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The Gemara discusses the background for the rule that the husband’s property is mortgaged for the marriage contract.
“ Rav Yehuda said: At first they would write for a virgin two hundred dinars and for a widow one hundred dinars. They would then demand that this amount be available in cash, and then the men would grow old and would not marry women, as they did not all possess such large sums of money, until Shimon ben Shataḥ came and instituted an ordinance that a man need not place the money aside in practice. Rather, all of his property is guaranteed for her marriage contract. "
"Therefore, the Sages instituted an ordinance that they would place it in her father-in-law’s house, i.e., in her husband’s house. And wealthy women would craft their marriage contract money into baskets of silver and of gold, while poor ones would craft it into a large vessel for the collection of urine, as their marriage contract was large enough only for a small vessel.”We look at the history of Takanot and rabbinic authority as well as Hershey Friedman’s description of how the sages of the Talmud recognized the danger of making religion rule-based and therefore came up with several legal devices to improve the law and make it more ethical.
Indeed, the Talmud blamed the destruction of Jerusalem and the Second Temple by the Romans on the fact that people insisted on following the strict letter of Torah law and not doing more than the law required.