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Why is one witness believed to permit a woman to remarry (eid echad ne'eman b'issurim) when testimony about her husband's death normally requires two witnesses? The shiur develops a fundamental chakira: does eid echad in issurim establish facts like testimony in monetary cases, or does it merely create likelihood sufficient to permit? The Rambam (רמב"ם)'s position emerges that issurim require no judicial fact-finding—only reliable evidence—while the Rabanan instituted a formal din for pragmatic reasons (mishum agunah).
This shiur explores a fundamental question in the laws of testimony: why does the Torah (תורה) accept a single witness (eid echad) to permit a woman to remarry when her husband has died, while normally establishing facts requires two witnesses? The Gemara (גמרא) in Gittin discusses this question in the context of a woman's status as a chazaka of issur—she is presumptively forbidden to remarry until we know her husband has died. Tosafot addresses the contradiction: how can we rely on one witness when the woman has a chazaka status of being forbidden? The Marshas explains that Tosafot holds there is no reason to assume she is still seeing dam (blood), so her testimony doesn't contradict any established facts. The Ramban (רמב"ן) offers two answers: first, since the Torah believes her regarding herself (for bedikahs and mikvah), she is therefore believed regarding her husband. Second, it is simply impossible (efshar) for the system to work otherwise—no one can check all her bedikos, and people need to be able to live with their wives and fulfill peru urvu.
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Gittin 2b
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