[ ]BrothersHalitza: From Communal Condemnation
to Judicial Consultation
While calling on a man whose brother died without children to marry
his brother’s widow “and perform the levir’s duty,” Deuteronomy of-
fers no mechanism for forcing a man to perform levirate. Instead, Deu-
teronomy acknowledges that a man may choose not to marry his broth-
er’s widow and describes a ritual to release the couple from the levirate
bond. The ritual is triggered by the widow, who appears before the elders
and complains that her “husband’s brother refuses to establish a name
i n Israel for h is brot her.” T he lev i r may have told t he w idow or ot her fa m-
ily members explicitly that he has no desire to perform levirate, or she
may have intuited his reluctance. The elders, alerted by the widow of
the levir’s refusal, “summon him and talk to him”; this talk is presum-
ably i ntended to ma ke h i m reconsider h is sta nce. If t he elders a re u nsuc-
cessful, the widow removes her brother-in-law’s sandal, spits in his face,
and declares, “Thus shall be done to the man who will not build up his
brother’s house!”
The description of the ritual in Deuteronomy establishes two things.
First, the brother’s refusal is seen as a slight to the deceased, not the
widow; he is criticized not for rejecting his sister-in-law, but for deny-
ing his brother a name. Even the complaint of the widow references her
brother-in-law’s failure to do his duty toward her dead husband; if she
feels personally slighted, she does not voice that complaint. Second, the
ritual is intended to humiliate the levir. It is performed publicly, and con-
tains elements — the removal of the shoe and spitting — that are clearly
meant to embarrass the levir. Furthermore, the ritual is carried out by
the widow, who serves as a surrogate for her deceased husband; we can
assume that being publicly shamed by a woman is even more humiliat-
ing for the levir than being shamed by other men. Finally, the shame of
refusal does not end with the completion of the ritual; the man carries it
throughout his life, for he is assigned the appellation “the family of the
unsandaled one.” A man who denies his brother a child, a name in Israel,
deserves, according to Deuteronomy, to be publicly mortified.
The rabbis retain this halitza ritual, but their understanding of its
function is markedly different from that of the Tora h. The Mishna h por-
trays halitza as an acceptable alternative to levirate. In some situations,