Introduction[ xix ]hope restored or hope dashed make levirate an institution that offers
a fascinating opportunity to study the complex relationships that exist
within families.
In his study of Jewish marriage in antiquity, michael Satlow “focus[es]
attention on the gap between marital ideologies and ideals and their re-
a l it ie s .”^8 A study of levirate marriage reveals such a clash of ideals and
reality. Ideally, brothers live and work together, sharing common eco-
nomic interests and a commitment to their family’s continuity. In such
a world, a brother would gladly assume responsibility for his brother’s
widow and provide his brother with an heir. In reality, brothers may
have competing interests. A man’s ow n interests may trump t hose of his
deceased brother. In line to inherit the estate of his childless brother, a
man might be reluctant to sire a child who would displace him as his
brother’s heir. This reluctance is already acknowledged in the Hebrew
Bible, where onan’s refusal to consummate his union with Tamar is at-
tributed to his realization that “the seed would not count as his.”^9 while
onan’s actions are condemned by God and the narrator of Genesis 38 ,
his concerns underscore a real tension that will be addressed in later
discussions of levirate analyzed in this book.
A widow might consider remaining within her husband’s family a de-
sirable outcome, and she might want to provide her late husband with
a posthumous child. However, she might find marriage to her brother-
in-law distasteful and prefer to contemplate marriage outside her hus-
band’s family. on some level, levirate as laid out in Deuteronomy 25 is a n
institution that controls women, allowing the claims of a woman’s hus-
band and his family to determine her future. This understanding of le-
v i rate, however, is compl icated by bibl ica l na r rat ives t hat por t ray Ta ma r
and naomi promoting unions that male relatives resist.^10 one cou ld read
t hese stor ies a s ev idence t hat ch i ld less w idows were relat ively powerless
and may have seen levirate as their only viable option, but one could
also argue that the Hebrew Bible promotes levirate as a desirable course
for women or sees married women as full members of their husband’s
fa m i ly, eager to promote t he cont i nu it y of t hat fa m i ly even a f ter t he hus-
band’s death. Later rabbinic discussions of levirate indicate that direct-
ing widows into levirate unions was a complex undertaking that some-
times failed; some rabbinic texts portray women as independent agents
focused on their own future rather than that of their husband’s family.