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Bais HaVaad on the Parsha, Parshas Devarim

Get Word

Excerpted and adapted from a shiur by Dayan Daniel Dombroff

August 4, 2022

These are the words that Moshe spoke to all of Yisrael…

Devarim 1:1

Tosafos (Gittin 2a) offers one reason that a get customarily has twelve lines of text: There are four blank lines in a sefer Torah dividing between each of the Chumashim, for a total of twelve. (The gap between Bemidbar and Devarim is not included, because Devarim is the Mishneh Torah and is separate.) A get is called sefer krisus (a scroll of division), so the number of its lines equals these lines of division.

I was once signing as a witness on a time-sensitive get, and I accidentally began to write my father’s middle name before his first. The sofer changed the text. Was the get valid?

The Rama (E.H. 125:4) writes that if some ink was spilled on a get, it may be used to form a letter. The get is still considered to have been written lishmah, because the conclusion of the writing of the letter was done with the correct intent, though the beginning was not. The Bais Shmuel concurs with the Rama, but the Pri Chadash disqualifies the get because he maintains that the entire letter must be written with the proper intent.

It would seem that our case of fixing a few letters is comparable to the case of the Rama, and the Pri Chadash would disqualify the get, but we relied on the Rama and Bais Shmuel. This is because according to the halacha, we follow R’ Elazar (see Gittin 86a) and validate a get with the eidei mesirah (the witnesses to the delivery), not the eidim signed on the get. Because the eidei chasimah are only present as a precaution, we may be lenient in case of need.

[1] See Pis’chei Teshuvah (E.H. 130) for a discussion of the nature of the signatures on a get.

 

 

 

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