Yerushalmi Ketubot 5:3 ירושלמי כתובות ה׳:ג׳

MISHNAH: One gives a virgin twelve months from when the husband requested to marry her to provide for herself⁶³To make her trousseau.. Just as one gives to the woman so one gives to the man to provide for himself⁶⁴To look for a house and otherwise prepare for a family. The girl’s family cannot force the husband into a definitive marriage before 12 months after the date of the preliminary marriage.. And to a widow thirty days⁶⁵Since she already has a trousseau.. If the time has come and they are not definitively married, they eat from his [property] and may eat heave⁶⁶If the prospective husband is a Cohen, the preliminary marriage is the act of acquisition. Lev. 22:11, speaking about heave, reads: “If a Cohen buy a person with his money, that person may eat it.” Since the preliminary marriage is formally an acquisition by money, the bride can eat heave as soon as the groom is required to feed her. Therefore, if the delay of the wedding is his fault, the girl’s family can require that he feed her after the statutory 12 months delay, and he can fulfill his obligation by providing her with heave (for which he did not pay) and which she must eat in levitic purity in her father’s house.. Rebbi Ṭarphon says, one gives her everything in heave. Rebbi Aqiba said, half profane and half heave⁶⁷As the Halakhah explains, a woman regularly has periods of impurity. R. Aqiba requires the groom to provide her with profane food for her periods of impurity; R. Tarphon, in the interpretation of the Babli, thinks that she can sell the heave and buy profane food for the money. This is a very problematic proposition since heave, for which the only possible buyers are other Cohanim, cannot fetch a price commensurate with that of profane food..

HALAKHAH: “One gives a virgin twelve months.” It was stated⁶⁸Similar texts are Tosephta 5:1, Babli 57b. It is difficult to know what “in its time” means. The Tosephta reads: “Adulthood is equivalent to a request [for marriage], twelve months.” This means the same as the explanation in the Babli: “If a girl became preliminarily married after she was an adult for 12 months, one gives her 30 days as for a widow,” since she had ample time to sew her trousseau. One can read the Yerushalmi in the same sense, that the time of reaching adulthood is as good as an engagement.: Adulthood in its time is twelve months. Rebbi Hila said, state: One gives an adult twelve months and one gives her a preliminary wedding, and thirty days to a widow. We have stated: “One gives a virgin twelve months,” and you say so⁶⁹How can the time given between definitive and preliminary marriages be 30 days when it is 12 months?? Rebbi Abin in the name of Rebbi Hila⁷⁰This is the explanation in the Babli (cf. Note 68) where also the tannaitic text is close to unintelligible.: After she was an adult for twelve months one gives her the preliminary marriage and afterwards thirty days. If she spent twelve months for the first⁷¹And for some reason, she was not married but divorced or widowed. and then the second one came. If he says to her, did you not wait already? She can say to him, I love you better than the young one⁷²She has everything prepared but never used her trousseau. Her new fiancé wants to marry immediately and notes that she already has everything. She can say that her trousseau was good enough for the first, to whom she never was definitively married, but for him it will not be good enough and she needs more time to prepare more things. She cannot be forced be marry immediately.. He is a widower, she is a virgin, and he wants to definitively marry. She can say, I love you better than a bachelor⁷³The same kind of argument as in the preceding case. In each case, neither party can be sued for breach of contract before the time allotted in the Mishnah has expired.. If he is a bachelor and she a widow, and she wants to be definitively married. He can say, I love you better than a virgin⁷³The same kind of argument as in the preceding case. In each case, neither party can be sued for breach of contract before the time allotted in the Mishnah has expired.. If she is underage and wants to grow up one listens to her⁷⁴While the underage girl can be preliminarily married to a man by her father without her being asked, she cannot be definitively married against her will while underage. The formulation of the Babli (57b) is: One does not contract for an underage girl to be definitively married while underage but one may contract for an underage girl to be definitively married when reaching adulthood. That formulation does not require the underage girl to ask for the delay..

When the time came and they were not definitively married, they eat from his property and [do not] eat heave. If the husbands died, they eat from his property and eat heave⁷⁵The word in parenthesis is a correction by the scribe himself, in the wrong gender and probably at the wrong place. The sentence is quoted by Tosafot, 58a, s. v. ואפילו; there it reads: הִגִּיעַ זְמָן וְלֹא נִישְּׂאוּ אוֹ שֶׁמֵּתוּ בַעֲלֵיהֶן אוֹכְלוֹת מִשֶּׁלּוֹ וְאוֹכְלוֹת בִּתְרוּמָה. “When the time came and they were not definitively married or their husbands died, they eat from his property and eat heave.” The next Mishnah will state that all this and the connected difficulties are removed by later practice, that no woman married to a Cohen can eat from her husband’s heave unless she is definitively married to him. The practice of the returnees from Babylonia probably should read: “When the time has come and they were not definitively married, they eat from his property and eat heave. If the husband died, they eat from his property and [do not] eat heave.” The levir who is a Cohen cannot cause his prospective wife to eat heave since in contrast to his brother he has no preliminary marriage that could count as acquisition. A Cohen’s widow can eat heave only if she remains a member of the priestly clan, i. e., if any descendants of her husband by her survive her husband’s death. Vice versa, a Cohen’s daughter married to an Israel can eat heave after her husband’s death only if no descendants of her husband by her survive her husband’s death.. Samuel, the brother of Rebbi Berekhiah, said: Only if the time was up on a Wednesday⁷⁶“12 months after she was asked to marry” means that the virgin can request to be definitively married on the first Wednesday following the end of the twelfth month (Mishnah 1:1). Therefore, she cannot ask to be sustained by her husband before that Wednesday.. What if the time was up on Tuesday or Thursday? Rebbi Ḥama bar Uqba in the name of Rebbi Yose ben Rebbi Ḥanina and Levi: Both say that he is as if the Sages had jailed him. Rebbi Joshua ben Levi said, if the delay is his fault, she is fed from his property⁷⁷The court will uphold her claim to be paid back the money she spent on her own food only if the delay is the groom’s fault..

It was stated⁷⁸Tosephta 5:1, Babli 58a, speaking of a Cohen’s wife. It is to be noted that the complete rules of purity were fully observed for almost 200 years after the destruction of the Temple; cf. Berakhot 1:1, Note 3. If heave cannot be eaten, it has to be given in minute amounts (“1 kernel of grain frees an entire silo”) and be destroyed; no wife can be fed with it.: “Rebbi Ṭarphon says, one gives all heave to her, for heave is found everywhere. Rebbi Aqiba says, half profane [food] and half heave, for women frequently are impure for holy things.⁷⁹Since she is not yet definitively married she can be presumed not to be pregnant; then she is impure every month during her menstrual period.” It was stated: “Rabban Simeon ben Gamliel says, any place, where heave is mentioned, one gives her twice the corresponding amount of profane [food]⁸⁰He agrees with R. Ṭarphon that she can be given all her food as heave but he holds that for her period of impurity she has to be given enough of the heave that she could sell a certain amount to Cohanim and buy profane food. Since there are few buyers, heave can be sold only at a large discount. Babylonian sources (Babli 58a and Tosephta) record a fourth opinion, by R. Jehudah ben Bathyra of Nisibis, that she is given ⅔ of heave and ⅓ in profane food, which should be enough for her total sustenance..