Levirate Marriage and the Family[ ]understand the rabbis’ focus on the nuclear family rather than the ex-
tended family.^25 The adult free Jewish male is the central player in rab-
binic law. Within the nuclear family, the adult male is the undisputed
authority figure; his wife and minor children are his responsibility and
are under his control. A strong extended family gives the senior adult
male significant authority over his adult sons (and their wives and chil-
dren). Although rabbinic law promotes honoring one’s parents, it cir-
cumscribes parental authority over adult children.
Early Israelite religion was centered in the extended family. The fam-
ily’s role in religion was diminished during the period of the monarchy,
as centralized institutions like the monarchy and the priesthood ap-
propriated power. The Babylonian exile brought an end to those institu-
tions and facilitated a return to family-centric religion.^26 Gradually, the
emergence of rabbinic Judaism, with its strong emphasis on the teacher –
student relationship and the transmission of traditions through disci-
pleship, led to a diminishing of the family as a source of tradition, while
promoting the family and the home as a place in which religious ritual
was practiced and taught to children. Rather than discrediting the fam-
ily, the rabbis co-opted it and brought it under their authority.^27 A fam-
ily unit comprising a man, his wife (or wives), and their children was
the unit that best served the rabbis’ vision of the people Israel. A man
might feel strong connections to his parents and siblings as well as to
other members of his father and mother’s extended families, and might
develop ties to his wife’s family as well, but his primary role was that of
householder, a role in which he controlled others and was answerable to
the will of God as interpreted by the rabbis.
Families are in a constant state of flux. They grow and shrink as
members are born, marry, and die. They adapt to economic and social
changes, adopting new structures to deal with changes. Within a fam-
ily, individuals play a variety of roles, assuming new roles when circum-
stances permit or demand. Levirate is a strategy by which a family seeks
to respond to an untimely death, one that leaves the deceased without
the preferred heir and his widow with no tangible link to her husband’s
family. Levirate offers a solution based on substitution, offering a man’s
brother to the widow in place of her husband and seeking to create a
child to fill the place of the dead. The family remains undisturbed as far
as possible and, if the levirate union is successful in producing a child,