The author, an associate professor of rabbinic literature at HUC-JIR in Los Angeles, uses the topics of yibbum and halitza as a window into both the role of the Jewish family in talmudic times and rabbinical interpretation and shaping of the biblical law found in Deuteronomy 25:5-10. The tractate, Yevamot, in the Mishnah and Tosefta, is devoted almost completely to levirate marriage and what happens when a husband dies, leaving his widow childless. If the husband has a brother, he is obligated to marry her or else to release her by the ceremony of halitza. Is the goal of the law to produce a posthumous heir for the husband or to protect the widow? Weisberg shows how the status of the yevama is totally different from that of an ordinary widow because, while no longer married, she is not independent but is bound to her brother-in-law. Weisberg also introduces a cross-cultural perspective, showing how different societies have practiced levirate marriage.
In this book, which was a 2009 National Jewish Book Award finalist in the category of Women’s Studies, Weisberg’s close analysis of the rabbinic texts gives us a fascinating view of how the rabbis looked at family structure, kinship, and inheritance. She considers some of the rabbis’ responses to the situation of the yevama, especially the increasing willingness to employ halitza rather than levirate marriage, as attempts to regularize the situation and possibly protect women from the abuses inherent in the biblical law. For readers who see the position of the Jewish woman as bride or as recipient of a get in case of divorce, as a passive one, it is interesting that in the ceremony of halitza, it is the woman who takes the active role—removing the sandal, spitting, and reciting the appropriate formula—and the man who is passive. (For more about levirate marriage, see articles in the Shavuot 5767 issue of the JOFA Journal, pp. 18–20).