Levirate Marriage and the Family in Ancient Judaism

Acknowledgments

[ xi ] Acknowledgments I am grateful for the friends and colleagues whose suggestions and questions have enriched this work, including rachel Adler, Judith Baskin, eugene Cooper, Yakov elman, Tamara eskenazi, Joel Gereboff, Sharon Gillerman, Bernard Jackson, Gail Labovitz, Stephen Passamaneck, Leonard Plotnicov, and ron reissberg. I am also grateful to my readers at UPne, whose critiques helped me revise the book. I want to thank rachel Timoner and Andrea namaste for their help in preparing the manuscript. my editor, Phyllis Deutsch, has been a joy to work with. my family has been an incredible source of support. my children, micah and noah, have tolerated learning much more about levirate marriage than they ever wanted to. noah has pushed me forward by threatening to write his own book. micah is a careful reader, whose sense of style has enriched my own writing. my husband, neal, has encouraged me during the difficult moments in my work and cheered me on during my successes. This book is dedicated to my doctoral adviser, Dr. Baruch Bokser, z”l. Dr. Bokser not only helped me become a scholar; he was an exceptional model of a teacher. From the moment he became my teacher until his death, Dr. Bokser was a devoted adviser, even reading portions of my dissertation in his hospital bed. The care and attention I have given my students is a tribute to his example—what is mine and theirs is his. ...