According to the Torah laws, the High Priest, the priest with the highest authority in the Holy Temple and the top job, must marry a virgin, for it is written “He who is the high priest\u2026 shall take a wife in her virginity” (Leviticus 21:10-13). According to the sages, the maturation process of a girl who has reached the age of twelve and a half involves the deterioration of her hymen, so the sages disagreed about whether a High Priest is permitted to marry a girl over the age of twelve and a half. What are the reasons for the disagreement? The disagreement is based on the definition of the virginity demanded by the Torah. On one hand, a virgin can be defined as any female who has not had sexual relations, even if she does not have a hymen. On the other hand, a virgin can be defined as a female who does not technically have a hymen, even if she has not had sexual relations. Why does one sage define the requirements for virginity one way and another a different way? Because of the words “in her virginity.”<\/b> In their opinion the wording of the Torah’s law should have been “he shall take a virgin wife,”<\/b> but since it is written “in her virginity,”<\/b> something more is meant. The sages disagreed on what exactly was that something more. One sage stated that had it just been written “he shall take a virgin”<\/b> it would have been interpreted to mean that even a girl of over twelve and a half is permitted to a High Priest, though her hymen has deteriorated, but as it is written “in her virginity”<\/b> a girl over the age of twelve and a half, whose hymen has deteriorated, is forbidden. The other sage stated just the opposite; were it written in the Torah “he shall take a virgin wife”<\/b> it would mean that the law demands the girl have an intact hymen which has not begun to deteriorate, but since it is written “in her virginity”<\/b> it adds that a girl over the age of twelve and a half, whose hymen has begun to deteriorate, is also permitted.
\n(Babylonian Talmud, Tractate Yevamot 59a)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
According to the Torah laws, the High Priest, the priest with the highest authority in the Holy Temple and the top job, must marry a virgin, for it is written “He who is the high priest\u2026 shall take a wife in her virginity” (Leviticus 21:10-13). According to the sages, the maturation process of a girl […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2610,"featured_media":20993,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[358],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12918","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-daily-peppers"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/daatemet.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12918","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/daatemet.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/daatemet.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/daatemet.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2610"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/daatemet.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12918"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/daatemet.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12918\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21958,"href":"https:\/\/daatemet.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12918\/revisions\/21958"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/daatemet.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20993"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/daatemet.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12918"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/daatemet.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12918"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/daatemet.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12918"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}