Yevamos 121a: If a man fell into water whose shore can be seen, his wife is permitted, but if the shore cannot be seen, his wife is forbidden.
יבמות קכא ע”א מים שיש להם סוף אשתו מותרת ושאין להם סוף אשתו אסורה.
שו”ע אה”ע יז,לב: ראוהו שנפל לים אפילו טבע בים הגדול אין מעידין עליו שמת שמא יצא ממקום אחר ואם נפל למים מכונסים כגון בור או מערה שעומד ורואה כל סביביו ושהה כדי שתצא נפשו ולא עלה מעיד עליו שמת ומשיאין את אשתו.
Among the 1500 people who died when the Titanic sank in 1912 was a young Jewish man named Shimon Meisner from Novopraga, a town in the province of Kherson, Russia. He left behind his poverty-stricken wife and three small children. The widow came crying to the rav of her town, Rabbi Yaakov Meskin, asking him to pasken whether she was permitted to remarry. She was also upset that he had instructed her sons not to say kaddish; he explained that agunah was a complex subject and it would take him some time to reach a conclusion; meanwhile, saying kaddish might mislead people to think that she had already received a heter.
Rabbi Meskin wrote a teshuva permitting her based on the opinion of the Mabit, cited in Kuntres Agunos (printed at the end of Even Hoezer 17), that only when the man falls into the water do we fear that he came up somewhere else, but when he was in the cabin of a sinking ship, and the water comes in and fills up the cabin, he is presumed dead, since the walls around him prevented him from escaping.
The Kuntres Agunos says that the Beis Yosef disagrees with the Mabit. However, Rabbi Meskin argued that since the entire chumra of “water whose shore cannot be seen” is Rabbinic in origin, we can rely on the Mabit here.
However, there is a problem with this. The Mechaber in 17:32 says that if a man fell into the ocean and later a leg was found, we cannot assume it was his leg unless it has a clear, distinctive mark (סימן מובהק). Now, why do we need such a clear mark? Any sign should be good enough, since we are dealing with a Rabbinic prohibition! The Panim Meiros answers that the Mechaber is talking about a case where only one witness saw the man fall. On a Torah level, we would require two witnesses to testify that a man died. Relying on one witness is a Rabbinic leniency. In a case of “water whose shore cannot be seen” the Rabbis did not apply their leniency, so it goes back to being a Torah prohibition.
Here too, since there were no kosher witnesses testifying that Shimon Meisner was on the Titanic, the case should be judged as a D’oraisa and we should not rely on the Mabit.
To this, Rabbi Meskin responded that we have other reasons to be lenient. Mrs. Meisner received a letter from the Russian consul in London, reading, “To Mrs. Tzivia Meisner of Novopraga, in the province of Kherson: Your husband Shimon Meisner was traveling on the Titanic and drowned. I will try to send you a share of the donations collected for the bereaved families of Titanic victims.” This testimony that Meisner was on the ship, which the consul surely heard from the owners of the ship, counts as מסיח לפי תומו – a non-Jew giving information without the intent to permit the wife the remarry. The consul’s intent was only to provide her with a donation, not to permit her to remarry.
Rabbi Meskin continues for 7 pages; then he sent his teshuva to Reb Itzele Ponevezher for his approval, and he prints Reb Itzele’s response: also lenient, based chiefly on the Mabit.
Source: Sefer Beis Yaakov, by Rabbi Yaakov Meskin Hakohein, rav of Novopraga and later rav of Burlington, Vermont, Siman 49
[What is puzzling here is: how does the Mabit’s heter apply to our case? Why couldn’t Meisner have been on the deck of the ship, not surrounded by walls?
It’s true that aside from many wealthy people who had luxurious cabins above deck, the Titanic also carried poor immigrants from Eastern Europe in third class cabins. Perhaps Meisner was sleeping in one of those cabins on the night of the shipwreck. But then again, perhaps he was not. Rabbi Meskin does not quote any testimony of survivors who saw him there. The most we know is that he was on the ship, and that he was not among those saved on the lifeboats.]
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