Levirate Marriage and the Family[ ]w. For is it not taught: One who is fleeing from prison and reaches
a ford, may say [to the ferryman], “I’ll pay you a dinar to take me
across,” and give him only the [usual] fee. Therefore, he can say
to him, “I was only jesting [so you would help me save myself].”
Here too, [she can claim], “I was only jesting [to save myself from
levirate marriage].” 91In these three cases, women are faced with levirs whom they should
not or do not wish to marry. In the first and third cases [F and P – U], we
are told that the levir “is unsuitable” for his sister-in-law. On the basis
of the Bavli’s discussion at Yevamot b, we might assume a significant
age difference between the levir and the yevama.^92 Nonet heless, t he lev i r
apparently wishes to marry his sister-in-law. In these cases, the yevama
does not express her wishes; we cannot be certain if the women found
these marriages distasteful and the rabbis in question agreed, or if the
women may have been willing to marry their brothers-in-law but the
rabbis disapproved of such “unsuitable” unions.
The second case [G – O] is the most detailed and involves an exchange
between Rabbi Hiy ya bar Abba and the mother of the yevama.^93 The rabbi
asks the widow to stand up, presumably to enter into the levirate union.
Her mother’s reply, “Her sitting is her standing,” suggests that the wom-
an’s reluctance to enter the union (her “sitting”) is the preferable course
of action, the one that will best protect her (her “standing”). Questioning
the woman, the rabbi learns that the levir is eager to marry his sister-in-
law to get his hands on her property, and she is not interested in marry-
ing him. Rabbi Hiy ya proceeds to trick the levir into halitza.
The third case includes a justification for refusing to carry out the
conditions on which the halitza was agreed to by the levir. Rav Pappa
compares a woman who promises to pay her levir if he releases her to
a person fleeing from prison. A promise to pay an inflated fee to escape
one’s pursuers can be ignored after the fact; so too, a woman can claim
her offer to pay her levir was a “jest,” an exaggeration intended to ef-
fect her release from him. The comparison suggests that an undesirable
marriage is a type of imprisonment, justifying the woman’s desire to
avoid levirate marriage and the rabbis’ willingness to assist her.
The same issues are discussed in Yerushalmi Yevamot : (a). Here
a woman’s unwillingness to marry her levir is presented as a justification