Last week, Daf Yomi readers learned that, under Jewish law, divorces can be given conditionally. For instance, a man can write a get, a bill of divorce, saying that his wife is divorced provided that she pays him a certain sum of money, or agrees to continue nursing his children. But what happens, the rabbis wondered in this week’s Daf Yomi reading, if the husband deliberately writes an impossible or illegal condition into the get? Can such conditions be enforced, and if not, what happens to the get that includes them?
These questions were raised in chapter 9 of Tractate Gittin, the final chapter of the tractate. In Gittin 84a, the Gemara lists some examples of impossible conditions: “This is your bill of divorce on the condition that you ascend to the sky, or on the condition that you descend to the depths of the sea, or on the condition that you swallow a four-cubit reed.” In these cases, the husband clearly doesn’t expect the condition to be fulfilled, since such things cannot be done. The only reason to say them, then, would be malice. One imagines a situation in which a woman is begging for a divorce, and the husband spitefully says he will grant it if she flies up into the air.
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