Child Marriages - Child Marriage By Region - European Judaism

European Judaism

In Jewish Ashkenazi communities in the Middle Ages, girls were married off very young. Despite the young threshold for marriage a large age gap between the spouses was opposed, and, in particular, marrying one's young daughter to an old man was declared as reprehensible as forcing her into prostitution. Child marriage was possible in Judaism due to the very low marriageable age for girls. A ketannah (literally meaning "little ") was any girl between the age of 3 years and that of 12 years plus one day; a ketannah was completely subject to her father's authority, and her father could arrange a marriage for her without her agreement. If the father was dead or missing, the brothers of the ketannah, collectively, had the right to arrange a marriage for her, as had her mother, although in these situations a ketannah would always have the right to annul her marriage even if it was the first. According to the Talmud a father is commanded not to marry his daughter to anyone until she grows up and says 'I want this one'. A marriage that takes place without the consent of the girl is not an effective legal marriage. If the marriage did end (due to divorce or the husband's death), any further marriages were optional; the ketannah had the right to annul them. The choice of a ketannah to annul a marriage, known in Hebrew as mi'un (literally meaning "refusal", "denial", "protest"), led to a true annulment, not a divorce; a divorce document (get) was not necessary, and a ketannah who did this was not regarded by legal regulations as a divorcee, in relation to the marriage. Unlike divorce, mi'un was regarded with distaste by many rabbinic writers, even in the Talmud; in earlier classical Judaism, one major faction - the House of Shammai - argued that such annulment rights only existed during the betrothal period (erusin) and not once the actual marriage (nissu'in) had begun.