Ketubot 27
Hideouts
I can’t
leave Ketubot yet!
The mishnah
here talks about a tragic situation: if a city is besieged and conquered, all
the wives of Kohanim in the city are considered to have been raped and
therefore are forbidden to their husbands. There is a way out though: even if
there is one witness to the woman not being raped, that witness is considered
dependable and the woman can return to her husband. The following mishnah
illustrates this halacha with a terrible story: Rabbi Zechariah ben HaKatzav
swears by the Temple המעון
הזה! that when idolators entered Jerusalem
he never left his wife’s side, literally he never let go of her hand. Despite
this testimony, his wife was forbidden to him because one cannot testify about
oneself.
The Gemara
has a curious and very significant addition:
אמר רב אידי בר אבין אמר רב יצחק בר אשיאן: אם יש שם מחבואה
אחת מצלת על הכוהנות כולן
Rabbi Idi bar Abin in the name of Rabbi
Yitzchak bar Ashian said: If there is one hideout it saves all the Kohanot.
Who are
these rabbis and what is a מחבואה?
And most significantly, why didn’t Rabbi Zechariah ben HaKatzav avail himself
of this loophole? Rav Yitzchak and Rav Idi are both Babylonian Amoraim, 3rd
and 4th generation respectively (approximately fourth century C.E.).
This places them long after (and far away from) the Great Revolt and
destruction of the Temple (first century) as well as the Bar Kokhba Revolt
(second century). Rabbi Zechariah clearly lives in pre-destruction Jerusalem,
as evinced by his swearing by the Temple.
(wikipedia)
And what of
the מחבואה?
Rabbi Elchanan Samet, in a seminal article in the 1980s, discusses the then
emerging phenomena of Bar Kokhba hideout caves. Up until the 1970s we knew
about these subterranean hideouts from both Roman literature – they are
mentioned by the historian Dio Cassius – and Talmudic literature. Both sources
seem to indicate that the caves were prepared for guerilla warfare and that
soldiers hid out in them during the ill-fated Bar Kokhba revolt.
(wikipedia)
But suddenly Israeli archaeologists were
finding the caves all over the shephelah (near Bet Shemesh/Bet Guvrin) and
today we have found such hideout systems in the Judean desert, the Judean hills
and even some in the Galilee – more than three hundred systems to date. Could
they all have been used exclusively by soldiers? Even the ones underneath
residences?
www,agenda.co.il
Rav Samet
looks back at the sources and suggests that perhaps some caves were created for
purposes other than military. Our daf is a perfect example. After the trauma of
the Great Revolt, the people were prepared for the next time. They created
hideouts מחבואות – a very specific term that does not
mean just a basement or a shed but a place that would be near impossible for
the enemy to find. If the women of a town had such a refuge, even if they did not use it, they could be rendered permissible to their husbands. A terrible
situation but a significant halakhic solution. And the fact that only the Amoraim
are aware of it and not the Tannaim of the Mishnah (or poor Rabbi Zechariah and
his wife) means this was an innovation that only came later, in the time of Bar
Kokhba.
May we merit
that the Jewish people have to use its ingenuity only for good things and not
for war!
www.lhv.co.il
The article "מחבוא(ה) - עדות מן המשנה
והתוספתא לקיומן של מערכות המסתור" appears in a
caving journal called Nikrot Tzurim, #13 from 1986.
Huge thanks
to Michael Even Esh for bringing this to my attention!
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