For the source text click/tap here: Nedarim 90
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Our MISHNA states: "Initially the Sages would say that three women are divorced even against their husbands’ will, and nevertheless they receive payment of what is due to them according to their marriage contract. The first is the wife of a priest who says to her husband: I am defiled to you, i.e., she claims that she had been raped, so that she is now forbidden to her husband.
The second is a woman who says to her husband: Heaven is between me and you, i.e., she declares that he is impotent, a claim she cannot prove, as the truth of it is known only to God. And the third is a woman who takes a vow, stating: I am removed from the Jews, i.e., benefit from sexual intercourse with any Jew, including my husband, is forbidden to me.”
. They subsequently retracted their words and said that in order that a married woman should not cast her eyes on another man and to that end ruin her relationship with her husband and still receive payment of her marriage contract, these halakhot were modified.
We explore further the status of women with Judith Baskin’s work and Michele Murray’s analysis using the feminist scholar Judith Butlers theory of gender construction.