[ ]Mapping the Familybut did not die until after the surviving [brother] married, [the
widow] was never available to him!^111
While the Mishnah posits the possibility of various combinations of
marriages between members of two families, the possibility most fre-
quently mentioned by the Bavli involves two brothers married to two
sisters.^112 In the event that such marriages occur, a man’s brother’s wife
will also be his wife’s sister. The men are both brothers and brothers-in-
law, and their wives are sisters and sisters-in-law. While both brothers
are alive, these dual labels are not an issue, since the woman in ques-
tion is prohibited to her brother-in-law both as his wife’s sister and as
his brother’s wife.
If, however, one of the brothers dies without children, these relation-
ships or roles become oppositional. The yevama’s status as “brother’s
wife” is now grounds for levirate marriage, while her status as “wife’s
sister” presumably makes levirate impossible. The questions being ex-
plored by the Bavli are: Could we distinguish between cases based on
chronology? Could levirate be permitted if the yevama became “avail-
able” before the yavam married her sister? Could that permission be ex-
tended to a situation in which the yevama was the yavam’s “ br ot her ’s
wife” and thus a potential levirate mate before she entered the category
of “wife’s sister?” These turn out to be rhetorical questions, since the
Bavli concludes that a man may not perform levirate marriage with his
wife’s sister under any circumstance, but the discussion underscores
the complexity of family relationships. People may be related to one an-
other in a number of ways, creating a complex web of kinship and kin-
ship obligations.^113
Bavli Yevamot a – b considers the possibility of levirate when the
degree of kinship between the brother-in-law and sister-in-law is more
distant than “wife’s sister”:
MISHNAH
They enunciated a general principle with regard to the yevama:
Any woman who is forbidden as an erva does neither levirate
marriage nor halitza. [If she is forbidden] due to the prohibition of
a mitzvah... she may do halitza but not levirate marriage,... A
prohibition of mitzva [refers to] secondary relatives [prohibited] by
the words of the scribes.