Pt1 “Endless Water”: Eight Stories of Uncertain Drowning of a Husband in the Context of Remarriage (Yevamot 121a-b)
Mishna - Story from R’ Meir - man who fell into a cistern; Story from R' Yosei about a blind man who descended into a cave; Story in Asia (Minor) - man lowered into the sea, and only a leg came up
Part one of a three-part series. This part contains stories #1-3 from the mishnah (see the outline below). A future series will be about Eight Stories Regarding the Reliability and Validity of Gentile Testimony (Yevamot 121b-122a).
Intro
An agunah or aguna (Hebrew: עגונה \ עֲגוּנָה, aguná, plural: עגונות \ עֲגוּנוֹת, agunót; plural form: agunot; literally "anchored" or "chained") is a Jewish woman who is stuck in her religious marriage as determined by halakha (Jewish law). The classic case of this is a man who has left on a journey and has not returned, or has gone into battle and is missing in action.1
The sugya discusses the case of a man who falls into a body of water and does not reappear. It states that his wife cannot remarry because there is no definitive proof that he died; he could have emerged elsewhere.
The sugya quotes a number of relevant anecodtes. Some of them illustrate that survival in such situations is possible: the person was presumed dead, and then reappeared.2
Outline
Mishna - Story from R’ Meir - man who fell into a cistern
Mishna - Story from R' Yosei about a blind man who descended to immerse for ritual purity in a cave
Mishna - Story in Asia (Minor) - man lowered into the sea, and only a leg was brought up
Story of someone who drowned in “the lake of Samkei”, and Rav Sheila allowed his wife to marry
Story of Two people fishing on the Jordan River
Story from Rabban Gamliel - ship that sank, survivor later appeared in front of him
Story from R’ Akiva - ship that sank, survivor later appeared in front of him in Cappadocia
Story of the daughter of Neḥunya the Well Digger, who fell into the Great Cistern
The Passage
Mishna - Story from R’ Meir - man who fell into a cistern
The Mishnah discusses the case of a man who falls into a body of water and does not reappear. It states that his wife cannot remarry because there is no definitive proof that he died; he could have emerged elsewhere.
R' Meir supports this caution by citing an example of a person who fell into the Great Cistern and survived, reemerging three days later, illustrating that survival in such situations is possible.3
נפל למים, בין שיש להן סוף, בין שאין להן סוף — אשתו אסורה.
אמר רבי מאיר:
מעשה באחד שנפל לבור הגדול,
ועלה לאחר שלשה ימים.
If a man fell into the water and did not come out, whether the body of water has a visible end or does not have a visible end, his wife is prohibited from remarrying. There is no absolute proof that the man died, as it is possible that he emerged from the water some distance away.
R' Meir said:
An incident occurred involving a certain person who fell into the Great Cistern
and emerged only after three days. This is evidence that sometimes one may survive a fall into water, even when everyone assumes he is dead.
Mishna - Story from R' Yosei about a blind man who descended to immerse for ritual purity in a cave
R' Yosei recounts an incident involving a blind man and his guide (מושכו - literally: “puller”) who went into a cave for ritual immersion (tevila) and disappeared. After a significant amount of time passed, enough to assume that they had died, the Sages decided to permit their wives to remarry, based on the assumption that both men had died after failing to emerge from the water.
אמר רבי יוסי:
מעשה בסומא שירד לטבול במערה,
וירד מושכו אחריו,
ושהו כדי שתצא נפשם —
והשיאו את נשותיהם.
R' Yosei said:
An incident occurred involving a blind man who descended to immerse for ritual purity in a cave,
and his guide descended after him, and they disappeared there,
and they remained there long enough for their souls to have departed,
and the Sages permitted their wives to marry because they had disappeared into the water and not emerged.
Mishna - Story in Asia (Minor) - man lowered into the sea, and only a leg was brought up
Photo of pearl diving in Bahrain.4
In another incident reported from Asia (Minor) (עסיא), a man was lowered into the sea using a rope, but when the rope was retrieved, only his leg was attached.5
The Sages asserted that the possibility of the man's survival is based on the location of the cut on the leg. They concluded that if the leg was severed from above the knee, his wife could remarry, assuming the severity of the wound was fatal. However, if the cut was below the knee, his wife could not remarry, as survival was possible.
ושוב מעשה בעסיא,
באחד ששלשלוהו לים,
ולא עלתה בידם אלא רגלו,
אמרו חכמים:
מן הארכובה ולמעלה — תנשא.
מן הארכובה ולמטה — לא תנשא.
And there was another incident in Asia
in which they lowered a certain man into the sea on a rope,
and when they pulled the rope back to land only his leg came up in their hands, and they were not certain whether he was alive or dead.
The Sages said:
If his leg was cut from the knee and above, his wife may marry, as he did not survive such a wound;
if his leg was cut only from the knee and below, she may not marry.
This term is not used in our sugya. The term aguna / agunot is attested elsewhere in the Talmud, both Yerushalmi (1 time, as well as once in midrash Vayikra Rabba) and Bavli (3 times), but is rarely used. See Jastrow. The term became more commonly used in post-talmudic literature.
The talmudic idiom for “a body of water with no visible end” is “water with no end, endless water" - מים שאין להם סוף.
The “Great Cistern” - בור הגדול - may be a reference to a specific cistern in the Second Temple, see אנציקלופדיה יהודית דעת - בור הגדול.
Source of image: Muharraq Forever, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
In the Talmudic era, there were various reasons someone might be lowered into the sea with a rope, including pearl diving and harvesting sea sponges, performing maintenance and repairs on ships, conducting search and recovery missions, and, on rarer occasions, engaging in scientific exploration or marine studies.