Levirate Marriage and the Family in Ancient Judaism

1 | The Institution of Levirate

[ 1 ] [1] The Institution of Levirate W hat is levirate and how did it function in ancient Israel and early Judaism? Was levirate in ancient Israel treated as a new marriage, or was the levir, the brother of the deceased husband , simply a sexual surrogate for his brother? Was the levir marrying his sister-in-law, inheriting her as part of his brother’s estate, or merely serving as the genitor of children whose legal father was their mother’s late husband? What function did levirate play in the marriage system of the ancient Israelites? Was it intended to provide a wife for the deceased’s brother, a home for a childless widow, or children for a dead man? Was the deceased’s brother the only acceptable levir, or could that role be filled by any male kinsman? What options did a childless widow have, and what role, if any, did she play in choosing a new marriage or sexual partner? What role did the deceased and/or the widow’s extended family play in choosing or rejecting a levirate union? These are some of the questions that can be asked about levirate in Jewish tradition, but they can also be asked about levirate in general. This chapter considers levirate as an institution, in preparation for considering levirate in ancient Israel and then in rabbinic Judaism. It attempts to define levirate and identify variations in the way levirate is practiced. It also considers the reasons that cultures may employ levirate, and the nexus between levirate and other concerns within a given culture. In analyzing levirate as an institution, the chapter also considers the tension between the desires of individuals—levirs and Levirate Marriage and the Family [  ] widows—and the expectations of the extended family regarding obligations to the dead. Scholars have often resisted comparisons between Israelite culture and other cultures, or at best have preferred to restrict their comparative work to cultures that lived in close proximity to Israel.1 This method would suggest that to better understand levirate in ancient Judaism we might investigate levirate in the ancient Near East and consider responses to the death of a childless man in the Roman Empire and Babylonia during Late Antiquity. I will in fact consider these issues in later chapters. However, I believe that a broader cross-cultural consideration of levirate will enrich our understanding of Jewish constructs of that institution. The ancient Israelites did not invent levirate, but they undoubtedly adapted it to their needs.2 In the post-biblical period, the rabbis continued to adapt levirate to reflect changing family structure, marriage practices, and inheritance law. An analysis of levirate in other cultures, including anthropological studies of levirate in the twentieth century, when we have not only laws but ethnographic information and interviews , may help us understand how levirate interacts with and responds to broader cultural concerns. This in turn could help us in our investigation of rabbinic laws and cases, where cultural concerns and human reactions to levirate situations are often not explicit but must be teased out of texts. While rabbinic sources discuss levirate at length and in great detail, pre-rabbinic sources provide little information about levirate. The extant biblical passages provide minimal information about levirate law and mention one or two incidents of levirate unions. Outside of the Hebrew Bible, we have no data on levirate in ancient Israel. Although cross-cultural analysis has its limitations, and great variation may exist between ancient Israel’s use of levirate and the employment of levirate in other places at other times, a broader survey of levirate may shed light on levirate in a Jewish context.3 By comparing and contrasting levirate in ancient Israel and early Judaism with levirate in other societies, we may be able to pinpoint the social and economic concerns that underpin levirate in Israel and understand the changes in levirate described in rabbinic texts. My work in this chapter relies on a number of studies of marriage in The Institution of Levirate [ 3 ] general, as well as studies of marriage and widowhood in various societies in Africa and Asia. Some of the studies are based on recent ethnographic and anthropological research, while others are based on older work. I appreciate that these studies reflect different approaches to anthropology and ethnography, and that some of the earlier studies may now be considered outdated in their approach to their subjects.4 I...