In 11th century Germany, Jewish merchants would travel for their profession to Muslim Spain, North Africa or the East and would be away for years, leaving their wives and children without support and sometimes with only the support of the wife’s parents. It even happened that men would marry for the second time in one of those distant lands and start a second family.

Since biblical times there was no prohibition on polygamy. Polygamous Jewish marriages existed among Jews living in Muslim lands, where men were allowed to have up to four wives. But in the 11th century a series of takanot, edicts, were promulgated to protect women. Gershom ben Judah, a rabbi from Mainz, stipulated that a husband could not be away for more than 18 months and upon his return he had to remain at home for at least another six months. He also decreed that although men are the ones who initiate the divorce process, women had to agree to divorce. Previously, Halacha, based on verses 24:1 and 24:3 of Deuteronomy, assigned a passive role to women. Their opinion did not matter. Rabbeinu Gershom introduced the revolutionary idea that women had to agree. This condition was stipulated because some husbands simply paid their wives the amount stipulated in the ketubah in order to be able to divorce and that was it. This takanah originally only applied in Mainz, but by the middle of the century it had spread to northern France, England and all of Germany.

This rule prevented the husband of simply sending the divorce papers and thus solving the problem, when the wife discovered that he had a second family. From this takanah onwards, the husband could not divorce the first wife if she did not agree. The takanah practically prohibited having more than one wife. If someone wanted to suspend the effect of the edict and divorce without the wife’s consent, the takanah stipulated that 100 sages were required to agree for the husband to be able to divorce.

The rabbinical prohibition against bigamy dates back to the early 11th century. Rabbeinu Gershom ben Judah of Metz prohibited bigamy or polygamy under penalty of excommunication, surely influenced by the norm of monogamy practiced in Christian Europe. His decree was accepted without opposition by French and German Jews in particular. The prohibition of polygamy and the need for both parties to agree in order to divorce created a paradigm shift in the life of European Jews. With this, they could no longer have one in every port.

Prepared by Marcos Gojman.

Bibliography: A Jewish – Christian Symbiosis, the culture of Early Ashkenaz by Ivan G. Marcus.