Levirate Marriage and the Family[ ]k. Come and learn: [The baraita above taught]: “Which [women]
are [in the category of] secondary relatives?” and did not specify
these!
l. [Perhaps] it taught and left some out!
m. What did it leave out that it left out these?
n. It left out the secondary relatives [taught] by the school of
R. Hiyya.
o. Amemar permitted the wife of the brother of the father’s father
and the sister of the father’s father.The Torah prohibits marriages between Ego and many of his female re-
lations. These prohibitions include women to whom Ego is related by
blood — his mother, sister, granddaughter, father’s sister, mother’s sister —
and those related by marriage — his stepmother, stepsister, daughter-in-
law, brother’s wife, father’s brother’s wife, and wife’s sister.^114 W h i le t hese
prohibitions are multigenerational, involving women of Ego’s generation
(his sister), his parents’ generation (his parents’ sisters), and two genera-
tions removed in descent (his granddaughters), they cannot be equated
w it h generat iona l ba ns, since Ego may ma r r y h is first cousin or h is n iece.
After ruling that a woman is forbidden to contract levirate marriage or
perform halitza when a relationship with her brother-in-law is forbidden
by the Torah on grounds of consanguinity, the Mishnah considers rela-
tionships that are not prohibited by the Torah but fall into a category of
“secondary” relatives forbidden by the sages. These secondary relation-
ships represent a “one step removal” from those primary relationships
mentioned in Leviticus. Sometimes, the “step” is generational. The Torah
prohibits intercourse between a man and his mother, and the rabbis ex-
tend that prohibition to a grandmother. Sometimes, the step represents
an additional prohibition within a generation or type of relationship. The
Torah prohibits intercourse between a man and his father’s brother’s
wife. The sages restrict this prohibition to a situation where Ego’s father
and uncle share a father, but then add a prohibition to cover the wives of
other uncles, whether maternal uncles or the brothers of Ego’s father by
the same mother but different fathers. These prohibitions represent an
expansion of the definition of family — at least with regard to incest pro-
hibitions — to include more members of the generations above and below
Ego, on both his father and mother’s side and by marriage.