[  ]

[7]

Conclusion

T

he family imagined by and legislated for in rabbinic literature is
not the family portrayed in the Hebrew Bible. Some of the fea-
tures of the idealized rabbinic family correspond to those sug-
gested by the biblical text.^1 The family described in rabbinic texts is pa-
triarchal and patrilineal; while patrilineal and matrilineal relatives are
acknowledged as kin, it is the father’s family that is named mishpaha.
A woman leaves her father’s home upon marriage to live with her hus-
band. Inheritance favors male descendants over female descendants
and descent through males over descent through females. Wives do not
inherit from their husbands. Polygyny is permitted. Not coincidentally,
all of these characteristics are found in societies that practice levirate,
and levirate is a component of biblical family law.
At the same time, the idealized rabbinic family is not the extended
family but the nuclear family. At the center of the rabbinic family — and
arguably of the Mishnah as a whole — is the Israelite householder (ba’al
ha’bayit). Jacob Neusner imagines the householder as the “father of an
extended family, including his sons and their wives and children, his
servants, his slaves, the craftsmen to whom he entrusts tasks he does
not choose to do.”^2 This description suggests that the family imagined
in the Mishnah is an extended family with joint residence. This family
is patrilineal and patrilocal; the householder’s married daughters, along
with their husbands and children, are part of other families. But while
the Mishnah allows for the possibility of extended family residence, it