Levirate Marriage and the Family[ ]own estate. Levirate is ordered by the head of the family or promoted in
the public square with an audience, suggesting that it is unlikely that a
man would offer to fulfill this duty on his own. Finally, refusal to fulfill
one’s duty is met with divine disapproval or community censure, while
the willing levir is met with community praise.
The ancient sages attempted to make levirate more attractive to a
prospective levir. They assigned him his brother’s estate and paternity
of the children born to the levirate union. They made a levirate union
almost identical to “normal” marriage, while relieving the levir of the
financial burden of the marriage settlement. With these emendations
to the law of levirate, the rabbis transformed a purely fraternal duty into
an advantageous or at least acceptable marriage. Ironically, in so do-
ing, they created a new tension in levirate. Formerly, the tension was
one between duty to one’s brother or one’s family and the desires of
the self. In attempting to eliminate that tension, the rabbis made levi-
rate an institution that, if the deceased was survived by more than one
brother, had the potential to create tension between those brothers. In
the end, the expectation of the rabbis is that each levir will act on his
own interests, not those of his deceased brother, his surviving brothers,
or his extended family. The considerations regarding a levirate union, as
imagined by the rabbis, included the suitability of the widow as a wife
for her brot her-in-law, h is att ract ion towa rd her or t he absence of att rac-
tion, and the financial situation. There is neither explicit nor implied
concern for the deceased. Levirate, once an expression of the profound
obligations conferred by kinship, especially between brothers, becomes
a marriage option like all others. The claims of the dead on the living
and the claims of the family on the individual are completely ignored as
the levir makes his decision.