We have already looked at the harchakot that apply at mealtime. Here are two more that belong to the table.

We learn in the Shulchan Aruch that a husband is forbidden from sending his wife a glass of wine. Even if he does not pour the glass himself, he may not send it to her. A problem may therefore arise during kiddush. So what's a couple to do?

Five ways through kiddush

There are several potential solutions:

  1. Someone else drinks after the husband, before the wife. In this fashion the husband is not sending his wife wine; he is sending someone else wine.
  2. The husband pours wine into a cup but doesn't send it in his wife's direction. Rather, he places the cup down in front of himself. Then the wife, or someone else, can take it and the wife can drink.
  3. The woman can refrain from drinking. Although there is hidur mitzvah in drinking from the wine of kiddush, when hearing kiddush recited by another person it is not technically necessary to drink in order to fulfill one's obligation.
  4. The family members, or just the wife, may pour wine for themselves into a separate glass before kiddush is recited.
  5. Rav Ovadia Yosef zt"l permitted the wife to drink directly after the husband, on condition that the other members of the household would drink after her.

Doing it the same way all month

A couple may choose to do kiddush in one of the permitted manners all the time, even when she is not nidda, so that others don't pick up on her status. It is worth knowing, though, that there is no halachic obligation to do so. A woman has an obligation not to publicize the night of her mikveh immersion, but she has no formal obligation to conceal when she is or is not nidda. So if someone notices that the family sometimes does kiddush one way and sometimes another, that is fine from a halachic standpoint.

Source expansion

Masechet Kallah: a man who sends a cup of wine to a married woman without the knowledge of her husband deserves the death penalty, because da'ato raba alav. Rabi says it is because his yetzer hara is raba alav.

Ra'avad: this is the law regarding a man whose wife is nidda — he may not send her a glass of wine. However, if other people drink from the glass and then she drinks, that is acceptable.

Shulchan Aruch: a man may not send his wife a glass of wine. However, if others drink from the glass and she drinks after them, it is permissible.

Solution 2 above is the suggestion of Rav Mordechai Eliyahu zt"l.