I feel compelled to start yet a separate thread on this issue because we tend to compartmentalize it into different subjects when it really is one subject.

I've had some an exchange with someone in the Global Yeshiva in which I insist that halacha forbids premarital/extramarital sex. But these terms are really borrowed from Christendom. Torah has provision for multiple wives and even concubines. Sex with a concubine is neither pre-marital nor extra-marital, however this is a halachic designation that has to be done according to the letter of halacha. The Rabbonim have figured out ways of restricting and liberalizing these provisions according to the needs of the day. Rav Gershom's cherem on polygamy is a good example. Torah cannot be cancelled but restrictions can be put in place to affect the outcome.

Today there is an excess of Jewish women looking for husbands. Many of these women do have sex. We can argue halacha all we want but they do. If they are going to do it anyway, should they go to the mikveh? Would they be better off as a second wife or a pelagash because that has a good halachic standing. It's not considered an aveira or promiscuity to be a pelagash. A pelagash is a legal mistress. The Rambam ruled that only kings should be allowed them but other sages have challenged his ruling. The laws of Torah were put in place for just such circumstances but we have adopted a goyish morality that is coming back to sting us.

So, is the woman who is 39 years old and still looking for a husband better off sharing one as a second wife or as a pelagash, especially if she is having sex anyway. Rav Gershom's cherem expired at least a century ago and it was never accepted by the Sepharadim nor the Teimani. The only thing that "prohibits" us from having multiple wives is the law of the lands in which we live. In Israel during the 1950s the rabbanut instituted a one wife per family edict but I don't know how much it's binding halachically. Even under the current restrictions, multiple wives are allowed under special circumstances.

As for men; there has always been the sense that a Jewish man can get sex from a shiksa, in a pinch. I think with things opening up in halacha, Jewish men would feel empowered to have Jewish women for pelagash or secondary wives. What I'm saying may be inflammatory and not politically correct, but it's Torah!!!!

I have already dealt with this in the pre-marital forum. I brought many Halacha problems, where most Shitos hold it's Daraisah (or at least it should be Safek Daraisah) and a Pilegesh is with Kidushin and without Kesuvah. See there.

I agree that Pilegesh is without Ketubah, but it is recognised by halacha as legitimate, isn't it? If it is, could it be a solution for people who are having sex anyway?

Rav Chaim; should the 37 year old Jewish woman who is going to have sex anyway go to the mikveh? My post is not addressing issues we already know, issues which have heard in shiurim and drasha forever. It is addressing issues we know to be in halacha but have evolved along with Christendom. Today we have a crisis that was supposed to be solved by provisions already in Torah from the beginning. My question is whether those provisions can be revived because they were never cancelled, they are part of Torah. The Rambam says it is halachically okay to have pilegash. He just qualifies it by saying only kings can do so. Other sages were more lenient than he was. So to have women competing for men in illegitimacy while there is a legitimate way to do it is a travesty for Yiddishkeit.

We never condone the actions to make "more permissive" something that is prohibitted. We shouldn't encourage going to the Mikva to save sinners from issur Kareis as to condone the probable Issur LAv that's involved (Lo shiyeh Kodesh)

quote:

agree that Pilegesh is without Ketubah, but it is recognised by halacha as legitimate, isn't it? If it is, could it be a solution for people who are having sex anyway?

I mean that they hold that it must be with Kiddushin, but without the Kesuvah.

quote:

Originally posted by Rav Chaim:
We never condone the actions to make "more permissive" something that is prohibitted. We shouldn't encourage going to the Mikva to save sinners from issur Kareis as to condone the probable Issur LAv that's involved (Lo shiyeh Kodesh)

I am not familiar with these halachas. Quite honestly it never came up. You say that we should not act to make somthing more permissive which is prohibited.
I think Moshe Y's question (and mine) is; is it prohibited and if so why?

Rav Chaim:
Your response underscores my original issue of pelegash. It is true that halacha would not allow a woman, who is going to do something forbidden, to take a mikveh. But if the same woman were a pelagash, according to halacha, she should and it would be permissible. A woman who wants to have sex anyway can become a pelegash according to halacha.
This then brings us to the Rambam and others. Who is eligible for pelagash? At this point I feel that's the only point of discussion. The Rambam says only kings can do such a practice. By today's standards what's a king? A prime minister, as CEO, a Rav? I don't know.

Furthermore, other poskim are more lenient than the Rambam.

Practically, I don't know many women that would allow their husbands to take a pelagesh, nor do I know many women who would want to be a second wife to a man.

Putting the halacha aside for a moment, within the Western culture, a second wife is an undesireable and unacceptable concept, and so no woman would either allow her husband to take a second wife, nor would she want to become a second wife. Besides which you have the laws of the country against polygamy.

Putting halacha aside, I agree that in the western culture women have been socialized not to share their husbands. Women are glad when they find themselves a husband and don't want to share him until they get divorced or widowed. When tables are turned it doesn't seem such a bad notion. The reality of it is that they end up sharing their husbands anyway....surrepticiously (of course, this is a generalization, I suspect most kosher communities do not have this problem). The question really is whether women want it in the open or on the sly. Halacha says it can be done in the open and be kosher under certain conditions.

I'm not even advocating polygamy. I'm was just taking halacha to its logical conclusion in a situation where there is supposed to be a shidduch problem.

About the laws of the country against polygamy; that needs to be qualified. Most jurisdictions in the US do not recognize the ketuba as the definitive marriage certificate. Usually a Jew has to have both the civil certificate and the ketuba to be considered "married" by the state. In most jurisdictions polygamy is interpreted to mean having civil certificates with more than one spouse. Living with one woman is not considered marriage by most states, nor is living with 2 or 3 women in most jurisdictions. So halachically it's possible to be married Jewishly without being married according to civil laws, thus not violating any laws of the land.

Has there ever been a test case in secular law that maybe a woman sued for civil divorce and won something when they had a kesuba and no civil marriage license?

Thus the court would have recognized that a kesuba makes a marriage?

Then again, Common Law marriage is perhaps just this sort of thing, that if a man and woman live together as if married for some period of time, they get some community property rights and liabilities.

Generally, Rabbis do not sign a ketuba without also signing the civil license. So I doubt if there is anyone in the US who has a ketuba but no parallel civil certificate unless she is an aguna. In fact, the situation of an aguna whose ex-husband is re-married is a good example of a man who is Jewishly married to two women while he is married to only one woman by civil law.

The hypothetical situation I had mentioned would have to be by special arrangement with a Rav you trust and vice versa. The redistribution of wealth following death or divorce can always be settled at the consummation of the union using "prenuptual" agreements and trusts.

Gila suggested that most women would never do such a thing. That may be true but there may be lesbian/bisexual women who might find sharing a man to be a halachic way to take care of several mitzvot simultaneously.

Rob:
Your common law comment is an interesting one because most states in the US have a common law provision. But most of these provisions presume that the man has been living with one woman. If he had been living with 3 women, do these laws consider all the women to be common law wives? I don't know.

quote:

Originally posted by MosheYisraeli:
The redistribution of wealth following death or divorce can always be settled at the consummation of the union using "prenuptual" agreements and trusts.

There was an interesting case in Gemara Bava Metzia I recently read in which a mother and her son died in the same house collapse accident, I think.

Given our laws of inheritance, the precise order of their death became significant as to whether the family of the mother, who was not family of the son inheritted posessions of the son.

Given these sort of complications, what is the relative priority of a mistress asserting a common law marriage right, alongside other mistresses, some of whom with prenuptual agreemets, and others who thought they had exclusive rights?

Rob,
I'm not a lawyer, but precedence for palimony has already been set in our case law. Whatever arrangements are made is such situations will determine the outcome, I suppose.

The use of trusts can be a bulletproof method of sidestepping the entire inheritance issue, even when there aren't any multiple spouses involved. People tend to get weird when a parent dies and all normacly is thrown out the window. The use of trusts guarantees that whatever assets have been designated to the various people while the deceased was still living will remain that way. The wise man tries to make sure that there are no assets in his name when he dies. All assets should be already given "in trust" to the beneficiaries and organizations of his choice before he passes on. Trusts allow beneficiaries to "own" the assets before he dies. This way there is no squabbling among widows, ex-wives, children etc.

At one point Moshe Y. brought up the issue of frequent divorce and it's relationship to polgyamy.
This may not be as far fetched as it seems.
I read a summary of scholarly research a few years ago which postualted and supported the idea that the high divorce rate in the world may be partially attributable to humans (more so men) being hard-wired for polygamy. The p'shat was in the term that they used to describe common divorces as "linear polygamy". If this is the case then the observant jewish community's substantially lower than average divorce rate and non-practice of polygamy may be a strict observance of the law-of-the-land that the goyim may have found a way around.

I came across this thread and have read it with interest. The issues raised are often not so very relevent it seems to me.

As to issues of cival law, the Mormans have long since dealt with a viable and non-contested work-around to US cival laws against polygamy.

As to issues of what a wife will or will not find desireable or acceptable, is that not up to the individual wife?

As to what works for a given couple, is that not up to them?

As to how 3 or more adults would work out a plural marriage, who knows? We do not even know how most regular marriages are going to work out, so why do we need to know how a plural one will?

So, the only - by me at least - legitamate question which is being entirely ignored is: can a normal, observant Jew take on more than one wife, given that historically it has been reserved for royalty?

As we no longer have Jewish royalty that I am aware of - jewish princes and princesses notwithstanding - could so one please answer the actual question at issue: Is it lawful?

Thanks

/s/ Mark

Mark Baraz:

Welcome and thanks for your comment. When you say "is it lawful?" do you mean according to halacha or according to the law of the land?

The main reason an observant Jew cannot take on a second wife is "principally" the law of the land. Even Rav Gershom's original cherem among the Ashkenazim was motivated by the laws of Christendom. The answer to your question is not straight forward. First of all halacha, cannot cancel Torah. So Rav Gershom's cherem did not cancel or prohibit polygamy. It restricted it....among the Ashkenazim. Although his cherem has expired, it continues to be the minhag among the Ashkenazim. Among the Sepharadim, the cherem was never embraced. So until about 1950, an observant Ashkenazic man could have a second wife under special circumstances (the one usually quoted is the wife who goes insane etc.) but 100 rabbonim need to sign off on it. Among the Sepharadim all a man needed was consent from his wife and a beit din of 3 sign off on it. Today, among the Sepharadim they require an a priori clause in the ketuba of the wife allowing him to take a second wife in the future. All this presumes that the law of the land permits it. When the first wave of aliyah of the Teimani occurred in the early fifties, some had plural wives, the government of Israel accepted the plural wives but banned them from taking more wives. The Rabbanut instituted a wife per family edict in Israel which stands to this day.

Now if a Jew lives in Kuwait or Zimbabwe where the law of the land allows plural wives, can a Jew take on a second wife and be halachically okay? I suspect. In the US, can a Jew live with two women who are not married to him in a civil way but have ketubot for both of them? I suspect....depending on community standards. I doubt this could happen in a frum Jewish community.

What about Rambam's ruling that it's only for kings? Other sages had more lenient rulings than the Rambam, however, the idea of plural wives in every society is a priviledge of the captains of those societies, men of means and kings. If we go by Rambam's rulings we would have to come up with a "king" equivalent today. If we go by other poskim we would come up with more lenient rulings.

A fascinating scenario is that of two frum Jewish lesbians who "marry" a frum man for the purpose of procreation and actually living in marriage situation etc without having to deal with the same sex marriage issue. These are not rival women, they love each other. It may be a sitiation to kill several birds with one stone. Halachaically I see it as a better alternative to same sex marriage. There is the double opportunity for procreation and it's a "normal" halachic family.
(I know it's a crazy thought but while we are having such deep discussions, why not!)