Yerushalmi Ketubot 8:11 ירושלמי כתובות ח׳:י״א

MISHNAH: He⁹⁰The levir who marries his sister-in-law and whose brother’s inheritance is much larger than his wife’s ketubah cannot split the inheritance, reserve the amount necessary for the ketubah in a separate account, and use the remainder for his business. If he wants to commingle the inheritance with his own properties for his working capital, he has to pledge all his properties for her ketubah. should not say to her “here your ketubah is lying on the table” but “all my properties are pledged for your ketubah.” If he divorced her, she has no ketubah- lien⁹¹After he paid her, he has unlimited use of the remainder of his brother’s inheritance.. If he took her back, she is like all women who have a ketubah⁹²This is explained in the Halakhah..

HALAKHAH: ⁹³These two paragraphs constitute Halakhah 4:4 in Yebamot, explained there in Notes 97–101.“He should not say to her ‘here is your ketubah’”, etc. What does he do? “He marries her, he may divorce her and take her back, and she writes him a receipt for her ketubah.” Rebbi Yose said, the baraita has two possibilities. “Or she writes him a receipt for her ketubah.” Rebbi Ze‘ira in the name of Rav Hamnuna: If he married her, divorced her, and took her back, if he wrote her a new ketubah, the lien is on his property; otherwise, it is on the property of her first husband. Rebbi Yose ben Rebbi Abun said in the name of Rav Ḥisda, a Mishnah said so: “For he who takes back his wife, takes her back under the terms of her first ketubah⁹⁹The heads of the pre-Maccabean Ḥassidim sect; cf. Gen. rabba 65(18)..” In the end, if he married her, divorced her, and took her back? He tells you something new. Even if he married her, divorced her, and took her back, if he wrote her a new ketubah, the lien is on his property; otherwise, it is on the property of her first husband.

Rebbi Ze‘ira in the name of Rav Hamnuna said: A betrothed woman who died does not have a ketubah since she was not permitted to marry outside. That you should not say [the case] should be considered as if he divorced her and she should have a ketubah; therefore it was necessary to say that she does not have a ketubah.

⁹⁴A different version is in the Babli, 82b. It starts with a statement that women did not want to marry because their ketubah was unsecured and not privileged against the heirs. In earlier times, her ketubah was deposited with her family; then it was easy for him to divorce her. They then instituted that her ketubah had to be deposited with her husband⁹⁵In the Babli: With her father-in-law. Since the money was ready, there was no difficulty in finding the money for a divorce.; even so it was easy for him to divorce her. Then they instituted that a man should buy with his wife’s ketubah cups, plates, and bowls; that is what we did state: “He should not say to her ‘here your ketubah is lying on the table’ but all his properties are pledged for her ketubah.” Finally they instituted that a person should use his wife’s ketubah in business, then because he uses his wife’s ketubah in his business dealings he loses track of it and it becomes difficult for him to divorce her.

Simeon ben Sheṭaḥ decreed three things⁹⁶In the Babli, Šabbat 14b, he is credited only with the institution of the ketubah and a decree about impurity of metal vessels (Note 102). “The institution of the ketubah” probably means the formulation of the ketubah as a contract, which was unnecessary as long as the sum due was paid, or at least earmarked, as bride money. His decrees can be dated to the reign of his sister Shlomzion (Salome), widow of Alexander Yannai, 79–69 B.C.E.: That a person should use his wife’s ketubah in his business dealings. And that children have to go to school⁹⁷In the Babli, Baba batra 21a, universal mandatory schooling is attributed to the post-Herodian High Priest Joshua ben Gamla. The Babli also notes that before Joshua ben Gamla’s time there was organized higher instruction only for youths 16 years and older. This cannot refer to Simeon ben Sheṭaḥ’s institution reported in the Yerushalmi since by no stretch of the imagination can a 16 year old teenager be called תִּינּוֹק.. Also, he decreed impurity for glass ware⁹⁸Biblical impurity applies only to kinds of vessels and implements mentioned in the rules of impurity: earthenware and metal (Lev. 6:21), leather and textiles (Lev. 13:49), bone and wood (Num. 31:20). Other vessels cannot become impure; to this fact one attributes the great number of stone vessels found on archeological sites of the Second Temple period. (Similarly intrinsically pure vessels made of cow dung have not survived for the archeological record.) The impurity of glass vessels, unknown to Moses, is purely rabbinical. One has to take the information that the impurity of glass ware “was decreed” by the head of the Synhedrion with a grain of salt. Most probably, he simply codified the rules which were popularly observed before, when the Pharisees obtained the leadership in the state. The reasons given in the Babli Šabbat 16a/b for the rules are inconsistent since the rules, derived from popular observance without any scriptural basis, are inconsistent as a mixture of two different sets of rules. Glass vessels are compared to earthenware vessels since the former are made from sand, the latter from clay. They are also compared to metal vessels since if broken they can be melted down and made into new vessels.. But did not Rebbi Ze‘ira, Rebbi Abuna say in the name of Rav Jeremiah: Yose ben Yo‘ezer from Ṣereda and Yose ben Joḥanan⁹⁹The heads of the pre-Maccabean Ḥassidim sect; cf. Gen. rabba 65(18). from Jerusalem decreed impurity for Gentile lands¹⁰⁰Here also, a long-standing popular observance (cf. Amos 7:17) was codified which attributed to the earth of Gentile lands (within or without the Holy Land) the impurity of rotting human bodies. and glass ware; Rebbi Yose said, Rebbi Jehudah bar Ṭabbai¹⁰¹The co-head with Simeon ben Sheṭaḥ in the leadership of the Pharisees under Shlomzion.? Rebbi Jonah said, Jehudah bar Ṭabbai and Simeon ben Sheṭaḥ decreed on metal vessels¹⁰²The possible impurity of metal vessels is biblical (Note 98). Following the Babli Šabbat 16b, what they decreed was that metal impure by the impurity of the dead should not become pure by being melted down, but only by sprinkling with water containing ashes of the red cow. The political background of this decision (which seems to contradict biblical rules, Num. 31:22–23) and the reliability of the Babli in this respect is difficult to establish.; Hillel and Shammai decreed on the purity of hands¹⁰³They codified the rules that hands which were not all the time consciously guarded from impurity after being washed are impure in the second degree and, therefore, impart impurity to fluids, heave, and sacrifices but not to solid profane food (cf. Demay 2:3, Notes 136–137; Babli Šabbat14b).. ¹⁰⁴From here to the end of the Chapter, the text is from Ševi‘it 1:7, following Note 55 (variants noted ש). Rebbi Yose ben Rebbi Abun in the name of Levi: That was the current practice; they forgot it¹⁰⁵There was no rule-making authority in the time between the two Yoses and Simeon ben Sheṭaḥ and Jehudah ben Ṭabbai., but the later ones got up and agreed to the opinion of the earlier ones to teach you that everything the Court insists on will come to be in the end just as Moses was told on Sinai; as Rebbi Mana said (Deut. 32:47): “For it is not an empty word, from you,” if it is empty it is from you because you do not exert yourself about it. “Because it is your life,” when is it your life? At the time that you exert yourself!