A Marriage Mended by Malady
A certain righteous woman constantly comes to ask me for blessings for other women. She does her deeds l’shem Shamayim, never asking anything for herself. She once brought a woman who was diagnosed with cancer. The doctors could not find a cure for her disease-ridden body. I gave her some suggestions regarding mitzvah observance, in the merit of which she might find healing. Then, without realizing, I asked if she was married. “Of course I’m married!” she asserted.
The righteous woman at her side corroborated her reply. “Why does the Rav ask such a question,” she asked in bafflement. “Of course she is married!”
I apologized for insulting her. “Please forgive me,” I asked. “I did not mean to undermine her marriage contract. I don’t know why I asked this question.”
The ill woman accepted my apologies, but the entire way home, she could not calm down. She spoke about my question the whole time. “Forget about it,” her friend said. “Of course you are married. The Rav said he didn’t mean anything.”
Suddenly, the escort asked her friend, “Tell me, were you married in a Beit Hakeneset, with a rabbi presiding, according to Jewish custom?”
“I had only a civil marriage, not a religious one.”
The woman was shocked to hear this. She immediately phoned me to ask what to do. I was pleased to hear that I had not done something wrong by asking my strange question. I instructed the woman to undergo a Jewish marriage in the Beit Din, and to keep all the laws of family purity as we were commanded in the Torah. Then I wished her a speedy recovery.
Hashem proved to all that my inquiry about her marriage was not irrelevant at all. In the merit of my words, this ill woman corrected a great misdeed and married according to halachah.
This incident honed in on the fact that, sadly, many Jews have civil marriages, which are not recognized by Judaism whatsoever. Moreover, there are countless couples, who, even if they married according to halachah, accept only a civil divorce, and not one from the Beit Din. Women divorced in this way who subsequently remarry are considered as having two husbands, a very severe sin. May this case awaken others to be more careful in this matter!
