Letter: T-S NS J68

Description

Petition to a Gaʾon by ʿa lonely orphan girl’, who had been married for ten years to a man who had taken her earnings, given her nothing, and criticized her publicly. She previously sought a divorce but this was not granted. She asks that the Gaʾon excommunicate her husband and provide her with a certificate confirming her respectability. The petition is written in a crude hand, perhaps by the woman herself. (Information from CUDL.) Translated in Goitein, Mediterranean Society, V, 201: "I[n Your name, o Merciful]. I hereby inform your Excellency, our Gaon—may his Rock preserve him—that I am a lonely orphan girl whom they have married to a man with no means of support. I have been with him for ten years, and he has always taken what I earned. Finally, when I was in shreds, with nothing to cover me properly, I said to him: "I shall not give you a thing anymore. I'll buy myself clothing with what I earn." He is not worth a thing, not even one dinar. For a year or more he has given me a bad name. I went to the judges and offered to buy myself free with everything due me from him to save my honor. But they did not grant me a divorce. By God, my honor is worth something to me! I am requesting now that the Torah scroll be taken out and that he who acted in this way and tells lies about me be excommunicated, and that I be given a certificate clearing [my honor] for God's sake. Thus you will save me from a Hell, which no one knows except God. May your welfare increase and never decrease. Amen, in eternity, Sela."