[ ]From Wife to Widow and Back Againants are now equal; the levir’s claim is based on his “marriage,” while
the woman’s family’s claim is based on the “incompleteness” of that
marriage.
The third opinion, that of Abbaye [I – J], also requires us to read the
mishna as a hybrid. The first case deals with a woman who acquires
property while a shomeret yavam; given her complete control over the
property, Abbaye clearly does not impute much legal force to ziqqa be-
yond prohibiting the yevama to marry outside her husband’s family. If,
however, the property comes to the woman while she is married to her
husband, his power over the property is equal to hers, and that power
is inherited by the levir to the extent that he can claim her property as
her heir.
For Rava [L], the factor that determines the validity of a levir’s claim
on the property of the yevama is a declaration of intent to perform le-
virate marriage. If he has not made a declaration, he has no rights. The
declaration has, at least according to the School of Shammai [M], the
force of betrothal and then some, giving the levir a significant claim to
the property of the yevama if she dies before he marries her. For Rava,
like Abbaye, ziqqa alone has little force, but together with a declaration
it has more force than betrothal, on which ziqqa is modeled.
Two of the solutions offered in this sugya, those of Ulla and Abbaye,
require particularly forced readings of the mishna, readings that de-
mand we imagine that the rulings reflect different moments on the
timeline of a woman’s life. All four readings focus on the way in which
a bond is created between a levir and his sister-in-law and the force of
that bond. What is clear is that the amoraim could not agree about the
precise nature and force of ziqqa or ma’amar, nor could they precisely
define the status of a yevama vis-à-vis the levir.
As was the case in the Yerushalmi, none of these solutions fully ad-
dress the language of the mishna. In discussing the legitimacy or force
of the levir’s claim to his “w ife’s” estate, the Bavli ignores the words “the
heirs of the husband.” If we follow the arguments of the amoraim, the
mishna should read “the levir” or “the husband.” The mishna’s language
suggests that the levirate widow is still tied to her late husband, that his
claim on her is somehow transferred to his heirs, including the levir.
The Mishnah acknowledges that the levirate widow is a hybrid, a
woman whose connection to the “man in her life,” that is, the levir, is