Reply To: Brainstorming an Alternate Term for Boyfriend/Chassan and Girlfriend/Kallah

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ujm
Participant

Avira, regarding the commonness of having multiple wives you wrote that it was rare to have many wives. That’s a mathematically obvious point (and therefore needn’t even be said). If it weren’t rare to have many wives (IOW, if it was common for people to have many wives), then obviously it would mathematically be necessary for many men to remain unmarried (since many other men had many wives, leaving an insufficient supply for all.)

So its lack of commonness was never a reason for the practice to not exist; otherwise the permissibility of multiple wives would never have existed. Therefore, even with (and when) having multiple wives was permitted and accepted, it obviously was only (mathematically) viable for a select minority. And in order for any individual person to have multiple wives, he would need to have the financial and emotional wherewithal to support them. Most do not have that. But that isn’t, in of itself, a reason to disallow the practice.

Rabbeinu Gershom, at his time in history, decided that for the Ashkenazic community it was causing more downsides than upsides, enough to outlaw it at the time. But even he put an expiration date on his ban since he acknowledged it wasn’t, in of itself, necessarily a bad thing for everyone. He left it for future generations to reconsider. Which they did, post-expiration, and decided to continue the cherem. But if Gedolei Yisroel at some point in current or future generations reconsider it again and decide its time has ended, they can discontinue the cherem against it. (Rav Avigdor Miller made this point once in one of his Q&As, available on recording.)