[ ]Mapping the Familyfamily members that were favored by Jews in antiquity, marriages be-
tween an uncle and a niece.
While rabbinic texts offer a broad definition of family and kinship,
they do not portray the extended family as a residential unit or the pri-
mary focus of an individual’s responsibility. The laws of mourning apply
primarily to a person’s immediate kin, his nuclear family of origin, and
the family he creates through his marriage. His obligations to mourn
for family members outside of this circle are described as obligations
to his immediate family to mourn with them. The preference for direct
descending inheritance privileges the relationship between a man and
his children over that between him and his family of origin — his father
and his brothers. Similarly, a married woman’s connection to her hus-
band and children takes precedence over that to her family of origin in
matters of inheritance.
Furthermore, the rabbis, while constructing a complex picture of the
fa mily, ack nowledge t hat fa milies generate tensions t hat might discour-
age extended family groups from sharing a residence. The assumption
of acrimony between a woman and her husband’s female relatives, dis-
cussions of disputes over inheritance between men who share a patri-
lineage, and differences of opinion among brothers as to how to resolve
a levirate obligation all suggest that large families were not necessarily
harmonious families and that shared residence might not have been de-
sirable. Discussions of levirate indicate that individual men and women
made choices that reflected their perceptions of their own needs, not
the needs of the extended family, and rabbinic support for those deci-
sions indicates a growing focus on the nuclear family over the extended
family.
The construct of the family assembled from rabbinic texts can sup-
port levirate marriage. Levirate is possible despite the extension of incest
prohibitions, since most of the women a man can marry can also marry
his brother. A preference for direct vertical inheritance is well served
by levirate, insofar as traditional levirate assigns children to the de-
ceased rather than the levir. An emphasis on the patrilineal family, the
mishpaha, would presumably encourage a sense of obligation between
sons of the same father, and the extended family might support a levir’s
decision to marry his brother’s widow. But, as we shall see, the rabbis do