This is not a simple topic, but for the moment we will start with the Talmud Yerushalmi in the first chapter of Kidushin, at the end of the first Mishnah, on Daf 5a (page 9) in the standard editions.

1) Rebbi Shmuel bar Rav Yitzchak asked the following question. How does a Shifchah Charufah (the Korban ha'Eidah writes that this refers to a woman who is half-Eved and half-Bas Chorin who had Erusin with an Eved Ivri) acquire herself? The Yerushalmi explains that the ramification of this is that if someone has Bi'ah with her, she will be exempt from lashes because she is no longer a Shifchah Charufah, and the man will be exempt from the Korban Asham.

The Yerushalmi states that it is obvious that she does not require a Get. We know this because Rebbi Chiya said in the name of Rebbi Yochanan that if someone who is a half-Eved and half-free man gave a Get to a woman, the Get has no validity. The Korban ha'Eidah writes that it follows that if an Eved Ivri divorced a Shifchah Charufah who is half-Shifchah and half-Bas Chorin, this divorce has no validity because the Gerushin does not apply to the entire woman.

2) One learns from this that in the opinion of the Yerushalmi the marriage of the Shifchah Charufah to the Eved Ivri is not a proper Kidushin, because it applies only to half of her, and therefore there is no such thing as a Get which could be capable of dissolving this union.

3) The Yerushalmi may be the source of the Rambam, Hilchos Ishus 4:16, who writes that if someone does Kidushin with a woman who is half-Shifchah and half-Bas Chorin, this is not total Kidushin.

4) Clearly this all requires further explanation, and there are dissenting opinions also involved, but we have at least made a start at understanding the Sugya.

Kol Tuv,

Dovid Bloom

I am now going to look in more detail, bs'd, at the opinion of the Rambam on this topic.

1) I will quote the above Rambam more fully:

"If someone does Kidushin with a woman who is half-Shifchah and half-free, this is not a complete Kidushin until she is freed. Once she is set free the Kidushin becomes complete. This can be compared to a minor girl who had Kidushin and then became an adult, who does not require a new Kidushin when she reaches adulthood."

2) The Magid Mishneh on the Rambam writes that the Shifchah Charufah has had Kidushin but she is not an "Eishes Ish," a married woman, because there is no death penalty for someone who had Bi'ah with her. It seems that we can understand this with the help of the Gemara in Kidushin 2b which states that the word "Kidushin" means that a woman is forbidden to the entire world, in the same way that Hekdesh, holy items belonging to the Beis ha'Mikdash, are forbidden to the entire world. So, too, is the Shifchah Charufah forbidden to everyone as a result of the half of her which is Mekudeshes.

However, she is not an Eshes Ish because not all of her is Mekudeshes. Therefore, Bi'ah with her is not liable for capital punishment, because a Chiyuv Misah applies only when the adulteress betrays a man who is entirely her husband. Instead, the punishment given by the Torah for the Bi'ah is the special Asham Shifchah Charufah.

3) The Beis Yosef on the Tur (end of Even ha'Ezer 44) explains the comparison made by the Rambam between the Shifchah Charufah and the minor who had Kidushin. The Beis Yosef writes that the Kidushin of the Shifchah Charufah is certainly no weaker than the Kidushin of a minor. This is because the Kidushin with the Shifchah has a Torah aspect to it, since the Gemara in Gitin (43a) refers to it as "Lo Shiyer b'Kinyano"; the man who married her did Kidushin with the maximum amount of her that he could, namely the entire free part of her. This is, therefore, better than the man who married half a woman, who left over half of her that he could have married but did not, and it is also better than the minor who got married, who is married only mid'Rabanan. Therefore, when the other half of her is set free, she does not require any more Kidushin to make the Kidushin with her husband complete. We learn this from the Kidushin with a minor. Even though originally this was only d'Rabanan, when she becomes an adult the original Kidushin automatically matures and becomes complete without any additonal help. Certainly the Kidushin of a Shifchah Charufah -- who was partly Mekudeshes mid'Oraisa all the time -- automatically becomes complete when she is set free.

Kol Tuv,

Dovid Bloom

1) There are two types of Kidushin for a minor girl. When the father marries her off, this is Kidushin mid'Oraisa, and the punishment for infidelity is Misah (see end of Kidushin 10a). However, when the Rambam compares the Kidushin of the Shifchah Charufah to the Kidushin of a minor, he is referring to an orphan girl whose mother or brothers married her off. The Kidushin of such a girl is only mid'Rabanan and there is no Misah involved. The Rambam describes such Kidushin in Hilchos Ishus 4:7, and in 4:8 he writes that if she does not want to stay with her husband, she does Miyun and does not need a Get. It emerges that according to the Talmud Yerushalmi neither the Shifchah Charufah nor the minor girl requires a Get and the analogy that the Rambam makes is good.

2) Miyun means "refusal." The minor girl who was married off by her mother or brothers is married only mid'Rabanan, and this is a Kidushin to which she never agreed. When she reaches adulthood she has the right to refuse this marriage. Therefore, since the component lacking in her Kidushin is her consent, it is possible to dissolve the Kidushin through Miyun. The latter is not applicable with the Shifchah Charufah because the component lacking in that case is the fact that only half of her can do Kidushin, so there is no reason that she should do Miyun.

Kol Tuv,

Dovid Bloom