Introduction[ xx ]Although laws ordering relationships between family members are
meant to maintain order and promote harmony in the family, levirate
highlights the tensions that can arise when the goals of these laws and
the interests of the affected parties clash. In particular, levirate calls on
two individuals, the brother and widow of the deceased, to contemplate
a transformed relationship, to shift from their roles as brother-in-law
and sister-in-law to husband and wife. Deuteronomy 25 and Genesis 38
suggest that this transition was not always a desirable one, at least for
the man. rabbinic texts continue to explore the tensions involved in re-
sponding to the levirate obligation, noting that both parties may be re-
luctant to fulfill the obligation. The rabbis also acknowledge, and more
or less condone, the unwillingness of the living to provide for the conti-
nuity of the dead.
The early rabbis’ transformation of levirate marriage reveals another
t y pe of clash, t he clash bet ween t he ex pectat ions conveyed i n a com mu-
nity’s sacred scripture and the changing reality and social norms of that
community. Deuteronomy presents levirate as a mechanism to ensure
the preservation of a man’s “name” or lineage. But the surviving brother
a l ready ensu res t he cont i nuat ion of t he fa m i ly l i ne. Fu r t her more, i n bib-
lical genealogies that include men born through levirate unions, such
children are accounted the sons of their genitor and not of their moth-
ers’ deceased husband. rabbinic discussions assign the property of a
deceased childless man to his brothers; if a man enters into a levirate
union, he inherits the estate of the deceased, bequeathing it upon his
deat h to a l l of h is sons, whet her or not t hey were t he resu lt of t he lev irate
union. It can be argued that rabbinic levirate does not achieve the goals
set forth in Deuteronomy 25 ; the deceased has no child and his property
passes to his brothers. In adapting levirate to their world, the rabbis in
fact ignore some or all of its biblical rationales. Because rabbinic notions
of the family and the individual’s place in the family are at odds with a
traditional construct of levirate, levirate is for all intents and purposes
abandoned. The retention of the union between the deceased’s widow
and his brother may signal a different rationale for levirate, or it may
indicate the unwillingness of the rabbis to entirely uproot a biblical law
when they did not find the law morally problematic.^11
This book uses as its primary source of information about the ancient
rabbis the texts they produced. These texts do not offer demographic