Resources for Kesubos daf 40

1.     The main סוגיא that all the ראשונים and אחרונים discuss here is why we don’t say עשה דוחה לא תעשה by the case of a man who is מאנס a lady where there is an איסור לאו for him to marry her. The גמרא explains that the reason is that if the lady would say she isn’t interested then there is no עשה to speak of. What exactly does the גמרא mean with that? רש"י says it means that we tell her to say she isn’t interested so we don’t need to be דוחה the לאו. That would seem to indicate that if she rebels and says “no, I want him for a husband” that the עשה would be דוחה the לאו. However, the ריטב"א says on behalf of רש"י that we would force her to say she is isn’t interested and assume deep down she agrees since מצוה לשמוע דברי חכמים. The ריטב"א himself disagrees with רש"י’s פּשט and says the גמרא just means that any לא תעשה that you can get rid of just by saying לא בעינא is a low level עשה that cannot be דוחה a לאו. The רמב"ם  in הלכות נערה בתולה פּרק ג׳ הל ה says that we don’t let him marry her since it is possible for her to say she isn’t interested and in that case the עשה ולא תעשה would be קיימין. The קובץ הערות understands theרמב"ם  to be learning like רש"י. Based on this he wants to bring a proof to a fascinating חקירה about עשה דוחה לא תעשה: is it the קיום עשה that is דוחה a לאו or the need to not be מבטל the עשה that is דוחה a לאו? In our case, the גמרא says that if she isn’t interested there is no עשה at all. However, he presumably isn’t מקיים any מצוה if she isn’t interested either. It would seem from here that that even the lack of ביטול עשה would have been enough to be דוחה the לאו. (What is interesting is that the רמב"ם  is almost a direct quote from the גמרא except that the גמרא says if she isn’t interested there is no עשה yet the רמב"ם  says if she isn’t interested the עשה is מקויים which sounds like there is a קיום עשה but that would need explanation.)

The תוספות ישנים asks why is our case any different than the גמרא in יבמות on דף ה ע"ב that says the עשה דכיבוד אב should be דוחה a לא תעשה of מחמר  on שבת and the גמרא has to answer כולכם חייבין בכבודי. Why would the גמרא not have just said that it shouldn’t be דוחה  since the father can say I don’t need it anymore and then there would be no עשה like in our case of אונס? He gives two answers. One answer is that by the case of אונס she does not have an עשה to marry him but she does have the לאו and she cannot be עובר a לאו for him when she can get out of it by saying לא בעינא. His other answer, as explained by the חתם סופר here, is that by אונס the חיוב to marry her is immediate, and it is possible later to get out of it later if she says she isn’t interested. However, by כיבוד אב, by the time there is a מצוה he already showed he is interested in it being done and you cant say at that point he should say לא בעינא since the חיוב עשה was חל already. He then suggests a fascinating פּשט that לולי דברי תוספות he would have said that תוספות’s question is correct and  this is exactly what the גמרא meant in יבמות when it said כולכם חייבין בכבודי. In other words, the reason כיבוד אב is not דוחה the לאו דמחמר is because the father could say לא בעינא, and since כולכם חייבין בכבודי that is what he should say and therefore even if he doesn’t say that it is not comparable to a regular case of עשה דוחה לא תעשה.

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