TRR 150-152

THE WEDDING RING

QUESTION:

When was the custom (or the law) instituted to use a ring as a symbol of the wedding? (Asked by Dr. Joseph Gutmann, Huntington Woods, MI.)

ANSWER:

This is a real question because there is not a single mention in the Talmud of the groom putting a ring on the bride’s finger. As far as the Talmud is concerned, it speaks in general of the groom giving the bride something of value as a symbol of the marriage transaction.

Eisenstein, in his Otzar Dinim, in the article Qiddushin, quite properly says that the Talmud has no mention of the ring, but that the wedding ring is indeed mentioned by the Gaonim. Unfortunately, he does not mention which Gaonim speak of the ring. It may well be that he does not actually mean the Babylonian Gaonim, but uses the term Gaonim as a general identification of the earlier scholars. As a matter of fact, we do have mention of the ring in Europe, both among the Sephardim and the Ashkenazim, roughly speaking around the eleventh and twelfth century.

One of the early references is in the mystic work Tiqunei Hazohar. It is found in Section 10, paragraph 23. It says that the groom must put the ring on the bride’s finger. Then the Zohar goes into mystic interpretations of the shape of the ring, its form similar to certain letters of the Hebrew language which are given mystic cosmological meaning. Since the Tiqunei Hazohar, like the Zohar itself is ascribed to Simon ben Yochai, we may take it to be eleventh to twelfth century Sephardic.

Now we have an Ashkenazic source, the Kol Bo, possibly from the fourteenth century. The Kol Bo, in its Section 143, quotes Isaac, the author of the work Menahel, and refers to the use of the ring at weddings as “the custom which everybody follows,” (kederekh minhag ha-olam). So by the time of this Isaac, it was widespread. Samuel Halevi, in the seventeenth century, in his Nahalat Shivah, #124, has quite a discussion about a borrowed ring being used by the groom. Then there is a discussion about avoiding precious stones in the ring. It must be a plain band. Perhaps the fullest and handiest discussion of the whole matter is in Isaac Lamperonti’s Pahad Yitzhaq, in his first long article on taba-at.

In general, therefore, the impression given us by the date and the spread of the sources is that the use of the ring was developed in Europe, let us say at the time of the Tosafists, both among the Ashkenazim and the Sephardim. See, also Mahzor Vitri #467.