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The second half of perek 7 discusses the deficiencies and defects in a spouse that can either invalidate a marriage retroactively, or can trigger an order from a Bet Din that the marriage be dissolved. Three of the Mishnayot deal with deficiencies / defects in a wife, and the last two deal with the same in a husband. A few quick notes (before Shabbat):
(1) Mishna 6 – To clarify, these are potential grounds for divorce if the husband were to bring the matter to Bet Din. There is no pro-active, interventionist Bet Din function here. Also interesting, is that this is THE Mishna that directly addresses expectations around a wife’s head / hair covering. Just as a point of reference.
(2) Mishna 7 – The Mishna is working through a case of “doubt”, i.e. the doubt created by the husband’s marrying his wife (i.e. the chuppah part of the wedding) without having said anything explicit about her being free of vows. With regard to the legal binding nature of the marriage itself, the Mishna takes a conservative approach, requiring a gett for the dissolution of the marriage (should the husband desire that), rather than simply declaring the marriage null and void on the grounds of “false pretenses”. On the other hand, when it comes to the Ketubah payment which is obviously a purely financial legal concern, the resolution of the doubt shifts to the possibility that perhaps there was no marriage here at all. This is based on the general principle that in financial matters, the burden of proof falls on the claimant.
(3) The discussion about physical blemishes may fall hard upon our ears. It should be noted that in Mishnayot 9 and 10 the discussion shifts to physical blemishes (and similar) in the husband. Rabbi Shimon ben Gamliel and Rabbi Meir tend to see the halachik significance of a blemishes equally, i.e. regardless of which spouse they may be found in, while the Sages (in Mishna 10) limit a wife’s ability to claim “blemishes” as grounds for divorce to a case in which it is clear that the husband deliberately hid these blemishes form her prior to their marriage. It should be noted that the work being done (for example by the International Beit Din and our friend Esther Macner) to retroactively annul abusive / exploitative marriages is based upon the discovery of abusive tendencies that the husband had already demonstrated prior to the marriage, but which he had hidden from his wife until after they were already married.
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