[ ix ]Foreword
The Hadassah-Brandeis Institute (HBI) is delighted to present this study
of the nuclear family in ancient Judaism by Dvora e. weisberg, associ-
ate professor of rabbinic literature and director of the Simha and Sara
Lainer Beit midrash at Hebrew Union College–Jewish Institute of re-
ligion in Los Angeles. In this engagingly written book, weisberg offers
fresh ideas about Jews and gender, the very purpose for which the HBI
was established. Her subject matter specifically is the levirate widow, “a
woman whose husband has died without children” and who therefore
must be available to her brother-in-law for marriage.
what can we learn from the predicament of such a woman? weisberg
shows us that examining the levirate widow enables us to consider “the
status of women as they move in and out of families through marriage.”
The levirate widow is in a liminal place between family membership
and non-membership, between childlessness and possible motherhood,
between acceptance and rejection.
Although hers is not a work of anthropology, weisberg understands
that because there is “relatively little information about levirate in an-
cient Israel, it is helpful to supplement that information with data from
other societies.” She also wisely discusses the functions that levirate
marriage served for ancient Israelites and “why it was problematic for
the early rabbis.”
Ultimately, however, weisberg does not limit her attention to the
bonds between brothers, between husband and wife, or between father