Levirate Marriage and the Family[ ]We might imagine a levir, believing the yevama’s child is his, taking
an interest in that child, even if he is forbidden to maintain the child’s
mother as his wife. The Bavli, however, imagines the levir claiming the
child as his son, not out of paternal pride or love, but to eliminate the
child’s claim to an inheritance. “You are my son,” proclaims the levir,
“and you have no claim to the property” that belonged to my brother or
father.
Similarly, the Bavli constructs a scenario in which the child finds
himself in a legal dispute with the acknowledged sons of the levir. The
levir, we must assume, is dead, since his sons are presenting themselves
as claimants to the estate of the deceased brother or their grandfather;
such cla i ms wou ld not be leg it i mate i f t he lev i r were a l ive. T he ch i ld may
never have been acknowledged by the levir. Now, the levir’s sons insist
that the child in question is their brother — something they may never
have acknowledged before — in order to reduce his claim on the estate.
Such protestations of brotherhood can hardly be welcome to the child,
whose claim to be the only son of his mother’s first husband would en-
title him to all or half of the estate being distributed.
In all of these cases, the disputants are members of the same patri-
lineage. The child whose paternity is in doubt is certainly the son,
nephew, brother, or cousin of the other claimants. However, their inter-
actions with him are far from fraternal.
Both the Bavli and the Yerushalmi construct scenarios that imag-
ine that the child born to the yevama shortly after the death of her hus-
band is a son. It is worth noting that if the child whose paternity was
uncertain was a girl, her status would be even more precarious. If she
was recognized as the child of her mother’s first husband, she would be
her father’s sole heir and be entitled to his share of his father’s estate.
If, however, she was treated as the child of the levir, she would have no
rights to her father’s estate in the event that the levir had sons from an-
other marriage. Instead of saying, “You are our brother, and you have
only a portion together with us,” the sons of the levir would be able to
say, “You are our sister and you are entitled to nothing more than main-
tenance from our father’s estate.”
These scenarios may help to explain the rabbis’ insistence that the
child of a levirate union be recognized as the child of the levir. It is easy
to imagine that had paternity of the children of a levirate union been