This review of Weisberg’s book commends her thorough research, while faulting her for an over-simplistic sociological model in her feminist analysis.  According to the reviewer, she presents “the Bible as working with an extended-family model, whereas the rabbis advocate a nuclear-family model.”  The reviewers (Farber, Graduate Division of Religion, and Broyde, professor of law, both at Emory University) claim that she ignores the enormous historical and sociological transformation from biblical Ancient Israel to the post-exilic lives of the Jewish family life in the rabbinic period and beyond, with the transition from a largely rural family-farm based culture to an urban one.   

Dvora Weisberg, a professor of Rabbinics at HUC-JIR, engages in a careful reading of the laws of yibum (levirate marriage, the obligation to marry the childless widow on one’s brother) and halitza (the ritual releasing the parties from such obligation).  From a careful reading of the biblical text (Gen. 38, Deut. 25:5-10, and Ruth), to an analysis of the sources in the Talmud and responsa, the author presents the rabbinic view of family and kinship structures, and principles of inheritance. Weisberg also engages in a cross-cultural perspective, showing how different societies have practiced levirate marriage throughout the world.