Prohibition Against Nursing Mother Remarrying Within 24 Months

Description

A woman who nursed her child of unknown paternity for three weeks then weaned him seeks permission to remarry eighteen months after birth. The Chasam Sofer rejects all proposed leniencies — dried-up milk, the child being in another region, threat of apostasy, and a calculated argument that the prohibition will lapse before a new child nurses — holding that the Rabbinic decree cannot be overridden by individual circumstances. He offers only a narrow, non-endorsing concession: if a rabbi has genuinely verified a real danger of apostasy and wishes to combine that concern with the Pnei Yehoshua's precedent on his own authority, the Chasam Sofer will not protest, though he does not agree.