Notes[ 19 ]ther’s sister, since these women cannot marry a man’s brother by the same father
and therefore never could be in a situation that calls for levirate marriage.
111. B. Yev. 5 a.
11. While there is some rabbinic attestation to such marriages, we should not
make broad assumptions about marriage patterns from the cases found in the
Mishnah and in the Talmuds. Such marriage patterns are common in some cul-
tures. The first marriage creates bonds between the families and may lead to
further marriages among family members. In addition, societies in which adult
brothers live together might promote this type of marriage pattern, since sisters,
or women from one extended family, may live and work together well, thus pro-
moting harmony within the extended residential family.
113. Pasternak, Introduction to Kinship, 1 4.
114. Leviticus contains no explicit prohibition on sexual relations between a
man and his daughter. This prohibition is taken as a given by the rabbis, who
“learn” it through biblical exegesis.
115. Lev. 18 :1 – 13 ; : 19.
116. Lev. 18 : 14 ; :.
11. The distance between Ego and this maternal uncle is also recognized in
the laws of inheritance. Ego might, in theory, inherit the property of a paternal
uncle or a maternal uncle, if these uncles have the same father as Ego’s parents.
Those uncles who share only mothers with Ego’s parents could not bequeath
property to Ego; rather, in the absence of children, their property would devolve
on siblings on their father’s side.
118. Anthropologists distinguish between referential terms, the terms that an
individual uses when asked how he is related to a given person, and terms of ad-
dress, the terminolog y he employs to speak to that person (Pasternak, Introduc-
tion to Kinship, 13 ). The rules discussed in this sugya and others indicate that the
rabbis employ terms of reference that distinguish between maternal and pater-
nal relatives, but that terms of address may have been less precise.
119. Ego is forbidden to marry his wife’s sister, which would suggest, follow-
ing the general principle enunciated by Judah bar Shela, that he ought to be for-
bidden to marry the wife of her male “counterpart,” i.e., the wife of his wife’s
brother. The Bavli does not comment on this apparent difficulty, nor do the clas-
sical commentators. Perhaps the fact that the prohibition against a wife’s sister
is limited to the wife’s lifetime softens the prohibition such that the rabbis do not
accord it the same severity accorded to other incest prohibitions.
1. Y. Yev. : 4 , 3 d.
11. Fox, Kinship and Marriage, 114 – 1.
- Brothers (pages 9 – 1)
- Steinberg, Kinship and Marriage in Genesis, 13 – 14 .
. Lev. 19 :1; 5: 35 – 36 ; Num. 3: 6 ; Deut. : 8 et al. - Gen. 13 : 8.
- Gen. 14 : 4.
- Gen. :.
- Lev. 5:5.
. Lev. 5: 48. Since the Torah continues by explaining that, in the absence of
“brothers,” a man should be redeemed by “his uncle or his uncle’s son, or anyone
of his family who is of his own flesh” (Lev. 5: 49 ), we can assume that the broth-
ers referred to in the preceding verse are actual brothers rather than kinsmen in
general.
- Steinberg, Kinship and Marriage in Genesis, 13 – 14 .