Introduction[ xxiv ]“reenter” her husband’s family, to resume her status in it as wife and
in-law. Analysis of the status and position of the levirate widow allows
us to consider the status of women as they move in and out of families
through marriage; it also allows us to consider rabbinic understanding
of the relationships between women and their in-laws.
The sixth chapter discusses the child of a levirate union. At issue are
the child’s paternity and his or her place in the father’s family. A child
is both the stated goal of a levirate union and its greatest challenge. If
assigned to the deceased, the child enters the world fatherless and dis-
i n her its h is or her presu med biolog ica l fat her, t he lev i r. If assig ned to t he
levir, the child is part of a “normal” family, but even a male child cannot
inherit the estate of the deceased or carry on his name. In this chapter,
we evaluate levirate as a strategy of continuity in Late Antique Judaism
and consider what, if any, alternative strategies could be employed. our
analysis includes the place of procreation in rabbinic law and the op-
tions that existed for a man who failed to father children.
recent discussions of the Jewish family in Late Antiquity have ar-
gued that it is important to offer a definition of family, but have not
actually done so.^15 Instead, these discussions have focused on two as-
pects of familial relationships, the husband – wife relationship and the
parent – child relationship. I agree that these relationships are, in fact,
the central family relationships considered in rabbinic Judaism, which
focuses on the nuclear rather than the extended family. my goal is to
expand the discussion of the Jewish family in antiquity by exploring
broader definitions of kinship, in order to better understand the web of
relationships that define families and the ways that individuals might
navigate among these relationships and manage their multiple roles
within the family.
Scholars are generally in agreement that the Jewish family in antiq-
uity was not distinctively “Jewish,” but reflected the structure and val-
ues of the Greco-roman family.^16 michael Satlow makes a similar claim
for Jewish marriage in antiquity. In his very brief treatment of levirate
marriage, which he labels an “irregular union,” Satlow suggests that
the tannaim, the Palestinian rabbis of the second and third centuries,
associated levirate with the Greek epiclerate, an institution designed to
ensure the orderly transfer of property within a family. The Palestinian