Gittin

and signed with special reference to that woman? It cannot be R. Meir, for he requires only that it should be signed, but not that it should be written with this intention, as we learn:  'A Get must not be written on something still attached to the soil. If it was written on something still attached to the soil, then torn off, signed and given to the woman, it is valid.'  Nor again can it be R. Eleazar, for [as we know] R. Eleazar requires that it should be written but not necessarily that it should be signed with 'special intention'.  Nor can you maintain that after all it is R. Eleazar, and that in saying that 'special intention' is not required, he means 'not required by the Torah', but he admits that it is required by the Rabbis. This cannot be; for there are three kinds of Get [which the Rabbis have declared invalid, though they are not invalid according to the Torah], and R. Eleazar does not include among them one which has not been signed with 'special intention', as appears from the following Mishnah:  Three kinds of Get are invalid, but if a woman marries on the strength of one of them, the child is legitimate. [One,] if the husband wrote it with his own hand but it was attested by no witnesses; [a second,] if there are witnesses to it but no date; [a third,] if it has a date but the signature of only one witness. These three kinds of Get are invalid, but if the woman remarries on the strength of one of them, the child is legitimate. R. Eleazar says that even though it was not attested by witnesses at all, so long as he gave it to her in the presence of witnesses it is valid, and on the strength of it she may recover her kethubah from mortgaged property, since signatures of witnesses are required to a Get only as a safeguard.  Are we to say then that after all R. Meir is the authority, and that he dispenses with 'special intention' only as a requirement of the Torah but not as a requirement of the Rabbis? How can this be, in view of what we have been told by R. Nahman, that R. Meir used to rule that even if the husband found a Get ready written on a rubbish heap