Levirate Marriage and the Family in Ancient Judaism

Foreword

[ ix ] Foreword The Hadassah-Brandeis Institute (HBI) is delighted to present this study of the nuclear family in ancient Judaism by Dvora e. weisberg, associate professor of rabbinic literature and director of the Simha and Sara Lainer Beit midrash at Hebrew Union College–Jewish Institute of religion in Los Angeles. In this engagingly written book, weisberg offers fresh ideas about Jews and gender, the very purpose for which the HBI was established. Her subject matter specifically is the levirate widow, “a woman whose husband has died without children” and who therefore must be available to her brother-in-law for marriage. what can we learn from the predicament of such a woman? weisberg shows us that examining the levirate widow enables us to consider “the status of women as they move in and out of families through marriage.” The levirate widow is in a liminal place between family membership and non-membership, between childlessness and possible motherhood, between acceptance and rejection. Although hers is not a work of anthropology, weisberg understands that because there is “relatively little information about levirate in ancient Israel, it is helpful to supplement that information with data from other societies.” She also wisely discusses the functions that levirate marriage served for ancient Israelites and “why it was problematic for the early rabbis.” Ultimately, however, weisberg does not limit her attention to the bonds between brothers, between husband and wife, or between father [ x ] Foreword and child. Instead, her goal is to reflect on what takes precedence in Jewish decision-making. First, the nuclear family takes precedence over the extended family—an unusual argument to emerge from a study of how widows are expected to marry their brothers-in-law if there are no male heirs. Second, the individual takes precedence over any group. As she puts it, “the rabbis emphasize . . . their concern for individual men and women, whose marriage choices the rabbis defend against the claims of the deceased and the extended family” (emphasis added). moreover, the living take precedence over the dead. The freedom to choose—at least for the men—reigns supreme. But in the man’s freedom to choose lies the kernel of the woman’s options as well, for if the living brother does not choose her, then she is not bound to him and can make a new way for herself. Levirate Marriage and the Family in Ancient Judaism joins many other books in the HBI Series on Jewish women that offer new readings of ancient texts. These include Anne Lapidus Lerner’s Eternally Eve: Images of Eve in the Hebrew Bible, Midrash, and Modern Jewish Poetry; rahel r. wasserfall’s Women and Water: Menstruation in Jewish Life and Law; elizabeth wyner mark’s The Covenant of Circumcision: New Perspectives on an Ancient Jewish Rite; rochelle L. millen’s Women, Birth, and Death in Jewish Law and Practice; Judith r. Baskin’s Midrashic Women: Formations of the Feminine in Rabbinic Literature and Tamar ross’s Expanding the Palace of Torah: Orthodoxy and Feminism. It is my sincere hope that, singly and together, these books are deepening our understanding of the gendered meaning of Jewish texts and practices. Shulamit reinharz Brandeis University november 2008 ...