Levirate Marriage and the Family[ ]part of his family, whether they are related to one of his parents through
a shared father or mother or both. The question is: What is the nature
of the legal relationship between Ego and his uncles, as determined by
the degree to which their lineage can be traced to common male an-
cestors? The strongest bonds, in a legal sense, are between a man and
his father’s kin, when those kin share a common father — Ego’s paternal
grand father. This shared male ancestor is the source, so to speak, of the
prohibition against a sexual relationship between Ego and his father’s
brother’s wife. The rules that forbid a union between Ego and other un-
cles’ w ives, pater na l u ncles who sha re on ly a com mon mot her w it h Ego’s
father, or maternal uncles whose father is Ego’s maternal grandfather,
are likewise rooted in connections through men. The paternal uncles,
though not the sons of Ego’s paternal grandfather, are the brothers of his
father, while the maternal uncles in question share a father with Ego’s
mother. In contrast, Ego’s mother’s brother by a common mother has no
“ma le” connection to Ego; there is no “father” w ithin t wo generations of
Ego who has kinship ties with this man.^117
Rava’s response to Rav Safra [E] underscores the force of kinship
even when it is not patrilineal or through a common male ancestor on
the mother’s side. Rava concedes that the prohibitions against the wife
of any uncle other than Ego’s father’s brother by the same father are
“extensions” or protections for the core prohibition, the one explicitly
mentioned in the Torah. However, according to Rava, all the extensions
are equally legitimate, even those that are, as it were, secondary exten-
sions (gezera lig’zera). These prohibitions reflect the way that people talk
about t hei r fa m i l ies. T he ter m “g ra nd mot her” is used for bot h a mot her’s
mother and a father’s mother. Similarly, a grandfather’s wife, regardless
of whether the grandfather in question is a paternal or maternal grand-
father, is referred to as a member of “the household of Grandfather.” The
term “uncle” may be used indiscriminately to describe all the brothers
of Ego’s father or mother, with no indication as to whether these siblings
have a common father or a common mother.
The Bavli, then, acknowledges a variety of ways of defining kinship.
Some ways of organizing kinship ties are hierarchical, with precedence
given to paternal relatives, particularly relatives who share a common
grandfather. Others are looser, recognizing that a number of individu-
als, some related paternally and others related maternally, may all be