Rav Chaim explains a Yesod that in the case of Chalitzah, you do an action and Hash-m takes away the Zikah, but in the case of a Get, you yourself send her away.
Rav Shmuel Rozovsky asks, if that is so then how do we make a Kal V'chomor that if Chalitzah works for a Yevamah (who doesn't have a Get), it should certainly work for a wife? They are two seperate inyanim! Do you have an approach to answer this question?
Tzvi Abrahams, clifton, USA
While it is true that Chalitzah and Get differ as to whether the husband is the one who actuates the separation, we can still learn from the fact that the Torah did not specify a Get for a Yevamah, although it does for a wife, as an indication of the fact that the Torah makes it more "Kal", or easier to separate, from a wife than from a Yevamah. This being the case, we can then learn that any way of separating from a Yevamah will also suffice for a wife. This is because we are using the absence of Get for a Yevamah only as an indicator of the relative ease of separation from Yevamah and wife respectively.
Once we know that it is easier to separate from a wife than a Yevamah, we learn that Chalitzah pertains to a wife from the Chalitzah of a Yevamah. We would learn from this that the same way a Yavam does not actuate the separation, but only performs the act of Chalitzah, so, too, a husband would not actuate the Chalitzah, only perform the act of Chalitzah.
Rav Shmuel Rosovsky says further than this; he suggests that if we were taught that Chalitzah can separate a husband from his wife, the husband would actuate the Chalitzah just as he does in the case of a Get. He seems to hold that once we know from the Kal v'Chomer that Chalitzah is a valid form of separating husband from wife, we learn from other husband-wife separations the mechanics of how Chalitzah works.
I hope this helps you. Please let me know if you have any comments.
Dov Freedman