Resources for Yevamos daf 115
1. The גמרא discusses whether in a case where we are not aware of any war taking place and a woman tells us that there is a war and her husband was killed in it whether we can believe her testimony or not. Typically we would not believe her as we would assume a woman makes assumptions and didn’t actually see her husband die but here she has a מיגו that she could have omitted the fact that there was a war going on. All the ראשונים discuss the glaring question: מיגו is a way to prove that someone isn’t lying since if they were lying they would have said something else. However, in this case we don’t think the woman is lying; what we are afraid of is that she didn’t pay close enough attention to make sure her husband was actually dead. So how would a מיגו address that concern? There are many fascinating answers. תוספות in ד"ה מי אמרינן says that the fact that she knew there was a war going on when we didn’t means she is being מדייק well so we can believe her and assume that she made sure that her huband was in fact dead. The רשב"א has a different approach. He says that this isn’t a regular מיגו of believability. Rather, since if she had not mentioned a war we would have believed her and would not have been concerned that there was a war allows us to say that even though she did mention the war we still don’t have to be concerned. The ריטב"א understands that this is closer to the real concept of מיגו in the sense that she not only could have said nothing, she should have said nothing. The fact that she mentioned there was a war shows us that she must be very confident he is dead which adds credence to her claim.
2. The גמרא doesn’t resolve the question about whether a woman who is the source of our knowing about a war is believed to say whether her husband is dead. Most ראשונים therefore conclude that we must go לחומרא and not allow her to get married. However, the רמב"ם in הלכות גירשין פּרק י"ג הל׳ ג says that while this woman shouldn’t get married, if she did בדיעבד she doesn’t need to get divorced. The ים של שלמה is surprised by this since we should have said ספק דאורייתא לחומרא! The ספר מראות הצובאות in סימן י"ז אות קפּ"א explains theרמב"ם beautifully: he says that the רמב"ם says that the reason we are חושש בדדמי is because we are afraid she assumes her husband is dead when things that most people die from happen to him. Theרמב"ם also tells us in הלכות נחלות פּרק ז הל׳ א that if a situation where most people die happens to a person, his wife is מותרת מדאורייתא. If so, it comes out the חשש בדדמי is a only a דין דרבנן. If so, if we don’t have a resolution then we should say ספק דרבנן לקולא.
3. The גמרא tries to prove that we can rely on סימנין by a woman’s testimony that her husband died because we rely on them regarding cases of money. The קובץ הערות in סימן ע"ג אות ז asks (not directly on our גמרא), don’t we have a principle of איסורא ממונא לא ילפינן? If so, how can we learn from a case of what is acceptable by ממונות to a case of a woman remarrying? He answers that we aren’t looking at the הלכה as it regards to חושן משפּט vs אבן העזר. Rather, we are trying to figure out whether סימנים are considered a בירור like עדים and ממילא that will affect all הלכות whether they be monetary cases or cases of a woman remarrying.
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