Resources for Kesubos 62

1.     The משנה lists the חיוב עונה of each type of profession. Among them is the עונה of a טייל which is every day. There is an important תשובה in אגרות משה in אבן העזר חלק ג׳ סימן כ"ח that discusses much of the למדות and יסודות of our סוגיא. The שואל wanted to know the following: the מאירי says that the reason a ספּן (sailor) has six months for his עונה is because it typically took three months to get to where he was going and three months to get back. If so, nowadays where there are airplanes and no trip takes that long perhaps when a pilot gets home the next night he should be חייב in עונה even though he crossed an ocean?  Or do we say that people who cross oceans have a permanent היתר of six months since that was what חז"ל instituted? Rav Moshe זצ"ל answers that even in the old days, if a sailor got home early from his trip he was certainly חייב. חז"ל just gave a היתר as to how long you could be away if you needed to be. Rav Moshe then asks a fundamental question: how could it be that  חז"ל mandated for anyone to have a חיוב עונה every day when חז"ל instituted תקנת עזרא for the expressed purpose that people should not be with their wives כתרנגולים (too often)? He answers with the following יסוד: שאר וכסות we all understand depends on your profession. A poor man is not expected to provide the same שאר וכסות as a rich man. The same is true for עונה. A man who works far away cannot be expected to give the same עונה as someone who comes home every night. We see this from another הלכה as well: if a man has חיוב עונה once a week and then marries four women, he still only needs to be with one wife once a week which means each wife will be with her husband only once a month. Apparently it seems that the חיוב is not dependent on her needs but on what the husband can reasonably provide. However, Rav Moshe explains that it is really deeper than that. The חיוב עונה is actually based on something completely different—it is based on her expectations. In other words, if a woman knows her husband is around and available but still doesn’t want to be with her then she feels hurt and thinks her husband doesn’t love her.  Therefore, there is a חיוב every day for a guy who is always home (assuming his wife is interested). However, if her husband works far away or is otherwise too busy then she has no expectations and there is ממילא no חיוב עונה. Based on this, Rav Moshe says that once תקנת עזרא was instituted the woman’s expectations are lowered and ממילא there is no חיוב עונה more than once or twice a week. According to this he says the משנה must have been written prior to תקנת עזרא or after it was annulled.

2.     The גמרא quotes the פּסוק of שוא לכם משכימי קום מאחרי שבת...כן יתן לידידו שנה. The גמרא quotes this referring to the wives תלמידי חכמים who stay up at night waiting for their husbands to come home. There is a not so well known ט"ז in אבן העזר סימן כ"ה that quotes this פּסוק to mean that a person should get a good night’s sleep and not get up too early to learn or stay up too late learning since the amount of learning they will accomplish in a few hours well rested is equal to what they will accomplish in a lot of hours if they are overtired. Hence שוא לכם משכימי קום מאחרי שבת... כן יתן לידידו שנה. However, for most of us this is not נוגע since we have no time to learn except early in the morning or late at night!

The גמרא says that when רבי ינאי said “כפו מטתו since יהודה must be dead”, it was כשגגה שיצא מלפני השליט and ר׳ יהודה died. The קובץ שיעורים in אות כ"ח says that we can't chalk this up to the general ברכה and קללה power of a צדיק since that wasn’t רבי ינאי’s intention at all. Rather, we see from here that the words of a צדיק  will come true regardless. It is a part of the טבע itself that what a pure mouth says will occur. It is only the טומאה of our עבירות that rusts the power of our speech. This is especially relevant in these trying times where we are all hoping for our תפילות to be answered.

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