Levirate Marriage and the Family[ ]existence obviates the need for levirate, it stands to reason that they
should inherit their father’s rights to a portion of the land of Canaan.
The concern of their tribal leaders, that land inherited by women will
be transferred to other tribes when the women marry, is alleviated
when God orders women who inherit land to marry within their father’s
tribe.^14
While levirate remained a strategy for the transmission of landed es-
tates to direct vertical descendants in Sasanian Babylonia, it ceased to
fulfill that function among Jews in the rabbinic period. While the rabbis
offered legislation regarding inheritance, their laws “did not cater to the
i nterests of t he ow ners of la rge estates; t hey were more gea red to ‘m idd le
class’ farmers, the rabbinic ba’al ha-bayit, who operated t he fa m i ly fa r m
with the help of family and hired workers.”^15 The type of property most
commonly inherited by Jews in this period was no longer ancestral land
and thus did not require preservation through levirate. Commentaries
on Numbers claim that daughters who inherit no longer need marry
into their father’s patrilineage.^16 One of the primary motivations, then,
for employing levirate and for assigning the children of levirate to the
deceased no longer came into play.
Some rabbinic legislation may well be a response to changing con-
ditions on the ground. However, rabbinic law must also be evaluated
in light of the rabbis’ tendency to imagine an ideal society. It is impor-
tant when dealing with rabbinic texts to consider the ideal as well as the
real. We must consider not only the setting in which the rabbis created
law, but the worldview they sought to impose, or at least disseminate,
through legislation. Rabbinic law displays a strong interest in the family
and in legislating significant aspects of family life.^17 Incest laws dictate
whom one may marry and with whom one may not have sexual relations.
Laws control marriage and divorce, arguing that the creation and disso-
lution of marriage should be supervised by those who are well versed in
family law, that is, rabbis. The responsibilities of each partner in a mar-
riage are spelled out, as are the responsibilities of parents and children
toward each other. Inheritance, the transfer of property from one family
member to a not her, is a lso reg ulated. Through a ll of t hese laws, t he rab-
bis sought to promote orderly family life and to assert their authority as
(would-be) leaders of the Jewish community.^18 The rabbis also maintain
an interest in genealogy, but their interest is not tied to determining or