Levirate Marriage and the Family[ ]as his primary heirs.^21 Being acknowledged as the levir’s sons allows the
children of the levirate union, together with any sons the levir has by
other marriages, to inherit his estate. It also obligates the levir to provide
for the children, in contrast to societies in which assigning paternity to
the deceased frees the levir of any financial responsibility for the chil-
dren born to his widowed sister-in-law.^22
The three males connected through a traditional levirate union — the
deceased, his living brother, and the desired son — are linked by shared
patrilineage. It is the desire to preserve the deceased’s place in the patri-
lineage that leads to a levirate union, and it is the bond between men in
the same patrilineage that compels the levir to take his brother’s widow
a nd fat her a ch i ld on her. T he relat ionsh ip bet ween t he ch i ld a nd h is t wo
“fathers,” the deceased and the levir, is a confused one. On one hand,
the child shares their patrilineage, regardless of whose son he is legally.
On the other hand, if he is to serve as the heir of the deceased, he cannot
be recognized as the son of his biological father. Instead, the child of a
levirate union would displace his biological father, inheriting the prop-
erty of the deceased and carrying on his name. If the child of the levirate
union is treated as the son of his biological father, the levir, he cannot
truly “replace” the deceased or inherit his estate. The rabbis chose the
latter course, securing a living father for the children of levirate while
alienating them from the deceased.
Rabbinic texts consider the legal status of children born in a levi-
rate union. This material offers us no indication of how individuals and
families involved in levirate unions experienced those unions and un-
derstood the roles they assumed as a result of responding to the levirate
obligation. Does the rabbinic dictum that, when a man enters into a le-
virate union with his widowed sister-in-law, “she is like his wife in ever y
way”^23 reflect concern that the levirate marriage might not be experi-
enced by the parties as a normal union, or might it reflect a sense that
the levir and the yevama adjusted to their shift in roles and experienced
their marriage as unremarkable? Were children born to a levirate mar-
riage viewed by their parents and their extended family in a special way,
a nd wa s t hei r “con nect ion” to t he decea sed ment ioned? T hese quest ions
cannot be answered on the basis of the sources available to us, but rec-
ognizing the levir as the children’s pater offered them the legal support
and protection provided by a father.