[ ]Brotherson him; instead it asks the levir to consider whether a levirate marriage
would be good for him. The Yerushalmi insists that the court may even
discourage a levirate marriage when both parties are willing, if there is
a disparity in age between the couple.
From Brother-in-Law to Husband:
Married Life after Levirate
In some cultures, various factors distinguish a levirate union from a
marriage. The levir and his widowed sister-in-law may maintain sepa-
rate domiciles. The levir may have no financial responsibilities to his
sister-in-law or her children. The children of the levirate union may re-
gard the deceased, rather than the levir, as their father. In other societ-
ies, the levir and his sister-in-law may live together and their union may
be treated like a marriage, although it may require no ceremony.
The biblical narratives and laws that discuss levirate do not offer a
clear indication of the status of levirate in ancient Israel. Deuteronomy
suggests that the widow becomes her brother-in-law’s wife and that
only the oldest child of the union is “accounted to the dead brother.”
Judah’s relationship with Tamar after he discovers that she is pregnant
is unclear; the narrator’s observation that “he was not intimate with her
again” may not reflect normative levirate custom.
The Mishnah insists that a levirate union is a marriage, albeit a mar-
riage legalized in an irregular way. Furthermore, the Mishnah asserts
that once the levir marries his widowed sister-in-law, “she is like a wife
in every way, save that her marriage settlement is [a lien] on the prop-
erty of her first husband.”^51 The Bavli claims that a man may divorce the
wife he has acquired through levirate with a regular bill of divorce and
even remarry her, teaching us that once she becomes his wife, the levi-
rate bond between them is replaced by a marital bond. She ceases to be
his sister-in-law, his brother’s wife, a woman forbidden to him, and be-
comes his wife.^52 Still, the rabbis acknowledge that levirate marriage is
not t r u ly reg u la r. T he Bavl i a sk s why t he woma n’s ma r r iage set t lement is
a lien on the estate of the deceased rather than that of her new husband
and answers, “A wife was set aside for him by Heaven.”^53 While the levir
chose levirate over halitza, he did not choose this woman as his wife;
that choice was made by his brother and circumstance.
The difficulty of being married to a woman whom he did not choose