Levirate Marriage and the Family[ ]e. As Rav said to his son Hiyya and as R. Huna said to his son
Rabbah: In [your wife’s] presence, act like a mourner. {The wife
had presumably lost a close relative and was in mourning.}
When not in her presence, don’t act like a mourner.
f. The son of Mar Uqba’s father-in-law died. He thought he should
observe the seven and thirty day mourning periods. R. Huna
came to him and found him [acting like a mourner]. He said
to him, “Do you want the food of mourners?” They only said [a
person should follow mourning customs] out of respect for his
wife in the case of his father-in-law and mother-in-law.^87The baraita [A] that introduces the sugya lists the family members for
whom an individual is required to mourn. The list is based on Leviticus
: and includes a person’s parents, children, brother, and unmarried
sister. While Leviticus does not mention the priest’s obligation to mourn
his wife, the rabbis derive that obligation from the verse’s inclusion of
the word sh’eiro;^88 a wife is also required to mourn for her husband. As-
suming that the sister and brother referred to in Leviticus are children of
the same father, the baraita expands the list to include all siblings, whole
or half; married sisters are also added to the list.
The first part of the baraita, then, recognizes the concept of what we
call the nuclear family. Each individual may be part of two interlocking
nuclear families: his family of origin and the family he creates through
marriage and procreation. These are the family members “closest” to
the individual, for whom he must perform the rituals associated with
mourning.
The continuation of the baraita [B] offers additional information
about family ties and obligations. Rabbi Akiba requires a person to
mourn those individuals who are mourned by the family members for
whom he mourns. Thus an individual would mourn for the primary
kin of his nuclear family members: his grandparents, aunts and uncles,
nieces and nephews, and grandchildren, as well as the spouses of his
immediate family and his wife’s parents and siblings. Rabbi Simeon ben
Eleazar proposes a narrower definition of secondary kin, emphasizing
the direct descent lines of the patrilineage by restricting the obligation
to vertical descent in the male line: the paternal grandfather and a son’s
son. The sages rephrase the obligation, requiring that one mourn with