) children—this, too, is a dangerous sign. Her actions socially isolate not only herself, but also her children and husband and thus he may divorce her without paying her ketubah if he chooses. 

“Neighbors bring food with death and flowers with sickness and little things in between. Boo was our neighbor. He gave us two soap dolls, a broken watch and chain, a pair of good-luck pennies, and our lives. But neighbors give in return. We never put back into the tree what we took out of it: we had given him nothing, and it made me sad.” Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

QUESTIONS TO CONSIDER AND DISCUSS

1. The Rabbis placed a premium on good neighborly relations, a sine qua non for building community. Do you agree? We live in a society in which many people barely know their neighbors. What has been your experience?
2. In Hamlet (Act 1, Scene 3) Polonius famously counsels his sons, Laertes: “Neither a borrower nor a lender be, For loan oft loses both itself and friend, And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.” Shakespeare had in mind the risk of lending money to people who might not repay their obligation. How would you feel if you lent money or a tool to a friend who did not pay you back? In what situations does borrowing strengthen a relationship, and when does it threaten to rupture a relationship?
3. The picture that emerges from the mishnah and Rav Kahana’s description is that of a controlling husband who seeks to socially isolate his wife from her family, friends, and community. There is a wealth of literature on people with borderline personality disorder and narcissistic personality disorder who engage in behaviors much like those ascribed to the hypothetical husband of this Talmudic passage. Often physical and emotional abuse are occurring behind closed doors.  The National Domestic Violence Hotline (thehotline.org) says: “Possessive and controlling behaviors don’t always appear overnight, but rather emerge and intensify as the relationship grows.” Do you know anyone in this situation? How might you speak with them and advice them?