Levirate Marriage and the Family[ ]his brothers, and if so, are they claiming it as part of the deceased’s es-
tate or because of the bond created between the yevama a nd t he lev ir(s)?
If, according to Rabbi Yose, the levir is like a husband, why doesn’t the
Mishnah explicitly mention the levir as the heir of the yevama?
In some cultures, a woman remains her husband’s wife even after his
deat h; she may enjoy t he r ig ht to use h is la nd, a nd a ny ch i ld ren she bea rs
will be legally his. In such a situation, it would make sense to speak of
the rights of “the heirs of the husband” to the levirate widow’s property.
The sages of the Mishnah and the Talmuds, however, do not believe that
marriage outlasts one of the partners. If we read “the heirs of the hus-
band” as referring to the heirs of the levir, the mishna makes no sense.
The levir is presumably alive; were that not the case, the woman would
have been an almana widow, not a yevama, and her late husband’s fam-
ily would have no claim on her property. The question remains: Why
should the heirs of a woman’s deceased husband have a claim on her
property? Is the levirate widow still a part of her husband’s family, and
if so, what is her relation to the family in general and to her husband’s
brother or brothers in particular?
This question is complicated by the remainder of the sugya, which
discusses a levirate widow’s right to burial. A husband has an obliga-
tion to bury his wife, but it is unclear whether that obligation devolves
on the levir, since he is not her sole heir and has no obligation to endow
her with a marriage settlement. A yevama does not collect her marriage
settlement from her husband’s estate while she awaits her brother-in-
law’s decision. He can therefore claim that he is inheriting the marriage
settlement from his brother’s estate, not from the yevama, and has no
obl igat ions to her. T h is d iscussion sug gests t hat t he lev i r is not equa l to a
husband under the law; his obligations to the yevama are not as great as
those of a husband and his rights to her property are not as strong.
Like the Yerushalmi, the Bavli focuses on clarifying the status of the
yevama given the rules found in the mishna. The Bavli offers multiple
“solutions” to the contradiction it sees in the mishna, suggesting a dis-
pute as to the status of a levirate widow.
a. Why do they {the Schools of Shammai and Hillel} agree about
the [law in the] first part of the mishna, but disagree about the
[law in the] second part of the mishna?