Kiddushin 2: The Gendering of Acquisition

Our very first Mishna teaches us about marriage from the woman's perspecitve.  We learn that there are three ways that a woman can be acquired in marriage:

1) through a monetary exchange
2) using a document
3) through sexual intercourse.

Beit Shammai say that a woman might be acquired by money or by something that is worth money.  How much money?  At least one dinar.  Beit Hillel argue that the item must be worth at least one peruta.  A peruta is said to be one eighth of an issar.

Our Mishna also tells us that a woman can end her marriage, or literally "acquire herself" in two ways: 

1) through a get, bill of divorce
2) through the death of her husband

In the case of a yevama, a woman who must marry her dead husband's brother after he died childless, she acquires herself through the death of her yavam or through the process of chalitza, which releases her from the bond between herself and her yavam.

The Gemara points out that we are learning about the woman's perspective specifically to introduce the  complication of acquisition through money.   They look to Ephron's field that is acquired just as a woman is acquired - through a a monetary exchange.  A field is taken (Genesis 23:13) just as a woman is taken (Deuteronomy 24:1).  Similarly, prooftexts are found for both fields and women to be acquired, and to be acquired through money.

Is this exactly the same transaction?  The rabbis ask openly about consent.  We have learned that a betrothal is not valid if the woman does not consent to her own acquisition.  Our notes teach us that the betrothal is not necessarily ineffectual in this case, but that it is of "uncertain status".  What might that have meant, in practical terms, for such a woman?

The rabbis then discuss which particular words are stated in their feminine or masculine forms in this mishna and why that might be the case.  This examination elucidates some of the rabbis' understandings about essential differences between women and men.  For example, the word derech, matter or way/path, is said in the masculine. This has to do with the context of the word derech when it is used in Deuteronomy 28:7.  In that verse, derech refers to the ways of war.  Men wage war but women do not; derech is thus stated in its masculine form in this context of kiddushin.  Another example is that of pursuit of a lost item.  One who has lost an item looks for it; man has lost his wife as woman was taken from his side.  Thus it is the way, derech, of a man to acquire a woman.  It is not the way of a woman to take a man.  More proof about why the word derech should be stated in its masculine form.

We can see that the contextual understandings of the rabbis was highly influential in their interpretations and in their teachings.  Of course our tradition is a patriarchal and male-centred religion.  It was disseminated by men who understood and explained our texts and our lives based on their own male readings of societal functioning.