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Yevamos 118a: בעניין צרות המכחישות ודיני ממנות

Yevamos 117b: Rav Chaim Brisker on כ"מ דע"א נאמן הוי כשנים

Yevamos 117a: Rav Reuven Grozovsky's Chakira in מדרש כתובה

Yevamos 116b: Rav Aharon Yaffen - Ritva is Lishitaso! - מסרו הכתוב לחכמים

Yevamos 116a: The Bais HaLevi Fascinating Chiddush When בדדמי Applies

Yevamos 115a: Rosh vs Rambam - Do we say Safek Lchumra in Our Sugya

Yevamos 115b: Rav Asher Arieli - In every בדדמי there is a חשש משקר - why מיגו would help

We all know that parents have a mitzvah to educate their children. But then comes a shocking Gemara: A child is eating treif, and the adults aren't obligated to stop him! What happened to the mitzvah of Chinuch?! Does Chinuch only require teaching children to perform mitzvos, or must parents also prevent them from committing aveiros? Is a father different from everyone else? And does the obligation change as a child gets older? The Rishonim offer dramatically different approaches, uncovering a fascinating debate about what the mitzvah of Chinuch actually requires. A powerful exploration of Tosafos, the Rambam, the Rashba, and the Beis Yosef that challenges everything we thought we knew about Chinuch!

A young child sees a fire on Shabbos and puts it out to help his father. Nobody asked him. Must his father stop him? The Gemara opens a fascinating debate about a parent's responsibility for a child's actions. But the real surprise comes from Rav Chaim Brisker's powerful yesod, brought by the Achiezer: Shabbos isn't simply another Torah prohibition. Its unique severity creates an entirely different dimension to a child's violation. Why might allowing a child to break Shabbos be fundamentally different from allowing him to eat treif?

A person is born completely deaf and cannot speak. Years later, a cochlear implant allows him to hear, speak, communicate and function completely normally. Is he still the חרש described by Chazal — or has he become a פיקח? Starting from the Gemara’s discussion of דעת in a חרש, we follow a fascinating debate from the Divrei Chaim and Maharam Shik to Rav Moshe Feinstein’s remarkable case of a deaf person who learned to hear and speak through technology — and then to the modern-day debate over cochlear implants. And there may be a major difference between two questions: Does this person now have full halachic דעת? And does hearing through a cochlear implant count as actual שמיעה for Shofar, Megillah and other mitzvos? Modern technology meets one of the most fascinating questions in Yevamos: What really defines a חרש?

Why is the kiddushin of a cheresh fundamentally different from the kiddushin of a katan? Rav Elchonon Wasserman, in the Kovetz Shiurim, develops a powerful yesod in understanding the sugya. At first glance, both a cheresh and a katan lack the daas necessary for a regular kiddushin d’Oraisa. But Rav Elchonon shows that the two are not the same chesaron at all. By a cheresh, there is a certain level of daas and an actual maaseh kiddushin, but the daas is not strong enough for the Torah to give the kiddushin its regular chalus. By a katan, however, the problem goes deeper: a katan simply does not have the halachic koach to create the chalus of kiddushin. That chiluk gives us a new way to understand the Gemara’s treatment of these two marriages and opens up a much bigger lomdishe question: when kiddushin does not work, is the chesaron in the person’s daas, in the maaseh kiddushin, or in his basic koach to create a chalus? A classic Rav Elchonon yesod that turns what looks like a small distinction in the Gemara into a fundamental understanding of daas, maaseh and chalus in Kiddushin.

Tosafos on Yevamos 111b makes a fascinating observation: performing chalitzah can be embarrassing for the yavam, particularly because the ceremony requires the woman to spit in front of him. That small comment opens an unexpected question in Hilchos Lashon Hara. If something is completely true — and may even be public knowledge — can merely repeating it still be Lashon Hara because the information itself is embarrassing? Rashi elsewhere describes divorce as something that can be a גנאי for the husband. Shu”t LeChafetz BaChaim, discussing the principles of the Chafetz Chaim, therefore asks whether telling someone that a particular person was divorced can itself constitute Lashon Hara. And that brings us directly back to our Tosafos: if chalitzah is also considered embarrassing, would the same problem apply to telling people that someone once performed chalitzah? We explore the surprising line between revealing a secret and simply repeating a true fact everyone may once have known — and whether an uncomfortable chapter from someone’s past can become Lashon Hara simply because there is no reason to bring it back up.

Yevamos 112a discusses one of the most private claims a woman can make: לא נבעלתי. “We never had relations.” But what happens when that claim comes up years after the marriage is already over? A fascinating case came before the Be’er Sheva Beis Din in 2018. A woman had been widowed from her first husband. She then remarried, eventually divorced her second husband with a get, and later wanted to marry a Kohen. There was one obvious problem: A Kohen cannot marry a גרושה. So she made an extraordinary argument. She claimed that her second husband had no גבורת אנשים and that they had never had relations. Had she known about his condition before the wedding, she said, she never would have married him. Maybe the marriage was therefore a מקח טעות. And if the kiddushin were never valid, perhaps she wasn't really a גרושה and could marry the Kohen. There was a major precedent she could point to. Rav Moshe Feinstein, in Igros Moshe Even HaEzer 1:79, dealt with a woman who discovered immediately after her wedding that her husband was completely incapable of consummating the marriage. The condition existed before the kiddushin, she hadn't known about it, doctors considered it incurable, and eventually the husband disappeared and she could not obtain a get. Rav Moshe ruled that she should not remain an agunah and permitted her based on קידושי טעות. So could the Be’er Sheva woman make the same argument? Beis Din investigated. They even obtained her former husband's medical records. The records showed that there had been a problem, but they did not prove the kind of complete, incurable condition that existed in Rav Moshe's case. And then Beis Din discovered something even more damaging. They looked back at her original divorce case. At the time, she had complained about other serious problems in the marriage. But she had never claimed that her husband had no גבורת אנשים. In fact, she remained with him for several months and even opened a שלום בית case. That makes it very difficult to come back years later and say: “Had I known about this, I never would have agreed to the marriage.” So Beis Din rejected the מקח טעות argument. But there was one final problem. She had already received a get. Even if the original kiddushin could somehow be invalidated, there is a concept called ריח הגט: Even a get that wasn't truly necessary can sometimes disqualify a woman from marrying a Kohen. So this woman wasn't trying to get out of a marriage. She was trying to go backward and prove: “I never needed my get because I was never really married.” And Beis Din said she couldn't. It is an incredible modern extension of לא נבעלתי: Can the claim “We never had relations” merely end a marriage — or can it sometimes prove that the marriage never existed at all?

What does Rav really mean when he says that a חרשת is “קנויה ומשויירת” — acquired, but with something left over? The Beis Shmuel gives those words a remarkable practical consequence: even after one man marries a חרשת, the Kiddushin of a second man can still take hold. The Aruch HaShulchan explains that there is a שיור in the very קנין itself — something the first husband never acquired, leaving room for a second Kiddushin. But the Rogatchover seems to understand the שיור very differently. He points instead to the missing דיני אישות, such as כתובה and תנאי כתובה. That leaves us with a fundamental question in Rav’s “קנויה ומשויירת”: Where exactly is the שיור? Is something missing in the קנין itself — or is the קנין complete, with something missing only in the consequences and dinim of the marriage?

Rav drops two remarkably precise descriptions of Rabbinic marriage: חרשת — קנויה ומשויירת. קטנה — קנויה ואינה קנויה. They sound almost identical. They’re not. The Aruch HaShulchan explains that the קטנה may represent an all-or-nothing marriage: if she performs מיאון, the kinyan can disappear entirely; if she does not, it can emerge as a complete Rabbinic kinyan. The Rogatchover then sharpens the other side. A חרשת isn't “maybe married.” Her marriage is real — but משויירת. Something is actually missing from what Chazal created. So what exactly are Rav’s two categories? A definite but incomplete marriage versus a marriage whose very status remains open. Two words in Rav — משויירת and אינה קנויה — reveal two fundamentally different ways that a דרבנן marriage can be imperfect.